Cryptocurrency Markets Rebound After Holiday Slump
Cryptocurrency markets experienced a slight rebound after last week’s downturn, as investor activity slowed down over the holidays. According to data from TradingView, Bitcoin (BTC) fell to a weekly low of $86,561 on Tuesday before rising back above $88,600 on Friday. This rebound is a welcome respite for investors, who have been watching the market with bated breath.
Demand for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) remained weak, recording $175 million in outflows on Wednesday, marking the fifth consecutive day of net outflows, according to Farside Investors. This trend suggests that investors are still cautious about investing in the cryptocurrency market. 
BTC/USD, year-to-date chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Aave Governance Vote Ends in Rejection
Aave token holders voted against a controversial governance proposal that aimed to transfer control of the protocol’s brand assets to DAO ownership. On Friday, the Snapshot poll ended with 55.29% “NO” votes and 41.21% abstentions. Only 3.5% of voters supported the proposal. The proposal asked whether Aave token holders (AAVE) should regain control of Aave’s domains, social networks, naming rights, and other intellectual property through an entity under a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). 
Aave governance voting results. Source: Snapshot
The rejection ended a tense governance episode for Aave, one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocols. It highlighted how timing, escalation, and participation can influence governance outcomes in a DAO.
Hyperliquid’s HYPE Token Surges
Decentralized perpetual exchange Hyperliquid is among the groundbreaking cryptocurrency projects of 2025, but rivals’ lucrative reward systems are vying to lure investors away. Cantor Fitzgerald predicts that Hyperliquid’s HYPE token (HYPE) will rise to $200 by 2035. Hyunsu Jung, CEO of HYPE finance firm Hyperion DeFi, argues that the surge is being fueled by the Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal 3 (HIP-3). 
DEX to CEX offender volume ratio. Source: CoinGecko.com
Perpetual swaps are futures contracts that reflect the price of an underlying asset but do not have an expiration date. Contracts maintain their price close to spot assets through a funding mechanism that transfers payments between long and short position holders.
CZ Proposes Solution to Combat Address Poisoning
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao suggested additional security measures to “eliminate” address poisoning, including wallet warnings and blacklists of suspicious accounts. “All wallets should simply check whether a receiving address is a ‘poison address’ and block the user. This is a blockchain query,” Zhao wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. 
$50 million address poisoning transaction, wallet 0xcB8. Source: Etherscan.io
Address poisoning is a form of phishing in which scammers trick their victims into sending cryptocurrencies to illegal wallets by first sending them small transactions. Unsuspecting users often copy and paste the attacker’s address from their wallet history.
Ethereum’s USDe Loses $8.3 Billion
Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe has lost about $8.3 billion in net outflows since the major liquidation on October 10 as confidence in leveraged and synthetic collateral structures continues to weaken. According to a report by 10x Research, October’s selloff marked a turning point for the crypto market, turning the bull phase into one of deleveraging. 
USDe market cap is falling. Source: CoinMarketCap.
USDe’s market cap was nearly $14.7 billion as of October 9th. In just over two months, that value has fallen to around $6.4 billion.
Uniswap Fee Change Set to Pass
The highly anticipated fee transition for the Uniswap protocol, dubbed “UNIfication,” has been passed and was expected to go live later this week after reaching the 40 million vote threshold needed to trigger one of the largest upgrades in the decentralized exchange protocol’s seven-year history. 
Change in UNI price in the last week. Source: CoinGecko
The proposal would see 100 million UNI tokens removed from the Uniswap Foundation coffers, while also introducing a protocol fee discount auction system to increase liquidity providers’ returns.
Overview of the DeFi Market
Most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView. Memecoin Pippin (PIPPIN) rose over 41% as the biggest gainer of the week, followed by Canton (CC) token which gained over 25% on the weekly chart. 
Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama
Thank you for reading our roundup of the most influential DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and information on this dynamically evolving field. For more information, visit https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-crawls-88k-aave-governance-drama?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss_tag_altcoin&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound
