Top Tokens of November ($)

Sponsor: Frax — Fraxtal Ecosystem: Where DeFi Meets AI.

1. 🧮 MicroStrategy Trades Below NAV for First Time Since January. Michael Saylor’s digital asset treasury slipped to a 2.6% discount as its $62.6B market cap fell below its $64.3B in bitcoin holdings, coinciding with BTC dipping under $100k.
2. 💰 Czech National Bank Buys Bitcoin in Historic First. The CNB deployed $1M into BTC, stablecoins, and tokenized dollar deposits for a “test portfolio" and launched CNB Lab to study blockchain custody, settlement, and tokenized finance.
3. 🏛️ Grayscale Files to List on the New York Stock Exchange. The $35B asset manager filed to list “Class A” shares under ticker GRAY, keeping DCG in control via dual-share structure and using an Up-C setup for tax efficiency.

	Crypto $3.4T	↘ 2.8%	↘ 2.79%
	BTC $98,617	↘ 2.6%	↘ 3.1%
	ETH $3,193	↘ 6.3%	↘ 4.0%

Market Plays:

• 🌊 Earning in The Deep’s Ink vaults
• 🏈 Trying Football.fun’s new NFL game 
• 💱 Trading Solana tokens on Robinhood
• 💸 Depositing ETH to Arbitrum’s Epoch 6

Reads:

• ✨ Infinex Is Inevitable — Kain Warwick
• 🛒 Crypto’s Amazon of Yields — Pendle
• 📖 Automated Coordination Using Order Book — Prince
• 📊 Using Options Data to Beat Prediction Markets — Ranger Global

Farming Opps:

• 🟠 BTC: 14% APR with Ekubo’s WBTC-LBTC pool on Starknet
• 🟠 BTC: 7% APR with Aerodrome’s tBTC-cbBTC pool on Base
• 🔵 ETH: 48% APR with Aerodrome’s WETH-LsETH pool on Base
• 🔵 ETH: 10% APR with Convex’s ETH-ETHx pool on Ethereum
• 🟢 USD: 17% APY with Exponent’s hyUSD PT on Solana
• 🟢 USD: 6% APY with Fraxlend’s USD vault on Ethereum

Airdrop Hunter:

• 🪙 Ethena: Claim ENA S4 airdrop
• 🏦 Tydro: Hunt INK airdrop
• 🌠 Meteora: Hunt MET S2 airdrop
• 🕯️ Lighter: Hunt Lighter airdrop

Crypto markets thrive on chaos, and October proved no exception! The dust from the 10/10 liquidations has barely settled, but crypto markets are already moving on, spinning up new narratives and new opportunities to ape.

Whether you’re hunting the next moonshot or dodging the next rug, these five tokens stealing the spotlight will no doubt be worth paying attention during the month ahead. Today, we’re diving into November’s most encaptivating altcoin stories. 👇

Pro tip: view bull/bear analyst ratings for these tokens in the Bankless Token Hub!

🦄 Uniswap

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: +20%
Ticker: UNI

About:

Uniswap is one of the few DeFi protocols to see its token price increase over the past 30 days.

The UNI token broke free from sector-wide weakness beginning November 4; it would more than double in price during the course of a six-day rally preceding this analysis, which culminated on November 10th with founder Hayden Adams unveiling a governance proposal to turn on protocol fees and align incentives across the Uniswap ecosystem.

Although the Uniswap ecosystem has frequently contemplated the creation of UNI value drivers through governance, no such proposals have passed. Most recently, the Uniswap Foundation’s February 2024 proposal to enable fees was unexpectedly canceled after undisclosed complaints were raised by an unknown “stakeholder.”

Token Catalysts:

• Big Burn: Hayden Adams’ proposal would use Uniswap protocol fees to burn UNI. It would also burn Unichain sequencer fees and symbolically delete 100M UNI from the Uniswap Foundation treasury to represent the protocol fees that could have been burned if fees were turned on at token launch. This substantial reduction in token supply should theoretically have a positive impact on UNI prices.
• Enhanced Functionality: Adams also seeks to improve the Uniswap protocol. His proposal calls for the creation of “Protocol Fee Discount Auctions,” which could internalize MEV to improve LP performance, and the launch of aggregator hooks, which would turn Uniswap V4 into a DEX aggregator.
• Questionable Economics: If adopted in its entirety, Adams’ proposal will merge the independent Uniswap Foundation into Uniswap Labs. The joint venture will receive an annual 20M UNI stipend, a hefty $160M+ expense that critics contend is unlikely to be offset by protocol fees.

🪙 PAXG (Tokenized Gold)

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

About:

Gold, and thus PAXG (Paxo’s tokenized gold derivative), has been on a tear, hitting new all-time highs and outperforming nearly every major asset class this year.

Despite a recent correction, this move for gold looks far from over when we dig deeper. The shiny rock’s bid appears to be driven in large part by debasement concerns and crumbling confidence in traditional reserve assets, particularly U.S. Treasuries. As geopolitical tensions escalate and domestic instability mounts – underscored by the longest government shutdown in U.S. history – gold has reclaimed its role as the ultimate safe-haven asset.

Token Catalysts:

• Abandoning Treasuries: Central banks worldwide are diversifying away from U.S. Treasuries and loading up on gold. Holdings of the two assets are reaching parity, and as more central banks rotate reserves into gold to hedge against dollar dominance, demand becomes positively reinforced.
• Geopolitical Instability: Ongoing tensions between the U.S. and other major powers, like China, has created an environment for gold to thrive. Sadly, we can expect these uncertain geopolitical realities to continue, keeping gold bid as investors seek safety outside traditional financial systems.
• U.S. Domestic Uncertainty: Domestic dysfunction – most evident through the ongoing, record-setting U.S. federal government shutdown – continues to undermine trust in U.S. institutions and the dollar's stability. Gold appears to be an attractive store of value insulated from domestic policy chaos.

🌊 Hyperliquid

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: -1%
Ticker: HYPE

About:

Amid a tumultuous market, Hyperliquid continues to demonstrate impressive strength. Despite facing increasing competition from the likes of Aster and Lighter, this breakout perpetuals DEX still boasts fees of $1.28B annualized and ranks third in revenue over the past year, only behind Tether and Circle.

Recently, Hyperliquid accounted for 35% of all blockchain revenue in a single month, and last month, the long-awaited Hyperliquid Improvement Proposal (HIP) 3 launched, decentralizing the market launch process and enabling the exchange to support the trading of limitless assets, including stocks, commodities, pre-IPO companies, and collectibles.

Token Catalysts:

• New Revenue Stream: Each new HIP-3 market generates trading fees that flow into Hyperliquid's daily buyback program, which already allocates 97% of all platform fees to repurchasing HYPE. More markets = more fees = more buyback pressure.
• Utility Mechanics: Launching HIP-3 market requires staking 500K HYPE tokens. As deployers rush to capture early-mover advantage in launching novel markets, this requirement could create significant demand pressure.
• Execution Risk: Launching novel markets presents technical hurdles for proper execution and cold-start problems around liquidity and demand, particularly for experimental asset classes without existing onchain infrastructure.
• Increased Competition: Competitive perp DEXs continue gaining ground with capital raises and airdrop incentives. Hyperliquid's shrinking market share could pose long-term growth headwinds if persistent.

💧 Lido

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: -15%
Ticker: LDO

About:

Lido is a decentralized liquid staking protocol that allows users to earn ETH yield without needing to run their own validator. Users deposit ETH and receive stETH in exchange, a fungible token that automatically reflects staking rewards and can be used across DeFi.

The largest Ethereum staking entity in existence, Lido controls 23% of all ETH staked across 265k validators. Lido also dominates Ethereum’s liquid staking market, where its stETH accounts for nearly 90% of all ETH LSTs.

Once a crowning jewel among Ethereum DeFi portfolios, the LDO token has been largely irrelevant since early 2023. Its ratio against ETH has been down-only since the start of 2024 and has ground down to fresh all-time lows in recent months.

Token Catalysts:

• Staking Clarity: Earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that Treasury and the IRS had “issued new guidance giving crypto ETPs a clear path to stake digital assets and share staking rewards with their retail investors.” This move stands to benefit existing ETH staking infrastructure.
• Institutional Match: When evaluating where to stake their ETH ETFs, institutional asset managers will default to Lido. For non-crypto native capital allocators who must prioritize for liquidity, Lido is the obvious choice. The protocol’s dominant Ethereum staking market share guarantees it will provide superior liquidity on unstaking transactions.

👻 Aave

Website | Twitter
30-Day Change: -15%
Ticker: AAVE

About:

Blue chip lending platform Aave is the largest blockchain-based protocol in existence, entrusted with over $50B of user assets, $23B of which is actively lent out into the crypto economy.

Unlike emerging lending market designs, like those pioneered by Euler and Morpho in which every market is risk-isolated and curated by third parties, all Aave lending activity is managed via a unified DAO, which is responsible for making all protocol risk management decisions.

Token Catalysts:

• Ethena Exposure: At the time of writing, Aave held nearly $4.5B of exposure to Ethena’s USDe synthetic dollar stablecoin, more than half of the token’s total supply. While Ethena claimed its delta neutral operations went unaffected by October’s disastrous liquidations (due to still-unreleased agreements with centralized exchanges that prevented “automatic de-leveraging”), the drawdown highlighted that it may be impossible for Aave to clear this position without becoming insolvent.
• Activity Drawdown: Fallout from October liquidations continues to radiate across Aave’s lending markets, with the protocol losing nearly one-third of its total value locked and active loans in the five weeks ahead of this analysis.

FRIEND & SPONSOR: FRAX

The Fraxtal ecosystem is expanding at lightning speed—this month’s biggest highlight is IQAI.com, the newest Agent Tokenization platform from IQ and Frax. IQ is building autonomous, intelligent, tokenized agents launching on Fraxtal in Q1. Empower on-chain agents with built-in wallets, tokenized ownership, and decentralized governance—all within a fast-growing Fraxtal ecosystem.

Learn More

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EARLY ACCESS

Beating Entropy with Bryan Johnson

Longevity is surging back into the zeitgeist, and Bryan Johnson's “Don’t Die” framework is a moral OS here.

In this episode, Johnson joins David & Ryan to lay out his existence-first philosophy: why fighting entropy should outrank status and profit, how AI alignment changes the stakes, and what a two-species future could mean for humanity, freedom, and wealth.

Listen to the full convo! 👇

Watch on Bankless