ETH's Best Day Since 2021 ($)

Sponsor: Mantle — Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for onchain finance.

1. 💸 Stripe Launches 'Stablecoin-Powered' Accounts. The payments giant completed its $1.1B acquisition of Bridge in February.
2. 💰 Coinbase is Buying Deribit for $2.9B in Record Deal. The mostly-stock deal for the derivatives exchange is the largest crypto acquisition ever.
3. 🟠 Bitcoin Crosses $100K for First Time Since February. Juiced by hope of a trade deal, BTC once again crossed the significant barrier.

	Crypto $3.23T	↗ 7.9%	↗ 7.0%
	BTC $102,973	↗ 6.0%	↗ 6.5%
	ETH $2,175	↗ 20.6%	↗ 17.8%

Market Plays:

• 🌈 Claiming Creator LP fees on Rainbow
• 📥 Earning XP with Superstacks deposits
• 🧱 Exploring OpenCover’s vfat cover buys 
• 🪪 Checking for an $SNS allocation on Solana
• 🌊 Trading Universal’s new incentivized pools

Hot Reads:

• 🌐 Keiretsus - Kei Kreutler
• 💸 Internet Finance - Felipe Montealegre
• 🔰 Simplifying the L1 - Vitalik
• 🪙 Content Coins and Free Media Markets - Dee Goens
• 🤖 x402: An Open Standard for Internet Payments - Coinbase

Farming Opps:

• 🟠 BTC: 88% APR with Aerodrome’s eBTC-cbBTC pool on Base
• 🟠 BTC: 8% APR with Suilend’s LBTC vault on Sui
• 🔵 ETH: 359% APR with Aerodrome’s weETH-WETH pool on Base
• 🔵 ETH: 33% APR with Convex’s ETH-xETH vault on Ethereum
• 🟢 USD: 6% APY with Morpho’s Gauntlet USDC vault on Ethereum
• 🟢 USD: 9% APY with Pendle’s syrupUSDC PT on Ethereum

Airdrop Hunter:

• 🪙 Ethena: Claim season 3 ENA airdrop
• 👻 Boop: Claim BOOP airdrop
• 🐻 Berachain: Claim Boyco unlocks
• 🖊️ EthSign: Claim SIGN airdrop

Crypto thrives on chaos, and in April, five altcoins stole the spotlight with price swings that were anything but subtle.

From AI-fueled agent economies to penguin-powered memetic machines and scandal-scarred blockchains, the markets didn’t sleep – and neither should you! Whether you’re hunting the next moonshot or dodging the next rug, these five tokens that defined April are worth paying attention to in the month ahead.

Today we’re diving into the biggest winners, the hardest losers, and the wild catalysts behind April’s most explosive altcoin stories. 👇

🤖 Virtuals Protocol

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: +357%
Ticker: VIRTUAL

About:

Deployed to the Base and Solana networks, Virtuals Protocol is the preeminent AI agent token launchpad, offering a marketplace for developers to monetize their task-specific bots and providing speculators with exposure to one of crypto’s hottest emerging market narratives.

By purchasing agent tokens, like LUNA and VADER, users on the Virtuals platform gain governance rights over specific agents, enabling them to influence their development and potentially share in resulting profits.

VIRTUAL tokens are locked as liquidity to create new tokenized agents on Virtuals, providing deflationary pressure on the token, and anyone seeking to purchase ownership in or interact with tokenized agents on the platform must use VIRTUAL as currency, creating innate utility.

Token Catalysts:

• Genesis Launch: Towards the tail end of April, Virtuals updated its tokenomics with the release of Genesis, a new framework that seeks to reward genuine ecosystem contributors through a "proof of contribution" points system. To participate in Genesis agent token launches, users must lock a combination of VIRTUAL tokens and points, which can be earned by holding VIRTUAL, staking whitelisted agent tokens, and “yapping” about Virtuals.
• Agent Token Turmoil: While the broader AI agent sector has enjoyed considerable gains over the past month, many tokens still remain well off their highs and pared back some gains earlier this week amid scandal surrounding Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu’s fabricated death.

🐧 Pudgy Penguins

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: +262%
Ticker: PENGU

About:

Pudgy Penguins is one of the only crypto brands to have successfully monetized its IP through a collection of digital content and physical merchandise. In December 2024, the NFT project airdropped PENGU tokens to community members and aligned blockchain users.

Deployed to Solana, PENGU is the official token of the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem; according to token lore, holders “become a beacon of memetic culture, a spreader of good vibes, and an active participant in [Pudgy Penguin’s] remarkable underdog story.”

Token Catalysts:

• Paid to Post: On April 26, Pudgy Penguin CEO Luca Netz announced a campaign that rewards impassioned content creators with $2 per 1k views on Twitter posts and memes centered around the PENGU token.
• NFT Revival: Alongside the PENGU pump has come increased floor prices for the Pudgy Penguin NFT collection, which are up 30% off their early April lows.
• Game Launch: Last year, Pudgy Penguins and NFL Rivals creator Mythical Games announced a partnership to develop a mobile game, which is expected to launch sometime in 2025. PENGU may very well be utilized as an in-game currency considering Apple's recent legal defeat, which cleared the way for App Store developers to utilize external payment rails.

🍁 Maple Finance

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: +141%
Ticker: SYRUP

About:

Maple Finance is one of the few onchain lending protocols that has bucked declining TVL in 2025. While leading competitors from Aave to Fluid to Morpho have all experienced sizable drawdowns in their active loans since January, Maple has managed to increase the key metric by 169% on a year-to-date basis.

The nexus of this rapid growth has been Maple’s prudent decision to add high-yielding overcollateralized opportunities to legacy unsecured offerings. Since the beginning of April, Maple’s managed Syrup vault (which offers SYRUP token rewards in addition to underlying yield) has had its deposits parabolically double to $721M.

Similarly, Maple’s BTC Yield vault (which accrues real BTC yield from Core Network staking) has seen deposits increase threefold to $157M over the same period, meanwhile, the High Yield Secured Lending vault has garnered an additional $20M in deposits.

Token Catalysts:

• Fundamentals Rally: As indicated above, Maple Finance has been one of crypto’s best performing lending markets in 2025, growing deposits by 169% on a year-to-date basis and experiencing considerable success with its overcollateralized offerings, which rank among the highest-yielding onchain opportunities with respect to their risk profile.
• Binance Listing: Maple Finance’s SYRUP may have performed well throughout the month of April in tandem with strengthening fundamentals, but the token truly exploded in price on May 6 after Binance announced it would list spot markets for the tokens.

🐻 Berachain

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: +1%
Ticker: BERA

About:

Berachain has perhaps been the most anticipated alt L1 blockchain to launch in 2025, and while its early days were filled with promise, the token’s price performance has been abysmal since late March, losing as much as 66% off its highs.

Network users can take their DeFi receipts (i.e.; LP tokens) and deposit them into the Berachain rewards hub to enhance their yield with inflationary BGT emissions. At launch, Berachain came equipped with a slew of new applications, many of which came armed with airdrop promises and fresh design takes optimized for BGT incentives.

While it was hoped that Berachain would achieve a virtuous growth cycle by using enshrined network token incentives to foster market-leading liquidity and yield opportunities, unfortunately, the model is proving unsustainable as perpetual BGT emissions weigh down BERA price and yields compress.

Token Catalysts:

• BOYCO Unlocks:  Deposits to Berachain BOYCO pre-launch vaults unlocked on May 6; incentives on these vaults amounted to 10M BERA and represent a sizable 2% of token supply unlocked at once. While the unlock could pose continued BERA sell pressure, it remains possible that the event was priced in throughout April and the oversold token is due for a bounce.
• Stablecoin Slump: Berachain has experienced sizable deposit outflows in recent weeks. The amount of onchain stablecoins has slumped by over 70% since peaking on March 27 as users increasingly withdraw to chase alternative yield opportunities.

🏃‍♂️ Movement

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: -46%
Ticker: MOVE

About:

Movement is a modular blockchain framework and Ethereum L2 built around the Move programming language, which was initially developed by Facebook/Meta for its Diem project. Move is also implemented by alt L1s Sui and Aptos.

Similar to Polygon PoS, Movement substitutes standard proof generation schemes (like fault proofs and validity proofs) with a proof-of-stake design, creating additional trust assumptions but decreasing transaction wait times. The “M1 Shared Decentralized Sequencer” aims to provide cross-chain interoperability between the Movement L2 and independent Movement ecosystem chains.

Token Catalysts:

• Market Maker Drama: An explosive CoinDesk exposé revealed details on how Movement Foundation insiders may have used market makers to dump MOVE tokens following token generation at artificially inflated prices, unpacking a network of shadow co-founders and conflicted legal counsel in the process.
• Founder Firing: Movement’s Rushi Manche reportedly went on indefinite leave in mid-April following an internal investigation into market maker abnormalities. On May 6, Movement Labs confirmed that it had terminated the embattled co-founder.
• Delayed Airdrop: Movement’s long-awaited “Movedrop” for early users has been delayed multiple times; there is no official timeline for its arrival. Recent events have significantly depressed ecosystem sentiment, increasing the likelihood of the impending Movedrop further harm token price as recipients rush to exit.

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Catalyst Overview:

PENGU had been one of the best-performing cryptocurrencies at the time of this analysis, having doubled in 17 days and rallied an impressive 275% off its early April lows.

Pros:

• Paid to Post: On April 26, Pudgy Penguin CEO Luca Netz announced a campaign that rewards impassioned content creators with $2 per 1k views on Twitter posts and memes centered around the PENGU token.
• Payments Possibility: Apple’s recent legal loss to Epic Games opened the door for mobile developers to utilize external payment rails with zero fees. Pudgy Penguins partnered with NFL Rivals creator Mythical Games last year to launch its own mobile game in 2025, and PENGU could emerge as a native currency for in-game transactions.

Cons:

• Speculative Meme: While PENGU could have brewing payments possibilities, the monetary appeal of Pudgy Penguins is largely confined to a niche group of onchain superfans and the token has no fundamental value.

Price impact:

The Bankless Analyst Team is initiating bullish coverage on PENGU viewing the token as well-positioned for further upside as savvy speculators attempt to front-run the impending launch of Pudgy Penguins’ mobile game and the novel utility it would unlock for PENGU.