PA Daily | Aave brand asset ownership proposal rejected; Trust Wallet browser attacked resulting in a $7 million loss, platform commits to full compensation

Today’s News Highlights:

1. Caixin: Overseas U-card advertisements attract users to pay with USDT for ChatGPT and others, but domestic applications face legal risks.

2. Ethereum will undergo Glamsterdam and Hegota forks in 2026, with gas limit expected to increase to 200 million.

3. Trust Wallet browser extension security incident led to over $6 million stolen from user funds.

4. Uniswap protocol fee switch proposal UNIfication passed overwhelmingly.

5. Aave brand asset ownership proposal was rejected, with over 55% voting against and 41% abstaining.

6. Performance of Launchpad over the past year: Binance Wallet leads with 12.69x ROI, ATH ROI 78.01x.

Macroeconomics

Caixin: Overseas U-card advertisements attract users to pay with USDT for ChatGPT and others, but domestic applications face legal risks.

According to Caixin, overseas bank cards “U-card” that facilitate payments via USDT stablecoin are advertising on platforms like Xiaohongshu to attract users to apply. Users can use U-card for payments including ChatGPT Plus subscription charges, converting on-chain crypto assets into off-chain purchasing power. However, applying for and using U-card within China faces special legal risks.

Caixin notes that since 2023, Binance’s U-card has exited the European market, and other projects like OneKey, Infini, etc., have also gradually shut down C-end services, indicating a systemic crisis in the U-card industry.

Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison to be released early in January 2026, serving less than two years.

Former Alameda co-CEO Caroline Ellison, cooperating with investigations into the FTX case, will finish her two-year sentence early on January 21, 2026. She has been transferred from federal prison to community supervision. She previously pleaded guilty and assisted in prosecuting SBF, with a penalty of $11 billion, and this month agreed not to serve as an executive of a publicly listed company or crypto exchange for 10 years.

Opinions

Yi Lihua: A major bull market is expected in 2026; continue to buy ETH on dips with $1 billion.

Trend Research founder Jack Yi tweeted that short-term unrealized losses are temporary, and the long-term trend is bullish. ETH is currently at the bottom range, and his team’s research predicts a major bull market in 2026. He emphasizes transparency in their bottom-fishing and top-selling operations since this year and states they will not miss long-term gains due to short-term volatility.

Jack Yi reiterates that the team plans to continue investing $1 billion to buy ETH on dips to capture potential future gains of thousands of dollars.

Earlier, data confirmed by Yi Lihua: Trend Research holds 645,000 ETH with an unrealized loss of $143 million.

Nano Labs Founder: Bitcoin bear market bottoms often occur around Christmas.

Nano Labs founder Jack Kong (Kong Jianping) tweeted analyzing Bitcoin’s price trajectory around Christmas. He pointed out that from $0.25 in 2010 to $98,200 in 2024, Bitcoin’s price has increased nearly 400,000 times over 14 years. Historical data shows that Bitcoin bear market bottoms often occur around Christmas, such as in 2014 at $319, in 2018 at $3,815, and in 2022 at $16,831.

The predicted $88,000 in 2025 is a correction from 2024, possibly reflecting market expectations of cyclical adjustments. From a macro perspective, this volatility is a characteristic of digital assets as emerging stores of value.

Earlier, Nano Labs founder Kong Jianping: Bitcoin hash rate has sharply declined, with at least 400,000 mining machines shut down.

Project Updates

Ethereum will undergo Glamsterdam and Hegota forks in 2026, with gas limit expected to rise to 200 million.

Ethereum will see major upgrades in 2026, including the Glamsterdam and Heze-Bogota hard forks, aimed at scaling Layer 1 and further applying Web3 technologies. Glamsterdam is expected mid-2026, focusing on “block access list” and “separating proposers and builders” (ePBS). The former will enable perfect parallel processing, shifting Ethereum from single-channel to multi-channel mode, greatly increasing transaction throughput; the latter will improve block production efficiency and allow more time for zero-knowledge proof verification.

Additionally, Ethereum’s gas limit in 2026 is expected to increase significantly from the current 60 million to 100 million or even 200 million, with data blocks possibly exceeding 72 per block, further supporting Layer 2 protocols to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. It is anticipated that 10% of Ethereum validators will switch to verifying zero-knowledge proofs, paving the way for Layer 1 scaling to 10,000 TPS.

The Heze-Bogota hard fork at year-end will focus on enhancing privacy and censorship resistance, further optimizing the Ethereum ecosystem.

Earlier, Ethereum developers renamed the subsequent upgrade after Glamsterdam to “Hegota.”

Trust Wallet browser extension security incident led to over $6 million stolen.

According to Trust Wallet official and on-chain detective ZachXBT, version 2.68 of Trust Wallet browser extension has a security vulnerability causing many user wallets to be compromised in recent hours. The official recommends affected users disable version 2.68 and upgrade to 2.69. Mobile and other versions are unaffected. The team is actively investigating and contacting victims. Initial estimates indicate over $6 million stolen, with hundreds of victims and multiple stolen EVM, Bitcoin, and Solana addresses publicly known. Affected users can contact official support channels for assistance.

CZ responds to Trust Wallet theft: losses total $7 million, user funds will be fully reimbursed.

CZ posted on X that the Trust Wallet incident resulted in approximately $7 million in losses, and the platform will fully compensate affected users, assuring funds are “SAFU.” He also mentioned that the team is investigating how attackers successfully submitted malicious code in the new extension version.

Trust Wallet: $7 million user assets will be fully refunded, refund process coming soon.

According to Trust Wallet official announcement, the security incident involving version 2.68 of the browser extension affected about $7 million in user assets. The team commits to full reimbursement, with the refund process to be announced soon. Users are advised not to enable the old version extension and follow the upgrade instructions to version 2.69, emphasizing not to click on non-official information.

Uniswap protocol fee switch proposal UNIfication passes overwhelmingly.

The Uniswap protocol fee switch proposal, UNIfication, was approved with overwhelming support. Voting results show approximately 125 million UNI in favor, 742 against. After a 2-day lock period, Uniswap Labs will burn 100 million UNI tokens and enable fee switch mechanisms on Ethereum mainnet for v2 and v3, starting to burn UNI and Unichain fees.

Hyper Foundation officially confirms HYPE token burn from aid fund address.

According to Hyper Foundation, community-voted validator governance has officially recognized the aid fund held at address 0xfefef…fefe as burned. 85% of votes supported, 7% opposed, 8% abstained. These tokens will be permanently removed from circulation and total supply.

Earlier this month, Hyper Foundation proposed that HYPE held by the aid fund be considered burned, permanently removing it from circulation and total supply.

Aave brand asset ownership proposal rejected, with over 55% voting against and 41% abstaining.

According to the Aave governance forum, the ARFC proposal to transfer control of Aave brand assets (domain names, social accounts, trademarks, etc.) to DAO governance ended voting on December 26. It was not approved, with 995,000 votes against (55.29%) and only 63,000 in favor, with 41.21% abstaining. The proposal aimed to address risks of current third-party control and clarify ownership and usage through DAO legal structures.

Key Data

Performance of Launchpad over the past year: Binance Wallet leads with 12.69x ROI, ATH ROI 78.01x.

According to defioasis.eth, the ROI performance of major ICO/IDO/IEO Launchpads over the past year is as follows: Binance Wallet leads with a current ROI of 12.69x and an ATH ROI of 78.01x.

Echo, the best non-CEX platform for new listings, achieved an ATH ROI over 17x but has been acquired by Coinbase.

Buildpad’s ATH ROI is close to 10x, believed to be linked with resource cooperation with Binance, increasing the probability of projects being listed on Binance.

MetaDAO performed strongly in Q4, with a current ROI of 4.15x and ATH ROI of 8.73x. It is highly anticipated after the cooling of Solana ecosystem.

Gate Launchpad has the most projects but requires timely actions; OKX Wallet’s ATH ROI is second only to Binance Wallet but with fewer projects; Coinlist performed poorly, with the lowest ATH ROI.

Overall, early exit from new projects generally yields profits, but long-term holding may lead to losses. Currently, 8 Launchpads have an average current ROI below 2, with 5 below 1.

AI concept tokens plummeted 75% this year, with a $53 billion market cap evaporating over the year.

AI-themed crypto tokens have sharply corrected since their 2024 peak, with a 75% decline in 2025, losing about $53 billion in market cap, nearly $10 billion lost just in December. Market sentiment cooled, liquidity dried up, new projects frequently issued, and macroeconomic negatives contributed to this deep correction. Eight major AI tokens declined over 70% this year, including Artificial Superintelligence Alliance down 84%, Render and The Graph each down 82%.