TL;DR

• Reciprocal tariff policies to be released this week, with a high focus on US trade deficit countries and will push up inflation.
• This week’s incoming economic data includes the US labour market report on Friday and the ISM PMI.
• Bitcoin is experiencing a significant pullback due to the lack of catalyst and skyrocketing rise in the last year.
• Altcoins remain sluggish with no signs of near-term improvement.
• Following another exploit on Hyperliquid suggesting a brittle risk-control management, $Hype dropped by 25%.
• Sonic launches SonicCS 2.0 with Enhanced DAG Consensus achieving 2x speed and reducing memory usage by 68%.
• Maven 11 closed $107M Fund III to support crypto startups and emerging AI-Crypto Innovations.
• ArbitrumDAO proposes reclaiming $215M Gaming Catalyst Funds after key contributors setbacks.
• Last week, the most funded projects were infrastructure projects.

Macro Overview

Reciprocal tariff policies to be released this week, with a high focus on US trade deficit countries and will push up the inflation.

The reciprocal tariff policies will soon be released on April 2nd, and the policies will focus on the main sources of the US trade deficit, including the countries and regions with higher trade surpluses and tax rates. For the top 15 economies with largest goods trade deficits, they accounted for 86% of imports and 74% of exports, including China, EU, Mexico, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Canada, India, etc. Prioritizing these economies will send a clear signal to reduce trade deficit and encourage manufacturing return. Also the policies will facilitate faster negotiations, encouraging concessions on tariffs, non-tariff barriers (i.e., value-added taxes and industrial subsidies), and investment in the US.

Tariffs will lead to a series of side effects on the US economy, and it will disrupt existing resource allocations, raise prices, reduce growth, and exacerbate short-term economic fluctuations. The dollar performance will also impact the economic situation, as if the dollar appreciates, the tariff impacts on both inflation and growth will be redacted. If the dollar depreciates, negative effects will be exacerbated.

Other than tariff policies, highlights for the US market this week will include the newest US labor market report this Friday, and the PMI data for both manufacturing and service sectors from the Institute of Supply Management. The labor market report, which will include non-farm payrolls, unemployment rate, and average hourly earnings, will further serve as an indicator after the release of the PCE last week.

Last week the dollar index dropped after hitting a 3-week-high on Wednesday. As the PCE data recorded 0.1% higher than estimation and the tariff policies are coming soon, investors are switching assets for safe haven.

The total asset level dropped for roughly $16bn last week, to $6.740tn level. As starting from April the cap on monthly US Treasury roll-offs will be limited to $5 billion, the asset level will enter a relatively stable period.

Gold price soars to all-time high amid the Trump administration’s new round of tariffs coming close at the beginning of April. Combining the uncertainties on interest rates, the gold price has been pushed towards the $3,100 line.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

As of Monday, Bitcoin and Ethereum were priced at nearly $82,000 and $1,800, respectively, reflecting weekly declines of 5.8% and 13.3%. Following the lack of catalyst and last year’s skyrocketing performance of bitcoin, bitcoin is undergoing a significant pullback. As for altcoins, limited capital inflows, a wave of token unlocks and a backlog of projects awaiting listing all point to a sluggish outlook.

2. Total Market Cap

The total crypto market capitalization stood at $2.61 trillion as of Monday. Excluding BTC and ETH, the total market cap of altcoins priced at $765.41 billion, showing a respective increase by 6.7% and 7.3% on a weekly basis. Still, altcoins remain stagnant with no signs of near-term improvement.

3. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

Last week, TON rose by 6.6%, while HYPE plunged by nearly 25% following another exploit on Hyperliquid, which drained funds from its HLP mechanism. As for Pi, which had a high opening price, it has been declining since its listing, recording a decrease of 25% as much as hyperliquid.

The Key Crypto Highlights

1.Sonic launches SonicCS 2.0 with Enhanced DAG Consensus achieving 2x speed and reducing memory usage by 68%

Sonic has introduced SonicCS 2.0, a new consensus protocol designed to significantly improve transaction speeds and reduce memory usage within its blockchain network. Compared to SonicCS 1.0, the updated protocol demonstrates a 2x average speedup and achieves a 68% reduction in memory usage per epoch, dropping from 420 MB to 135 MB. The protocol builds on Sonic’s Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) consensus mechanism, which organizes transactions into events and arranges these events into a partial order. SonicCS 2.0 enhances the election process, where leader events are selected to linearize transactions into blocks, by overlapping elections across multiple layers. This overlapping approach allows events to simultaneously act as candidates, voters, and aggregators in different elections, creating a pipeline-like process that accelerates transaction finality. Additionally, SonicCS 2.0 incorporates vectorization techniques to optimize computation and storage, using matrix-based voting structures that leverage fixed validator stakes and CPU SIMD instructions for faster operations.

2. Maven 11 closed $107M Fund III to support crypto startups and emerging AI-Crypto Innovations

Maven 11, a European crypto venture capital firm, has successfully closed its third fund at $107M. Announced in November 2023, Fund III secured support from anchor investor Theta Capital Management and new institutional backers from Europe and Asia, including London-based Karatage. The firm has already deployed around 15% of the new fund, backing startups such as GTE, JokeRace, August, and Spire Labs. Over the next 3–4 years, Maven 11 plans to invest in a mix of new deals, pre-seed, Series A, and follow-on funding rounds, with check sizes ranging from $0,5M to $5M. Fund III will support both equity and token rounds, focusing on consumer applications, infrastructure, and emerging areas like the intersection of AI and crypto. Additionally, Maven 11 has launched its Founder Residency Program, offering flexible and personalized support for early-stage startups, distinguishing it from traditional web3 accelerators.

3. ArbitrumDAO proposes reclaiming $215M Gaming Catalyst Funds after key contributors setbacks

The Arbitrum DAO is considering reclaiming funds from the Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP), an initiative launched to accelerate web3 gaming on the Arbitrum network. This marks a rare move for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and raises broader questions about the accountability of decentralized communities. Launched in March 2024 by the Arbitrum Foundation and DAO, the GCP was allocated 225M ARB tokens to be spent over three years. The program was initially capped at $25M for operational expenses, with the remaining funds designated for gaming grants. By early 2025, the GCP claimed to have over 64 projects in its pipeline. According to a proposal shared on Monday, the GCP was approved during a time of overly optimistic projections that have since proven unsustainable. The program has faced setbacks, including the departure of its key backer, Treasure DAO, from the Arbitrum ecosystem, as well as declining commitments from other contributors.

Key Ventures Deals

1.The First Ethereum Oracle_Chronicle secures $12M to Lead RWA Tokenization

Chronicle, the first oracle to launch on Ethereum, raised $12M in seed funding led by Strobe Ventures, with participation from Galaxy Vision Hill, Brevan Howard Digital, Tioga Capital, Fenbushi Capital solidifying Chronicle’s position as a key bridge between traditional finance and blockchain ecosystems. Operating as an oracle network since 2017, Chronicle has secured over $20B in total value and recently launched its “Verified Asset Oracle,” ensuring the authenticity of off-chain assets for issuers such as Centrifuge, Superstate, and MarkerDAO (Sky). With growing demand for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, Chronicle provides reliable and compliant data infrastructure for banks and asset managers. The platform integrates off-chain data with blockchain assets, ensuring security, auditability, and cost-efficiency through a validator network that includes both traditional financial data providers and crypto-native organizations like Sky.

2. Warlock Labs secures $8M to reduce MEV impact on Ethereum trading infrastructure

Warlock Labs has successfully raised $8M led by Polychain Capital and supported by Greenfield Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Ambush Capital, and TRGC to develop a solution for ensuring transparency and fairness in order flow processing within the blockchain ecosystem. The company focuses on addressing issues in Ethereum’s trading infrastructure, where operators often profit from processing order flow, sometimes at the expense of protocols and traders. Leveraging on-chain data, Warlock Labs aims to create tools and systems with zero-knowledge guarantees, enabling the firm to prove that submitted order flows remain untampered. This approach is particularly relevant in combating challenges linked to maximal extractable value (MEV), which allows for manipulation of pending trades, often causing harm to users and protocols. While initially targeting on-chain activity, the firm plans to expand its operations to centralized exchanges (CEXes), highlighting recent cases where market makers have exploited order flow for unfair profits. Warlock Labs positions itself as a scalable venture-backed business, competing with established players like Wintermute in the market-making space.

3. Fragmetric raises $5M to boost Restaking adoption and integrations in Solana

Fragmetric has raised $5M in Strategic funding to advance its efforts in promoting restaking, a new approach in blockchain infrastructure. The round was led by RockawayX with participation from Amber Group, Robot Ventures and brought its total funding to $12M . Restaking improves capital efficiency and strengthens Solana’s decentralization by spreading staked assets across various validators and protocols. Fragmetric has experienced significant growth, with the total supply of fragSOL more than doubling recently and about 50% of it now actively used in DeFi protocols. With over 43,000 unique deposit addresses, the platform demonstrates strong user engagement and a growing role in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem: integrations with major Solana projects, such as Jito’s TipRouter for optimizing staking rewards and Switchboard for enhancing security, further support its position in the restaking space.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 26, with Infra having 12 deals, representing 35% for each sector of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Social had 2 (8%), Data had 5 (19%) Gamefi had 5 (19%), DeFi had 5 (19%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $150M, 38% deals (10/26) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $86M. Most funded deals: Chronicle $14M, Hibit $5M

Total weekly fundraising fell to $150M for the 5th week of Mar-2025, a decrease of -93% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was -9% year over year for the same period.

About Gate Ventures

Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate.io, is focused on investments in decentralized infrastructure, middleware, and applications that will reshape the world in the Web 3.0 age. Working with industry leaders across the globe, Gate Ventures helps promising teams and startups that possess the ideas and capabilities needed to redefine social and financial interactions.

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