Gate Research Institute: ETH Leads the Rally | Macro Improvements and Fusaka Upgrade as Catalysts

Crypto Asset Overview

BTC (+1.63% | Current Price 93,452.5 USDT)

BTC experienced two phases in the past day: a strong rebound followed by high-level consolidation. After hitting a low of $83,828 on December 2, the price began a strong V-shaped recovery, mainly catalyzed by shifts in policy and macro expectations, including improved SEC regulatory outlook and renewed expectations of FED rate cuts. After reaching a high of $94,189.8, the price entered a consolidation phase at elevated levels. Currently, the three moving averages are in a standard bullish alignment: MA 5 > MA 10 > MA 30, indicating an overall bullish trend. As long as the price stays above MA 30 and maintains this bullish arrangement, the uptrend structure remains intact, and after consolidating at these high levels, BTC may attempt to break through the $94,000-$95,000 range again.

ETH (+6.73% | Current Price 3,218.28 USDT)

ETH quickly rebounded after hitting a low of $2,719.28 on December 2, forming a clear V-shaped bottom. Since the rebound started, ETH has shown continuous and stable upward momentum, consistently setting new local highs. Currently, the three moving averages are in a standard bullish alignment: MA 5 > MA 10 > MA 30, and the distances between the moving averages are relatively large, indicating a very strong uptrend. Since the rebound began, the price has closely tracked MA 5 and MA 10, rarely falling below MA 10, suggesting very strong short-term support, with every brief pullback quickly bought up. With improving macro and policy environments, and Ethereum’s successful Fusaka upgrade, ETH is expected to continue its trend and challenge the $3,300 threshold. However, given the small gap between MA 5 and the price, if short-term momentum fades, a quick but brief pullback may occur. As long as the price holds above MA 10 or MA 30 during such a pullback, the bullish structure will remain intact.

GT (+2.22% | Current Price 10.58 USDT)

GT’s price action has shown high correlation with the overall market, also experiencing a V-shaped reversal and quickly recovering the losses from December 1-2. However, after rebounding to the $10.4-$10.6 range, the price entered a sideways consolidation phase. Compared to BTC and ETH, GT’s moving averages are the closest and have just started to fan out upward, which may indicate the early or accelerating stages of a bullish trend, with upward momentum gathering. As long as the price stays above the dense moving average area at $10.4-$10.6, the uptrend structure remains intact. Against the backdrop of a dovish FED and increased market risk appetite, overall activity and capital inflow expectations in the crypto market are rising. Platform tokens like GT, supported by revenue and burn mechanisms, are expected to leverage their high-beta attributes to attract capital deployment.

Daily Top Gainers & Losers

In the past 24 hours, the market has been in an optimistic and bullish mood. The Fear & Greed Index has rebounded to 26, moving out of the “extreme fear” range. ETH is the leader of this rally, outperforming other coins. Positive regulatory expectations and renewed FED liquidity outlooks have provided fundamental momentum for the market’s V-shaped rebound and ongoing rise. As ETH maintains its strength, funds are likely to flow into ETH-related DeFi/Layer2 ecosystems, and then spread to other mainstream network tokens and platform coins with real revenue support.

TRADOOR Tradoor (+176.85%, Circulating Market Cap $19.8274M)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the TRADOOR token is $1.3843, up over 170% in 24 hours. Tradoor is an on-chain derivatives trading platform based on the TON blockchain, focusing on providing a user-friendly leveraged trading experience. Core innovations include using machine learning to optimize pricing models for zero slippage and fair trades; supporting low-barrier entry, such as leveraging small amounts of capital; and integrating AI security mechanisms to filter malicious orders.

TRADOOR’s price surge is mainly driven by its listing on Gate. Gate recently launched spot and perpetual contracts for TRADOOR, along with first trade, net deposit, and trading competition rewards, sparking FOMO and attracting new capital inflows.

BOB BOB (+111.55%, Circulating Market Cap $60.7614M)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the BOB token is $0.0268, up over 110% in 24 hours. BOB is a hybrid Layer2 network aiming to combine Bitcoin’s robust security and liquidity with Ethereum’s smart contract innovation, serving as an entry point for BTCFi.

BOB’s rise is mainly driven by listings on Korean exchanges and short squeezes. BOB was listed on a Korean exchange yesterday and opened a KRW trading pair, attracting a large wave of Korean investors in a short time. Following the surge in Korean investor interest, the price jumped rapidly, triggering forced liquidations of leveraged short positions, creating a self-reinforcing rally. According to Coinglass data, BOB’s open interest grew by over 700% to more than $30M, and contract trading volume increased by over 3,200% to $1.26B, with BOB maintaining the highest negative funding rate—on Gate, the annualized negative rate reached an astonishing 1,600%.

SAPIEN Sapien (+51.46%, Circulating Market Cap $45.76M)

According to Gate market data, SAPIEN token is currently priced at $0.18, up over 50% in 24 hours. Sapien is a decentralized AI data network designed to address the lack of reliability and transparency in AI training data. Through a community-driven “knowledge minting” mechanism, users contribute, verify, and monetize human knowledge data for AI model training.

SAPIEN’s recent surge is mainly due to the renewed hype around AI and robotics narratives and concentrated speculation from capital. With the accelerated industrialization in the humanoid robot/embodied intelligence field, the market’s demand for high-quality AI training data is expected to rise, drawing wide attention to Sapien as an upstream data services concept. The Sapien ecosystem has over 30 enterprise clients, including Lenovo and Midjourney, with solid fundamentals and a relatively low token market cap, meaning even medium-sized inflows can drive significant price gains in the short term. Additionally, SAPIEN’s annualized negative funding rates across exchanges exceed 600%, objectively creating a “short squeeze” effect and further amplifying the upward slope.

Hot Topic Interpretation

Ethereum successfully completes the Fusaka upgrade, unlocking space for Layer2 and on-chain ecosystems

Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade is the second major upgrade to the Ethereum network in 2025, following May’s Pectra upgrade, and was officially activated at 21:49:11 UTC on December 3, 2025. This upgrade is a synchronized optimization of both the execution and consensus layers, aiming to handle the explosive growth of Layer2 networks and push the network toward higher TPS.

Fusaka is not just a parameter adjustment or optimization—it brings a series of structural changes, especially focusing on scalability, data availability, and fee/fee structure, mainly including:

1. Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling: Validators no longer need to download the full blob or entire dataset, but can instead sample and verify only parts of the data, greatly reducing node storage and bandwidth requirements.
2. Increased Blob Capacity: Fusaka significantly increases block capacity and the gas limit, allowing each block to carry more transactions and data, which is very favorable for batch submissions from Layer2 networks and rollup support.
3. Other Optimizations: Including Cell Proofs (changes to blob proof formats) and passkey signature verification (supporting FaceID/TouchID bridge-free authentication), improving user experience and smart contract compatibility.

Overall, Fusaka aims to pave the way for Layer2 networks and large-scale applications, enabling Ethereum to maintain both security and decentralization while also accommodating much higher frequency and scale of future on-chain activities.

Cayman Islands become a popular jurisdiction for Web3 projects seeking legal entities, registrations up 70% YoY

The number of foundation company registrations in the Cayman Islands has grown 70% year-on-year, exceeding 1,300 by the end of 2024, with over 400 more added in 2025. These structures are increasingly used as legal wrappers for so-called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and as ecosystem managers for major Web3 projects, with 17 foundation companies holding treasuries of over $100 million. This may indicate that Web3 projects are moving from early phases of fully anonymous operations to actively seeking legal and compliant structures.

As early as 2024, the Samuels v. Lido DAO case sounded the alarm for DAOs—those without legal entities may be treated as general partnerships, making participants, even voting token holders, potentially liable for the actions of the DAO with unlimited joint liability. This has prompted many projects to swiftly seek legal entities to provide liability protection for community members. Additionally, the Cayman Islands announced the implementation of the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) on January 1, 2026, requiring crypto service providers to conduct due diligence and information reporting. However, passive foundation companies or protocol treasuries that only hold assets and do not provide transactional services are expected to be exempt from mandatory reporting. Furthermore, the foundation company legal form in the Cayman Islands fits well with the DAO structure needs of current Web3 projects—it can have no shareholders, but can sign contracts, hold assets (such as treasuries and IP), and employ staff as an independent entity, with customizable charters allowing for token-based governance.

In short, the surge of Cayman Web3 foundations reflects Web3 projects proactively choosing the most suitable legal wrapper for their decentralized governance needs in response to major legal risks and new global regulatory regimes, aiming for safer and longer-term development.

PayPal stablecoin PYUSD grows against the market, up 36% in the past 30 days

The supply of PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD has seen remarkable growth against the market, with its market cap soaring from $1.2 billion in September 2025 to about $3.8 billion in November 2025—increasing by over $1 billion in November alone. PYUSD has surpassed USD1 to become the world’s sixth-largest stablecoin, thanks to a series of strategic moves by PayPal.

In September 2025, PayPal formed a strategic partnership with Spark, a leading DeFi liquidity platform launched by the original MakerDAO core team. PYUSD was integrated into Spark’s lending market, establishing on-chain institutional-grade liquidity and transforming PYUSD from a mere payment tool into an income-generating asset in DeFi, attracting significant capital seeking stable yields. At the same time, PYUSD aggressively pursued multi-chain expansion, targeting payment and remittance use-cases. PYUSD has expanded to multiple networks, including Solana and Sei, and, through partnerships with traditional payment giants like Mastercard and Fiserv, entered mainstream commercial systems. Furthermore, PayPal leverages its vast traditional user base and clear business strategy as a moat for PYUSD’s growth. Users can buy, hold, and send PYUSD seamlessly within the familiar PayPal and Venmo apps without needing to understand complex wallets or private keys, making it highly accessible. PayPal also introduced a PYUSD holding rewards program, offering users about 3.7% annualized yield—essentially passing on reserve interest to users to enhance stickiness and holding incentives.
References:

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data
• CoinGecko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/cryptocurrency-heatmap
• Coinglass, https://www.coinglass.com/FundingRate
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/12/03/ethereum-activates-fusaka-upgrade-aiming-to-cut-node-costs-speed-layer-2-settlements
• Cointelegraph, https://cointelegraph.com/news/cayman-islands-web3-foundation-companies
• DeFiLlama, https://defillama.com/stablecoin/paypal-usd

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