TL;DR

• The depreciation of the US dollar: consequence of the tariffs, divergence from US bond yields, and capital outflows for cross-regional asset reallocation.
• This week’s incoming data includes the US inflation, UoM sentiment and inventories data.
• BTC and ETH are both resistant, yet altcoins remain sluggish.
• The SOL/ETH ratio stood at 0.06, exhibiting a downward trend relative to Ether.
• Lagrange’s 300% surge and $1B FDV highlight strong market appetite for ZK co-processors — despite limited ecosystem adoption.
• Circle nets $1.1B in upsized IPO, hits $8.1B valuation amid stablecoin and real-world asset growth.
• Avalanche’s Etna upgrade powers sovereign App-chain expansion and institutional onboarding.
• Plume Goes Live with $150M, bringing solar farms and credit claims onchain.
• Most funded projects are Infra sector.

Macro Overview

The depreciation of the US dollar: consequence of the tariffs, divergence from US bond yields, and capital outflows for cross-regional asset reallocation.

A consequence of Trump’s tariffs is the depreciation of the US dollar. In general tariffs reduce imports and increase demand for domestic goods, which typically should support currency appreciation. However, since April 2nd “the Liberation Day”, the dollar has continued to weaken, and has notably diverged from the upward trend in the US Treasury yields. This anomalous behavior reflects market sentiment that high tariffs may harm the economy more than they impact other countries, prompting global investors to reduce dollar-denominated assets.

The global rebalancing of capital flows is also placing downward pressure on the dollar. European countries are undergoing an economic reform in response to the tariff shock, including increasing fiscal expenditures. China has also demonstrated strong momentum in high-tech sectors, encouraging foreign investors to reassess their asset allocation. This cross-regional capital reallocation, driven by shifting capital flows, is distracting the appeal of the US dollar.

US economic release highlights this week include the May inflation data this Wednesday, May PPI this Thursday and UoM sentiment this Friday. The inflation figures will focus on the core CPI after earlier data predicts that firms’ selling prices rose at the most pronounced pace since Sept 2022 due to higher tariffs. Manufacturing output prices have been rising at an especially sharp pace for the past two and a half years. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index will be published for June, focusing on inflation expectations and household confidence.

The dollar index didn’t see too much movement earlier last week, as it has been floating around the $98 to $99 level. The dollar advanced against other fiats after seeing a strong economic data last Friday.

The total assets ripped off $359mn last week. A slight drop in the US Treasuries held by the Fed contributed to this, with no changes in the MBS level last week.

While the gold price was affected by trade tension and weaker dollar earlier last week and quickly rose high and approached the $3,400 level, the strong job data last Friday led to an over 1% fall in the gold price given its stronger than expected outlook.

Crypto Markets Overview

1. Main Assets

As of this Monday, the prices of BTC and ETH were around $105,000 and $2,500 respectively, marking weekly decreases of 0% and 0%. Last week, the market focused on the stablecoins and had a dispute about the costs of transferring through stablecoins compared to the traditional transfer service provider such as airwallex.

Solana was priced at $150, down approximately 3% from the previous week. The SOL/ETH exchange rate, marked at 0.060, exhibited a downward trend compared to Ether.

2. Total Market Cap

Last week, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $3.25 trillion. Excluding BTC and ETH, the altcoin market cap was $846.5 billion, which remains unchanged.

3. Top 30 Crypto Assets Performance

Last week, market performance was mixed. Leo, AAVE, and Hype each gained over 5%, while Doge declined by 5.1% on a weekly basis. Overall, the market was uneventful, with no significant developments.

4. New Token Launched

Last week, the only major new token launch was Lagrange.

Lagrange focuses on ZK co-processors and is considered a flagship project in this niche. It has raised a total of $17.6 million, with a current market capitalization of $200 million and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $1 billion. The token saw a sharp price increase of approximately 300%, drawing significant market attention. It has since been listed on Binance, Bybit, and Coinbase.

Lagrange’s market cap and FDV reflect the valuation level the market is currently assigning to this category of projects, despite the fact that most ZK co-processors still lack ecosystem adoption and fall short of expected performance benchmarks.

The Key Crypto Highlights

1. Circle nets $1.1B in upsized IPO, hits $8.1B valuation amid stablecoin and real-world asset growth

Stablecoin issuer Circle has raised approximately $1.1B in its IPO with 34M shares sold. The IPO pegs Circle’s market capitalization at $6.9B, with a FDV reaching $8.1B. The IPO surpasses Circle’s previous target of $896M from two days earlier, itself an increase from the $600M originally anticipated when the IPO was first floated.Circle’s public listing marks one of the most notable crypto-related IPOs since Coinbase and reflects institutional appetite for stablecoin-native infrastructure, especially as regulatory clarity looms and real-world adoption grows.

2. Avalanche’s Etna upgrade powers sovereign App-chain expansion and institutional onboarding

Avalanche has unveiled a major architectural shift with the rollout of its Etna upgrade, transforming its L1 stack to supercharge app-specific chains. Etna’s impact is already visible in both consumer and enterprise adoption. Game publisher Nexon has launched Henesys_a permissioned Avalanche L1 for MapleStory Universe, delivering gasless transactions and tailored gaming logic for millions of users. Meanwhile, traditional institutions are building sovereign L1s on Avalanche: Bergen County, NJ is tokenizing over $240B in property deeds; California’s DMV is digitizing 42M vehicle titles; JPMorgan’s Kinexys is piloting tokenized funds using Avalanche infrastructure. The update significantly lowers the cost and complexity of launching sovereign chains, teams can now deploy their own chains for as little as 1.3 AVAX per validator per month while retaining full customizability over consensus, validator requirements, and fee models.

3. Plume Goes Live with $150M, bringing solar farms and credit claims onchain

Plume Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 specialized in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, has officially launched its mainnet, bringing $150M worth of assets onchain, its testnet processed over 280M transactions in just eight weeks, signaling both technical readiness and early ecosystem traction. Backed by Apollo Global and Haun Ventures, the modular, EVM-compatible network introduces a fresh approach to RWA composability under the “RWAfi” thesis, where institutional-grade assets are wrapped as yield-bearing, DeFi-native primitives.

Plume aims to tokenize billions in assets spanning solar farms, Medicaid claims, consumer credit, mineral rights, and corporate debt. Its foundational product, the “Nest vault,” allows users to stake stablecoins and receive composable RWA tokens, which can then be reused across lending protocols or for yield-generating loops, similar to recursive borrowing models seen in crypto-native DeFi.

Key Ventures Deals

1. Avantis raised $8M to expand onchain derivative trading of Real-World assets

Founders Fund and Pantera Capital co-led Avantis in $8M Series A round with additional participants including Symbolic Capital, SALT Fund, and Flowdesk. Avantis is a decentralized exchange built on Base. The funding structure includes equity with token warrants, though the post-money valuation remains undisclosed. This brings Avantis’s total capital raised to $12M following its $4M Seed round in Sep-2023. The platform offers leveraged trading across both crypto and real-world assets (RWAs) such as gold and forex, and has already facilitated over $7.5B in volume from more than 60,000 users. As the largest derivatives protocol on Base, Avantis is now preparing to expand its offering to equities, sports markets, and prediction markets. The team is undertaking a full AMM overhaul to support diverse price feeds, and will also launch a custom EVM-compatible blockchain to enable gasless trading and 10x capital efficiency.

2. Paradigm led Seed Round in 3Jane with $5.2M to pioneer unsecured credit in DeFi

3Jane secured $5.2M in Seed round led by Paradigm with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Robot Ventures, Wintermute and other investors. The project is building a “credit-based money market” that provides algorithmically underwritten, real-time USDC credit lines to users ranging from DeFi participants to AI agents — without requiring onchain collateral. Unlike prior unsecured lending attempts that failed due to weak underwriting and lack of legal enforcement, 3Jane integrates offchain financial data and real-time credit analytics. Its protocol leverages zkTLS, a privacy-preserving zero-knowledge tech, to extract verifiable credit data from centralized exchanges (CEXs), banks, and offchain financial flows, enabling trusted risk assessment while maintaining user privacy. Initially focused on the U.S. market, 3Jane is expected to launch mainnet in Q3 2025. The team targets sectors like merchant credit, revenue-based lending, and AI-native business finance, with a market size exceeding $1 Trillion.

3. Rails Raises $14M to launch Hybrid exchange with self-custody and CEX-level performance

Rails, a new trading platform aiming to resolve the long-standing trade-off between speed and security in crypto trading, has raised $14M in a token sale to launch its hybrid exchange. Backers include Kraken, Slow Ventures, CMCC Global, Quantstamp, and Round13 Capital. Combined with a prior $6M Seed round closed in Jan-2024, Total funding that Rails has now raised a total of $20M. The platform enables users to retain full custody of their assets onchain while achieving the execution speed and liquidity typically found on centralized exchanges (CEXs). At the core of Rails’ architecture is a hybrid custody-execution model: trades are validated using zero-knowledge proofs and Merkle trees, ensuring transparency and integrity without compromising speed. Rails will deploy exclusively on Kraken’s new Layer-2 network, Ink, leveraging its scalability and cost-efficiency for low-latency settlement. Initially, the platform will support trading in major crypto assets, with plans to expand further post-launch.

The number of deals closed in the previous week was 19, with Data having 7 deals, representing 37% for each sector of the total number of deals. Meanwhile, Social had 1 (5%), Data had 5 (26%), , Gamefi had 1 (5%) and DeFi had 5 (26%) deals

The total amount of disclosed funding raised in the previous week was $68M, 42% deals (8/19) in previous week didn’t public the raised amount. The top funding came from Infra sector with $30M. Most funded deals: IOST $21M; Rail $14M

Total weekly fundraising fell to $68M for the 1st week of Jun-2025, a decrease of -64% compared to the week prior. Weekly fundraising in the previous week was down -175% year over year for the same period.

About Gate Ventures

Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate, 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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