Key Takeaways

Market Trends: Q3 saw increased market volatility. The market declined in August but rebounded in September due to favorable rate cuts. The total crypto market cap fluctuated between $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion. BTC’s market dominance rose steadily, reaching 53% on September 30, a new high for the year. The ETH/BTC price ratio continued to fall, hitting 0.038 on September 30, the lowest in nearly three years.

BTC Analysis: BTC options had an average daily open interest of $20.2 billion, a 1.53% decrease from the previous quarter. On the September settlement date, open interest hit its highest level since April. Quarterly net inflows into BTC ETFs reached $4.34 billion. Due to an increase in network hash rate, mining difficulty continued to climb, reaching 88.40 T with a hash rate of 659.19 EH/s as of September 30. The BTC Layer 2 ecosystem’s total value locked (TVL) grew 20.47% over the quarter.

ETH Analysis: ETH options had an average daily open interest of $6.1 billion, down 37.15% from the previous quarter, indicating a drop in trading activity. ETH ETFs saw net outflows of $523 million this quarter. The average gas fee on the Ethereum network fell to 8.88 Gwei, a 38.01% decrease from last quarter’s 14.33 Gwei. The Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem’s TVL was $38.9 billion, down 10.13% quarter-over-quarter.

Other Major Public Blockchains: Solana’s DeFi TVL rose 20.79% quarter-over-quarter, with decentralized exchange Jupiter growing 72.60%. The TON network averaged 605,500 daily active addresses and 1.9 million daily transactions in Q3. The Sui network averaged 699,700 daily active addresses and 3.38 million daily transactions.

DeFi: Total Q3 DEX trading volume reached $395 billion, with five major DEXs accounting for nearly 80%, led by Uniswap at 33.8%. Cumulative revenue for DeFi protocols was $191 million. Pump.fun led with $63 million in revenue, followed by MakerDAO, Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and Aave.

NFTs and Gaming: NFT trading volumes were concentrated on Ethereum and Polygon, with daily averages of $5.4 million and $4.3 million, respectively. GameFi market cap reached $21.42 billion, up 6.25%. Pixels, an interoperable Web3 farming game, led in daily active wallet addresses.

Security Incidents: Q3 saw 93 hacking incidents, resulting in losses of approximately $784 million, with $27.54 million recovered. Attacks were varied, with contract vulnerabilities as the primary method (21 cases) and 36 account hacks. The evolving tactics underscore the need for enhanced security measures by project teams.

Industry Financing: A total of 324 projects secured funding in Q3, down 25.78%. Total funding reached $2.4 billion, a 15.21% decrease. Tools and information service projects grew by 69.71% in Q3, marking the only sector with positive growth.

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