• Fewer than expected jobs were created last month, sparkling investors’ hope for more than 2 rate cuts this year.
• US inflation data will be a key highlight for this week’s data flow, along with GDP updates in Japan and the UK.
• Lacking a catalyst for the upward trend, the crypto market is projected to decline.
• The market cap of stablecoin hits an ATH again and USDS stands out.
• Jito’s new proposal aimed at revenue growth and community incentives.
• Sui enhances security and user experience by Passkey’s integration.
• Ethereum has decided to delay the Pectra upgrade following two failed test runs.
• CeFi projects were the largest share of funding last week.

Macro Overview

Fewer than expected jobs were created last month, sparkling investors’ hope for more than 2 rate cuts this year.

Last week’s data showed the US economy added 151k jobs in Feb, which is slightly fewer than the market forecast of 160k. Meanwhile, last month’s average hourly earnings moderately increased by 0.3%, compared to the 0.5% in January. The softer average hourly earnings could be a relief to the Fed, as it shows a clearer indicator for economic slowdown amid the current complicated policy environment.

According to the LSEG, the investors are pricing in 78 bps of interest rate easing this year following the labour market report, which is approximately equivalent to 3 rate cuts with 25 bps each. The first rate cut is likely to start in June. Also, Federal Reserve Vice Chair of Supervision Michael Bar stepped down and Trump announced during the weekend that he will appoint a new official in the near future. Although appointing this role may not give Trump immediate influence on interest rate decisions, he got his early chance to reshape the Fed, particularly from supervisory and regulatory perspectives.

The US CPI data this Wednesday and PPI this Thursday will be this week’s key economical data highlights. The market consensus predicts the monthly core inflation to slow down from 0.4% to 0.3%, and the headline rate from 0.5% to 0.3%. Potential threats include tariffs that may already drive costs higher, accompanied by supply chain worries. The UK will publish Jan GDP and Japan will release last year’s Q4 GDP this week, and the Bank of Canada will likely make an interest rate cut decision to boost the economy from the impacts of US tariffs.

The dollar index dropped to its multi-month low last Friday after data showed fewer jobs were created than expected. Investors are also turning to Japanese yen and Swiss franc for safe-haven, amid a trade war is starting soon.

A slight drop of total assets has been recorded last week, as the total assets level reached $6.757tn. The Fed is on track of bringing down the assets level and ON RRP last week is $136bn.

Gold price recovered from the dump last week, climbing across the $2,900 line and landed at $2,909.03 last Friday. The market still has high demand for risky asset allocation given tariff threats and ambiguous monetary policies.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

The entire crypto market is currently in a downtrend, and this trend continues. The price of BTC stood at $82,000, declining by 11.2%, while Ether was priced at $2,000, decreasing by 15.4% on a weekly basis. The bullish catalyst of BTC strategic reserves has materialized, but the market has not responded as expected — namely, with purchases using Federal Reserve funds. Mostly, in the short to mid-term, no clear catalyst has emerged to support BTC’s further rise, making a continued decline more likely.

2. Total Market Cap

The total market cap of the crypto market amounts to 2.66 trillion this monday. Excluding Ether and BTC, it stands at 778.2 billion. Both of them reflect a dramatic decline of 12.7% and 14.7%. Most notably, The altcoin reserves strategy (SOL / XRP/ ADA) mentioned by Trump last week erased all of the gains.

3. Net Inflows

Despite the uncertainty about where newly issued stablecoins are used, the growth of the market cap of stablecoins rises steadily, marking it at $227.2 billion and reflecting a week-on-week increase of roughly $3 billion. Specifically, USDC and USDT rose approximately $500 million and $1.5 billion, respectively, where USDC is used as the only legal and well-liquidated stablecoin. Meanwhile, USDS saw a rapid increase of nearly 7.8%, pushing its market cap to over $4.6 billion, just a step away from surpassing Ethena.

4. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

Basically, Most of the altcoins have dropped in the last week especially for ADA, Hype and SOL. Ethereum dropped by 15.1%, even briefly falling below $2,000. Altcoins lack innovation, and external capital tends to flow into BTC. Additionally, a large number of altcoins are awaiting listing that drains liquidity from the market. All of the above contribute to the weakness of altcoins in this cycle. Theoretically, from a fundamental perspective, most altcoins are still overvalued, so caution is still necessary.

The Key Crypto Highlights

1. Jito’s new proposal aims at revenue growth and community incentive

Jito Network’s tokenomics proposal focuses on optimizing how its revenue is recycled or rewarded to strengthen ecosystem growth and community participation. Currently, the JTO token serves two main purposes: governance and security. The Jito DAO earns significant fees 4% from JitoSOL and 3% from TipRouter, but lacks a clear strategy to reinvest or distribute this value. The proposal explores two pathways: Rewards (direct value redistribution) and Recycling (reinvesting fees into ecosystem growth).
For Rewards, options include a fee switch (e.g., GMX’s model of sharing 30% fees with stakers) or buybacks (like MakerDAO’s $100M+ MKR burns).
Recycling mechanisms could involve Protocol-Owned Liquidity (POL) to stabilize JitoSOL/JTO trading pools, yield subsidies to compete with rivals like JupSOL, or grants to fund ecosystem projects.
Novel ideas include “Buyback & Barter” (using JTO to secure partnerships) and Real Yield Gauges (letting JTO holders vote on fee allocation to liquidity pools). The DAO is advised to prioritize recycling in 2024 via POL and yield boosts; to expand JitoSOL’s dominance, then consider rewards like buybacks once the ecosystem matures. Key risks include inflating JTO supply with premature rewards or hoarding treasury funds, which could demotivate community participation.

2. Sui enhances security and user experience by Passkey’s integration

Sui’s integration of passkeys marks an innovative step toward offering enhanced convenience and security while eliminating pain points like seed phrases and phishing risks. Passkeys are digital credentials powered by SUI cryptography, enabling users to authenticate themselves using biometrics (Face ID, Touch ID), hardware security keys (like YubiKey), or cloud-synced credentials, without needing passwords or seed phrases. The process works by creating and storing a passkey on an authenticator (such as a phone, laptop, or security key), which then signs a challenge from the app server during authentication. Cloud-based passkeys can also sync securely across devices with end-to-end encryption, allowing seamless cross-device access. This means users can create accounts using biometrics, sign transactions without directly managing private keys, and access their accounts across devices effortlessly. Dapps also benefit, as passkeys simplify private key management, improve user experience by removing the need for extensions or passwords, and strengthen security through WebAuthn standards.

3. Ethereum has decided to delay the Pectra upgrade following two failed test runs

Ethereum has decided to delay the Pectra upgrade following two failed test runs, stating that more time is needed to gather sufficient data before deploying it to the mainnet. Initially, Ethereum planned to finalize the mainnet launch date for Pectra during a meeting on March 6, with hopes of releasing the upgrade within the same month. However, recent tests on Holesky and Sepolia, Ethereum’s two primary testnets, revealed significant issues.
On February 25, Holesky encountered a failure to finalize transactions as expected, while on March 5, Sepolia faced errors related to custom deposit contracts. Although the Sepolia issue was identified and resolved, and the network is now functioning normally, developers discovered that the problems stemmed from misconfigurations during testing rather than flaws in Pectra itself. Despite this, the development team chose to conduct further testing to ensure stability. To continue testing Pectra without relying on Holesky, Ethereum plans to create a shadow fork_a temporary blockchain copy used for testing, which will be discarded once Holesky is restored. Fixing Holesky requires 67% of validators to reconfigure their systems and come online, with restoration expected around March 28. By then, Ethereum aims to gather additional data to finalize the next steps for Pectra’s deployment.

Key Ventures Deals

1. FastLane Raised $6M to enhance MEV-Aware Solutions on Polygon and Monad

FastLane is a hybrid Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) protocol designed to improve transaction execution and blockchain efficiency, recently raised $6M in Strategic round led by Figment, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Robot Ventures,… and notable angel investors. The protocol is specifically focused on the Polygon and Monad networks, utilizing validator-centric sequencing and MEV-aware infrastructure to enhance the usability and DeFi applications. FastLane addresses critical issues like transaction spam and network inefficiencies while ensuring seamless integration by not requiring validators to run custom code on their nodes, which also helps reduce data transfer costs for both validators and searchers. Its integration with Monad emphasizes improving transaction predictability and usability for developers and end-users alike. FastLane’s ecosystem includes several components, such as shMONAD, a liquid staking token for Monad; Task Manager, a tool for automating smart contract executions without relying on off-chain dependencies; 4337 shBundler, a cutting-edge solution for account abstraction and gasless transactions; and Monad Atlas, a framework for MEV auctions and execution abstraction.

2. Seismic Secures $7M from a16z for App-Level Encryption

Seismic has successfully raised $7M in a Seed round led by a16z, with participants from Polychain, 1kx, NGC,… to address one of Ethereum’s unresolved challenges: forced transparency. Achieving app-level encryption requires encryption to be embedded at the base layer of the blockchain, a feature that cannot simply be added to existing transparent chains. This is the foundation of Seismic, an encrypted blockchain designed to eliminate the transparency bottleneck and empower developers to create new tools and applications. In general, Seismic introduces a groundbreaking approach by encrypting app-level information, including exchange parameters and vault transfers, which directly impacts application functionality and paves the way for innovative products. Early prototypes built on Seismic include “Level,” an app enabling asset trading based on personal beliefs rather than price, and Folio which connects users through one of the longest pay-it-forward chains in history.

3. Iron Fish acquired by BASE to bring privacy on mainstream

Iron Fish, a leading privacy-focused blockchain, is taking a major step via being acquired by Base, to make private transactions mainstream. Over six years, Iron Fish has developed cutting-edge privacy tech, including its PoW Layer 1 chain, Multi-Asset Shielded Pool (MASP) powered by ZKPs, and bridges to 27 chains. This M&A deal combines Iron Fish’s privacy infrastructure with Base’s scalability to drive global crypto adoption while protecting user privacy. Hence, the team aimed to onboard millions of users, making private transactions a standard feature and advancing economics. Meanwhile, The Iron Fish Foundation will remain independent, supporting the IRON token and expanding privacy solutions across chains. It will focus on tutorials, research, and partnerships like ChainPort, Oreowallet, and Foxwallet, while restructuring grants to prioritize experimental privacy initiatives.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 26, with Infra leading the way with 11 deals, representing 42% of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Social had 2 (8%), Data had 4 (15%), , Gamefi had 2 (8%), DeFi had 7 (27%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $313M, 30% deals (8/26) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $232M. Most funded deals: Metaplannet with $87M and Flowdesk $52M

Total weekly fundraising rose to $313M for the 2nd week of Mar-2025, a decrease of -81% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was up +69% year over year for the same period.