🏛️ Between eras: Long-term thinking

Why L2s were a success

Blockworks Research argues that Ethereum’s move to a rollup-centric roadmap was a necessary but costly tradeoff. 

Shifting execution to L2s weakened composability, fragmented liquidity, complicated security, and reduced L1 fee revenue, putting pressure on the store-of-value narrative. At the same time, cheaper transactions kept users and developers in the ecosystem and helped attract major institutions to launch their own L2s. Competition among rollups accelerated client upgrades, zero-knowledge research, and account abstraction, with benefits flowing back to the core protocol. 

The outcome now depends on improving interoperability, decentralization, and economic alignment between L1 and L2.

The retail trade: Crypto vs equities

The report argues that retail investors are starting to treat crypto and equities as substitute risk assets rather than buying both at the same time. 

Since late 2024, retail flows into equities have surged while crypto activity has cooled, marking a clear inversion from prior cycles. One driver is volatility compression in crypto, which reduces its appeal as a high-beta product just as equities offer competitive swings. Easier cross-platform access also lets capital move seamlessly between the two. 

At the same time, AI tools give retail investors more confidence analyzing stocks, while crypto still lacks clear valuation anchors. As a result, crypto must now compete within a broader multi-asset portfolio framework.

Perp DEX wars

Onchain perpetuals went from a ~$1.5 trillion annual niche in 2024 to a ~$7.9 trillion market by late 2025, forcing institutions to decide which perp DEX infrastructure can absorb the next wave of flow. An institutionally weighted scorecard puts Hyperliquid first (67/80) on liquidity and ecosystem depth, but its October 10 stress test revealed real tail-risk limits as $2.1 billion was closed via ADL in 12 minutes and open interest fell sharply afterward. Paradex ranks second (57/80) with the strongest institutional unlock, production-grade position confidentiality, zero-fee execution, and measurable retail price improvement. However, its ~0.99% share underscores the adoption gap. 

Across venues, capital stickiness (OI-to-30d volume), fee-adjusted execution costs, and privacy are emerging as the decisive battlegrounds, with no single platform yet combining extensible infrastructure, confidentiality, best-in-class execution, and durable economics.