The Defiant

Olivia Capozzalo & Camila Russo
July 24, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

NFTs are back in the news with the launch of new treasury firm that plans to earn yield on CryptoPunks

In other news:

The Tornado Cash trial currently underway in New York has hit a snag
The exit queue for Ethereum validators is experiencing record-long wait times
The native token of Sky’s (formerly MakerDAO’s) liquidity layer Spark rallied sharply this week
Crypto ventures now make up a key part of the Trump family fortune
Investment policy statements: Ending misalignment and empowering long-term vision in decentralized organizations [SPONSORED]
DIA's Infra Gardens Event Recap: Building the Future of Crypto & DeFi [MEDIA PARTNERSHIP]

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

DIA launches $DIA Staking and Oracle Grants with 20 chains, including Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Avalanche. Power your dApp with trustless oracles, cost-free.

Alephium’s Danube Upgrade Is Live — The Web3 We Were Promised, on Proof-of-Work

Alephium, the only scalable Layer 1 powered by Proof-of-Work and native sharding, has launched its landmark Danube upgrade. Danube delivers the performance and simplicity users expect with 8-second block times, seedless onboarding, invisible sharding, and a smoother smart contract experience. It’s Web2-grade UX, running on a decentralized, energy-efficient PoW chain.

Danube marks Alephium’s biggest step toward the Web3 we were promised — scalable, secure, and actually usable.

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Watch the full interview, shot at the beautiful DIA Infra Gardens event at EthCC Cannes

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We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the last 24 hrs:

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$118,681	0.81 %
Ethereum	$3,691.32	2.66 %
XRP	$3.18	-2.37 %
BNB	$773.62	0.12 %
Solana	$186.25	-2.14 %

MessariPortals	MINDSHARE Rank	MINDSHARE % Change (7d)
		9.43%
		-75.66%
		127.60%
Powered by Messari Portals

Today’s Big Story

Cowboy Ape Sells for $5M and Pixel Rocks Get a Bid: Are NFTs Back?

Esports-turned-“on-chain media” company GameSquare just dropped $5.15 million (in convertible preferred stock, naturally) on CryptoPunk #5577, better known as “Cowboy Ape.” The highly coveted Punk was purchased from Compound founder Robert Leshner in exchange for preferred stock, making him a strategic investor in the firm.

GameSquare has acquired the iconic Cowboy Ape #5577 CryptoPunk from DeFi pioneer @rleshner in a $5.15M strategic investment.

We also added $10M of ETH to our treasury, bringing total Ethereum treasury holdings to over $52 million.

— GameSquare Holdings Inc. (@GSQHoldings)
1:02 PM • Jul 24, 2025

On top of its first NFT purchase, the board simultaneously green-lit another $10 million ETH buy, pushing the firm’s Ethereum stack to over $48 million at current prices.

In what has to be a crypto treasury company first, GameSquare also unveiled an “NFT yield strategy” that targets 6-10% on stablecoins — apparently, the company is planning to farm the Punk for yield and licensing fees.

It lands GameSquare in the middle of a question the market hasn’t seriously dared to ask since the last bull run: are NFTs back?

One data point doesn’t make a trend, but the Cowboy Ape isn’t alone. CryptoPunks, the original PFP collection, has been on an absolute tear. A wallet sweep earlier this week hoovered up 45 Punks for nearly $8 million, driving single-day turnover to $13.6 million and hauling the collection’s floor to 47.7 ETH (~$180K) — the highest volume since late 2024.

Meanwhile, Pudgy Penguins’ floor price has doubled, Moonbirds have nearly tripled, and ERC-20 spin-offs like PENGU are belting out double-digit daily gains.

Volume Climbs

Zoom out and the macro picture starts to match the anecdotes. Aggregate NFT trade volume is on track to be the highest since January at $156 million, posting its third consecutive weekly increase, according to data from The Block and CryptoSlam. Ethereum-based projects grabbed the lion’s share. Put differently: for the first time this year, JPEGs are moving in line with altcoins.

Even relics of the 2021 mania are stirring. An EtherRock — literally a pixelated rock — just changed hands for 300,000 USDC on GONDI, an NFT collateralized-lending marketplace that wasn’t even around during the last cycle.

Meanwhile ETH itself is flirting with $4,000 after ripping 27% in ten days. The ETH rally is taking Ethereum NFTs with it, as eight of the top-10 NFT collections by weekly sales are Ethereum-native, according to DappRadar.

Still Far from 2021

So, are NFTs “back”? It depends on your benchmark. Weekly volume is still a fraction of the $3 billion highs of August 2021. Liquidity remains thin outside the blue-chips, and most new mints still flatline.

Following the broader trend in crypto, what’s changed is the buyer profile, with corporates like GameSquare treating NFTs as yield-bearing treasury assets. Lenders are rehypothecating PFPs in NFTFi platforms and collections are launching fungible tokens to keep holders engaged.

With ETH surging, cheaper L2 transaction costs, and a risk-on mood, we’re getting the first credible pulse since the crash.

In short: we’re not back to 2021 levels yet but there’s hope. For now, the Cowboy Ape is lassoing millions, EtherRocks are rolling, and zombies from the NFT graveyard are stirring. That’s more life than this market has shown in a long time. Whether this turns into a full-blown NFT bull market is TBD.

With love,

Cami, founder of The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

How Lido is Redefining Ethereum Staking: Dual Governance, Liquid Staking, and the V3 Upgrade

On the latest episode of The Defiant Podcast, The Defiant founder Cami Russo sat down with Hasu, strategic advisor to Lido. Their conversation dives into the evolving role of Ethereum in DeFi, the future of staking for institutions, and the broader implications of programmable money.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

DoJ’s Tornado Cash Case Wobbles After Jury Hears Questionable Evidence Decentralized crypto mixer Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm’s criminal trial in Manhattan is approaching a critical moment, as scrutiny over shaky evidence, contested tracing methods, and potential prosecutorial overreach intensifies.
ETH Unstaking Queue Hits Record High, Led by Justin Sun-Linked Addresses Ethereum’s validator exit queue is now seeing record-long wait times as DeFi whales unwind stETH strategies. Withdrawals of stETH are led by wallet addresses linked to Justin Sun and affiliated crypto exchange HTX, with a combined 80,000 stETH, among other whales, drastically increasing the demand to redeem stETH for ETH.
Spark Rallies More than 400% as TVL Explodes to $8 Billion Spark, an on-chain capital allocator and liquidity layer launched by Sky (formerly MakerDAO) in 2023, recorded significant growth in Q2, and its native SPK token is now catching up. SPK surged sharply this week, peaking near $0.18, up from around $0.04 just a few days ago.
FEATURE: Trump’s Crypto Assets Now Comprise a Key Part of Family Fortune Worth Billions Since launching his re-election campaign in 2024, one that heavily focused on the adoption of cryptocurrency, President Donald Trump and his family have aggressively entered the crypto space with a series of ventures, from memecoins to crypto ETFs. Reports place the total sum of Trump’s net worth derived from crypto ventures in the eight- to nine-figure range.