Our weekly crypto derivatives analytics report delves into macro events, the current state of crypto and trading signals from spot trading volume, and futures, options and perpetual contracts.

December's end-of-year options expiration brought an unexpected drop as realized volatility fell to the lowest levels of the month. Perpetual swap open interest remained stable, indicating these markets weren't heavily used for hedging against expired options, likely contributing to the muted volatility. 

While most expired open interest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) hasn't been reinvested, the balance of calls and puts remains consistent. Notably, ETH options are pricing in higher implied volatility as compared to BTC, particularly for shorter expirations, leading to a flat term structure for ETH, while BTC is offering cheaper options exposure.

In the perpetual markets, low volatility and minimal spot movements have led funding rates for nearly all tokens to mirror broader market sentiment throughout the holiday season. On the options side, BTC's term structure is noticeably lower and steeper than ETH's, with realized volatility now dipping below implied volatility levels, highlighting an intriguing shift in market dynamics.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Open Interest Solid Amid Year-End Options Expiration

Although open interest for both BTC and ETH perpetual swaps hasn’t returned to early December 2024 highs, it remained robust throughout the significant end-of-year options expiration event. This suggests that these markets weren’t heavily utilized to 

 of the expiring options contracts, likely contributing to the lack of volatility observed during this period. Instead, trading volumes have dipped noticeably during the winter holiday season, coinciding with a collapse in realized volatility back to December 2024’s lowest levels.

BTC Option Curve Remains Steep During Call-Put Parity

The expiration of December's end-of-year options didn’t trigger the anticipated surge in volatility; instead, realized volatility has plummeted to the lower end of its recent range. The implied volatility term structure remains steep compared to both its recent behavior and ETH's, with longer-dated implied volatility around 57%, and 1-week at-the-money options trading about five points lower. Much of the expired open interest hasn’t yet been rolled into new positions, maintaining a neutral balance between puts and calls. Consequently, BTC's options market positioning is relatively neutral, lacking the leverage it had at the start of December 2024.

Huge ETH Option Expiring Doesn’t Cause Volatility

A late December spike in realized volatility didn’t carry into the new year, with ETH’s spot price currently exhibiting volatility below that of short-tenor implied volatility. Interestingly, the implied volatility term structure has undergone a steepening and re-flattening over the past week, contrasting with BTC’s slightly steeper profile. This suggests that ETH’s options market is anticipating higher short-term volatility in spot price movements. 

Despite the significant expiration of options open interest at the end of December 2024, which didn’t lead to a rollover into later expirations, call options continue to dominate the market and have increased at the start of 2025.

Advanced

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Bybit X Block Scholes Crypto Derivatives Analytics Report (Jan 2, 2025): BTC Options Continue to See Call-Put Parity, With Lower Short-Term Volatility Expected

Dive into FLock, a decentralized platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform countless industries, but its development often raises questions about privacy, control and inclusivity. 

 is a unique decentralized platform that democratizes AI training, fine-tuning and inferencing. With its blockchain-powered infrastructure, FLock ensures transparency, security and community-driven decision-making, paving the way for AI models that align with established societal values. 

In this article, we’ll explore how FLock decentralizes AI training, its key features and its potential impact on developers, communities and users.

 platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed. By leveraging blockchain technology and a novel approach called 

, FLock addresses critical issues in AI development, such as centralized control, lack of transparency and privacy concerns.

At its core, FLock’s mission is to democratize AI by enabling communities to participate directly in the creation and refinement of AI models. Through federated learning, FLock trains AI models across multiple decentralized devices or servers. This method ensures that data remains local, eliminating the need for raw data exchange while still enabling robust model training. By decentralizing the training process, FLock not only protects individual privacy, but also fosters a more inclusive ecosystem in which diverse contributors can collaborate.

What sets FLock apart is its integration of 

. This ensures that all contributions — whether data, compute power or feedback — are transparently recorded and fairly rewarded. Blockchain tech’s immutable ledger enhances trust among participants and safeguards the process against manipulation. Additionally, the platform’s on-chain incentive mechanisms encourage participation from a wide range of contributors, ensuring that rewards are distributed equitably.

Ultimately, FLock empowers communities to develop bespoke AI models tailored to their specific needs. By decentralizing the process and prioritizing transparency and collaboration, FLock breaks the monopoly of large corporations, creating an AI ecosystem that aligns with public ethics and societal values.

, an Oxford alumnus with a robust background in AI and blockchain technology. Sun, who serves as FLock's CEO, has an impressive career trajectory, having worked as the Director of AI for the Royal Bank of Canada and as an AI Research Fellow at Imperial College London. His vision for FLock stems from a deep understanding of both the technical and ethical challenges of AI development.

The founding team also includes other Oxford alumni, boasting over a decade of combined experience in AI research and the cryptocurrency industry. This team brings a collective blend of academic excellence and practical expertise that positions FLock to lead the decentralized AI movement.

FLock has successfully raised $11 million in funding across two rounds, reflecting strong investor confidence in its vision. In May 2024, FLock secured a $6 million seed round co-led by Lightspeed Faction and Tagus Capital, with additional backing from Digital Currency Group (DCG), Volt Capital, OKX Ventures and Inception Capital.

Later, in December 2024, FLock announced a $3 million successful funding round led by DCG and joined by prominent names like Animoca Brands, Fenbushi Capital, GnosisVC and GSR. These investments are being channelled into enhancing the platform’s testnet and federated learning client, accelerating FLock’s mission of enabling secure, collaborative AI development.

With this funding and over 1,500 nodes contributing from platforms like Numerai and Kaggle, FLock is rapidly scaling its impact on decentralized AI training.

FLock AI revolutionizes AI development through its decentralized training framework. This approach allows participants to contribute to AI model training without ever sharing their personal data. Instead, models are trained locally across devices using federated learning, which ensures that data remains with its owners while still enhancing the accuracy of the model overall. 

FLock’s reward system is designed to incentivize active participation. Contributors who provide data, computational power and/or feedback are compensated with FLOCK tokens, ensuring a fair distribution of rewards. 

FLock empowers its community through a robust governance framework. Decisions regarding AI model development, deployment and ethical considerations are driven by the community, ensuring alignment with established societal values. Through blockchain-based voting mechanisms, contributors can influence the direction of AI projects, fostering transparency and public accountability. 

FLock’s modular architecture allows contributors to participate in specific aspects of AI model development. Whether providing raw data or computational power or even refining algorithms, the platform enables a collaborative and scalable development process. 

At the core of FLock’s philosophy is its commitment to privacy and security. By leveraging blockchain technology, the platform ensures that no single entity controls the AI development process. Data remains local and protected by cryptographic measures, while the immutability of blockchain guarantees transparency in every transaction and model update. 

 begins with a blockchain and an AI layer.

The blockchain layer underpins FLock’s incentivization and security mechanisms.

The AI layer facilitates model training, refinement and deployment, leveraging both centralized and federated approaches.

Let’s have a look at the supply and demand for the FLOCK token.

FLock adopts a 1:2 ratio model between team/investors (33.3%) and community (66.7%), prioritizing community-driven growth and ecosystem expansion. The majority of tokens are allocated to incentivize user participation and long-term ecosystem success.

FLock aims to improve the future of AI development by decentralizing the training process and ensuring transparency, privacy and inclusivity. By leveraging blockchain and federated learning, FLock empowers communities to contribute to AI creation without compromising on privacy. Its innovative reward system and community-driven governance foster a fair and collaborative ecosystem. 

With significant backing and a growing network of contributors, FLock is positioning itself as a leader in decentralized AI, offering a more ethical and secure alternative to traditional AI development models. As it continues to scale, FLock is set to transform the way AI models are built and deployed.

 — and earn a share of a 10 million FLOCK prize pool. For more details, visit 

Intermediate

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FLock AI: Decentralized AI Training

In this tutorial, we’ll explore how you can complete a series of tasks in Network3 for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade.

Task 1: Register for a Network3 Account and Connect Your Bybit Wallet 

: Navigate to the campaign page and click on the 

task. Click on the task, and Galxe will ask to redirect you to the Network3 register page.

: Register for a Network3 account using your email address. You may indicate a 

Task 2: Download the Network3 App and Run a Node for One Hour

 and choose your operating system to download the Network3 app.

 or powerbutton, depending upon which operating system you’re using. For ease of reference, we’ve used macOS and iOS as examples below.

: Keep running the node until the timer reaches 

Beginner

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How to Complete Network3 Tasks for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade

Bybit launched the Bybit Merch Creative Challenge for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool.

The S&P 500 dropped 0.22% on Thursday, its fifth straight decline, with investors eyeing Friday’s economic updates. Coindesk Indices, an index measuring broader cryptocurrency market performance was up by 2.03%, with Bitcoin and Ether rising by 2.79% and 2.70%, respectively in the past 24 hours.

Today's top performer is XRP, which surged 1.9% following a rise in price driven by increased open interest and positive market sentiment.

Ripple (XRP), launched in August 2012, is a blockchain technology company focused on improving international payments with its cryptocurrency, XRP. XRP price surged due to increased open interest, a major XRP transfer, and market sentiment linked to Trump's inauguration. Bullish momentum is supported by high short liquidations, with key resistance levels to watch for further price movement.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of 

 for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool. Participants can design exclusive Bybit merchandise, with submissions open until Jan. 15, 2025. Winners will be announced on Feb. 1, 2025, across four prize categories.

Yesterday, Bitcoin Spot ETFs recorded a total inflow of $84.8M, driven by $107.9M from non-GBTC funds, partially offset by a $23.1M outflow from GBTC.

, offering an airdrop for participants who complete tasks like swapping and bridging using the Mango wallet. Points earned through tasks determine airdrop rewards. Join via the Mango wallet and follow steps on the testnet dashboard.

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Bybit Launches $50,000 Merch Design Challenge for University Students Worldwide

Bybit Learn

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Explainers

Altcoins

DeepLink Protocol (DLC) is a decentralized AI cloud gaming platform offering ultra-low latency and high scalability.

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The gaming industry is among the fastest-growing sectors these days, with thousands of new titles released every month. Despite the industry's spectacular growth rates, many issues limit the adoption and accessibility of gaming for users worldwide. Modern video games often require significant processing capacity, due to their visual and technical sophistication. This forces gaming enthusiasts to purchase expensive hardware, which is frequently out of reach for many. 

Additionally, as games grow more sophisticated in terms of features, visual effects and storylines, there are issues with scalability and latency, even when the gamer owns a reasonably recent, high-spec machine. This all on top of security issues and inflexible payment terms for leading games.

Cloud gaming platforms have emerged in recent years as an alternative to traditional gaming setups in order to address these issues. Unfortunately, centralized cloud gaming solutions still struggle to address many of the limitations mentioned above. Despite leveraging the cloud, these platforms are often hamstrung by hardware availability limitations. Payment plans are also not among the most flexible or affordable when you use traditional cloud gaming providers.

DeepLink Protocol (DLC) is a decentralized platform that offers cloud gaming services on 

, utilizing the processing power of computers around the world to achieve greater scalability and lower latency. Using its protocol, you can play the most advanced games without the need to own expensive hardware. Its services are a critical contributor to increasing the accessibility and affordability of gaming among different segments of users.

 (DLC) is a blockchain-based provider of decentralized AI cloud gaming services. 

Thanks to its services, gamers can play a myriad of titles directly streaming from the cloud. This frees them from the need to purchase expensive, high-end gaming machines, typically required when playing modern, visually sophisticated games.

DeepLink Protocol sources hardware capacity for its cloud gaming solutions in a decentralized fashion. It derives its processing power from providers around the world, such as powerful data centers or individuals with more modest hardware specs that share their computers' idle processing capacity on an ad-hoc basis.

Thanks to its decentralized capacity sourcing and cloud-based setup, DeepLink Protocol is able to achieve ultra-low latency, high scalability and brilliant performance, even for gaming titles that feature advanced graphics and visual effects.

DeepLink’s protocol is based on theAI computation–focused DeepBrain Chain blockchain platform. AI technology is thus infused in the games on DeepLink Protocol. For instance, in-game elements, such as challenges and storylines, can be customized according to your preferences. AI can also analyze player data to help developers craft more engaging gaming experiences, ensuring that games constantly evolve to suit the changing needs of players.

DeepLink Protocol was founded in 2020 by Singapore-based entrepreneur Yong He, who is also the founder of DeepBrain Chain (DBC). DeepLink's first functional version was released in August 2021. In July 2024, the project held a public sale for its native token, DLC, which (as of mid-September 2024) is expected to be listed soon on crypto exchange platforms.

 (DApp) on the DeepBrain Chain network, runs on a 

 (DPoS) consensus mechanism and is optimized for AI computations and use cases. It leverages 

 nodes to source computing capacity from users around the world. These mining nodes earn rewards in DLC tokens for their resource contributions. There are two types of mining nodes on the protocol: Genesis Traffic Nodes and GPU miners.

Genesis Traffic Nodes provide resources for core computations and data traffic forwarding. They’re crucial to the protocol's overall functioning and decentralization, as they also enable the ecosystem’s growth by computing bandwidth requirements.

GPU miners, as their name implies, provide GPU processing capacity, which is critical for enabling the smooth operation of today's typically resource-hungry video games. Most GPU miners from DeepLink cloud internet cafes are involved in long-term, stable resource provision in exchange for DLC rewards. The protocol relies heavily on these miners to deliver high-performance, premium gaming experiences.

There are also individual GPU miners, who typically provide their machines' idle GPU computing power on a flexible basis. Individual miners can start and stop sharing their hardware resources anytime. They also earn rewards in DLC tokens, though their relatively more modest resource contributions mean lower mining reward levels than those received by long-term GPU providers. The individual capacity-sharing mode can be suitable for anyone who would like to monetize their machine's idle resources flexibly and intermittently.

DeepLink Protocol earns revenues from its business model in two primary ways:

End users of the protocol's services can take advantage of the flexible capacity provision supported by the two modes of GPU mining — the long-term, stable service and the flexible on-and-off mode, as described above (under 

). The former would typically suit internet cafes, while the latter is optimal for individual gamers who'd like to access their favorite titles over the cloud. Payment for access to the cloud games supported by the protocol can be made in DLC tokens.

DeepLink Protocol’s software provides intriguing functionality in the form of remote control. This function allows you to control your devices — such as desktop computers, laptops and smartphones — remotely over the internet, and is based on live streaming media technology that features stellar performance parameters, such as 1 ms latency, 8K resolution, 244Hz refresh rates and 24-hour uptime.

DeepLink's DLC token is a cryptocurrency issued on the DeepBrain Chain. The project also maintains contracts for the token on two popular smart chains, 

 (BNB), likely to facilitate cross-chain use cases. DLC is used to reward mining nodes and to pay for access to the protocol's services.

DeepLink Protocol also sells a variety of NFTs, purchasable with DLC tokens, that provide access to exclusive and advanced features. Forty percent of DLC tokens used to buy these NFTs are burned in order to maintain the token's scarcity and price.

DLC's total supply is specified at 100 billion, with 60 billion issued on DeepBrain Chain, 30 billion on Ethereum and 10 billion on BSC. The token's supply allocation shares are as follows:

Deeplink Protocol also offers several airdrop campaigns that allow crypto users to earn DLC tokens. 

 rewards those who have staked at least 100,000 DBC — DeepBrain Protocol's native cryptocurrency — in DeepBrain Chain's nodes. The airdrop's eligibility snapshot date is Sep 19, 2024.

Another airdrop is taking place on the Bybit Web3 platform. 

 allows you to grab a share of 100 million in DLC funds on offer. Just create a Bybit Cloud Wallet or Seed Phrase Wallet, or import an existing Seed Phrase to get started. Next, complete several easy tasks, such as following DeepLink's X account, reposting its campaign on X and downloading the DeepLink client software. The campaign is valid through Oct 11, 2024, 7AM UTC.

DeepLink offers a variety of NFTs that provide their holders with access to advanced or exclusive features or rewards. Its main NFTs are Crown NFTs, which grant you one-year access to all enterprise features of DeepLink software upon activating them. Holding these NFTs also grants you access to DLC airdrops, various discounts for gaming protocols and voting rights. Finally, 10% of DeepLink software NFT revenue will be invested in node rewards, while 40% of the proceeds will be burned to boost the value of the DLC token.

DeepLink Protocol is an ambitious project that seeks to redefine cloud gaming by leveraging blockchain technology. The cloud gaming landscape is still dominated by centralized players, but the advantages offered by DeepLink are hard to ignore. Not only are users now free from the need to own expensive hardware, but they can also benefit from the DeepLink platform's great scalability and low latency to enjoy a smoother gaming experience.

Cloud internet cafes may also become more commonplace, thanks to the protocol's active focus on these entities. If the project gains significant traction in the blockchain gaming industry, we might see the revival of the good old internet cafe concept from the 1990s, now in the new web3 cloud format — and without the squealing noise of those dial-up modems.

DeepLink Protocol (DLC): Reshaping Cloud Gaming With Blockchain and AI

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards