In the first quarter of 2026, total cryptocurrency market trading volume reached $2.057 trillion, with derivatives dominating trading volume at approximately $1.863 trillion; spot trading volume was about $205.7k. Competition among the top five exchanges was fragmented. The decentralized platform Hyperliquid emerged as the standout, with quarterly derivatives trading volume of approximately $492.7 billion.

Gate News message: On April 3, the decentralized derivatives trading platform ApeX Protocol completed the distribution of March deposit and trading activity rewards, and the next round of activities is about to begin.

Grayscale Investments has filed a revised S-1 form, planning to convert the Bittensor trust into an ETF, involving the TAO token. If approved, it would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, boosting liquidity and transparency and attracting more institutional investors. This move reflects growing interest in the decentralized AI space, and it also means institutional capital is looking for new investment opportunities.

On April 3, U.S. stock market closed: the Dow Jones fell slightly by 0.13%, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose by 0.11% and 0.18%, respectively. Crypto sector performance was mixed: Solana rose 9.41%, while most other digital assets fell. msx.com launched hundreds of decentralized RWA tokens, involving multiple well-known U.S. listed companies.

As of April 3, DRIFT’s price is up 24.16%, now trading at $0.0561, with a market cap of approximately $32.62 million. Drift Protocol, as a decentralized exchange, has performed well in terms of security and liquidity, but trading has been restricted due to recent security incidents and risk management measures by South Korean exchanges, which has increased market volatility.

On April 2, U.S. stocks closed higher: the Dow rose 0.48%, the S&P 500 gained 0.72%, and the Nasdaq rose 1.16%. The crypto market was sluggish; Circle fell 4.89% and Solana dropped 1.73%. Meanwhile, SharpLink edged up 0.16%. msx.com is a decentralized RWA trading platform.

Grayscale research head Zach Pandl said that the current tokenization market is about $27 billion, and is expected to grow to nearly $190 trillion by 2033. Development will be rolled out in phases: early on, institution-led permissioned networks will lead, while in the long term, Ethereum will become the primary platform for decentralized finance.

On April 1, ahead of the U.S. stock market open, crypto concept stocks generally rose, with SBET seeing the largest gain reaching 2.02%. Others such as COIN, MSTR, and BMNR also rose as well. msx.com is a decentralized RWA trading platform that has already launched multiple U.S. stock and ETF tokens.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Jihoon Song presented FOCIL’s progress at the EthCC conference. The project aims to reduce Ethereum’s centralization risk by using a decentralized committee of validators. FOCIL improves blocks’ resistance to censorship by randomly selecting validators and encoding rules, lowers attack risk, and supports account abstraction and privacy protocols. This mechanism has been confirmed as a core feature of Ethereum’s future upgrades.

IoTeX released the IoTeX Hub on April 1, an open ecosystem platform that combines decentralized governance, staking, data analytics, and ecosystem exploration, aiming to provide a one-stop network control for real-world AI and supporting features such as direct voting, real-time monitoring, and project browsing.