gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

The sharp rise and fall of the viral daycare fraud journalist’s Base token is pushing sentiment around Base-native creator coins to an all-time low.

In other news:

Cardano-linked NIGHT outperforms
UNI drops despite UNIfication token burn

The Defiant’s 2025 in review:

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Stellar: The Proving Ground for Real-World Privacy The latest Stellar upgrade, X-Ray, delivers zero-knowledge cryptography that lets developers build privacy into their apps—protecting what matters while keeping Stellar radically open, trusted, and ready for real-world finance.

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

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$88,802	1.37 %
Ethereum	$2,986.25	1.71 %
BNB	$861.3	0.94 %
XRP	$1.87	0.24 %
Solana	$124.52	0.87 %

Sentiment Around Base-Native Creator Coins Craters After Daycare Fraud Journo Coin

As crypto markets continue to stagnate into year-end, Base traders briefly caught some relief this week when viral grassroots journalist Nick Shirley — who uncovered a multimillion-dollar daycare fraud in a series of widely circulated videos — created and launched his verified creator coin on creator-focused Base-based platform Zora. Shirley had help onboarding into on-chain content monetization by none other than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong himself, who also tweeted about it.

The publicity from Armstrong briefly sent the token as high as a $9 million market capitalization, especially notable in today’s poor on-chain conditions. But the euphoria didn’t last long and the token has crashed backed down to a market cap of about $2 million.

thenickshirley price chart. Source: DexScreener

One well-known Base trader on X summarized the sentiment across the ecosystem following $thenickshirley performance in a post this morning, noting that it may be an issue of timing:

“seems like any positive momentum is conveniently timed around unlocks and then immediately dumped into; prob no real breakout in price until there’s actual usage + inflows that can outpace seed investors/VCs selling.”

“Remains a great app, maybe later idk,” they concluded.

In the wake of the Shirley token incident, ZORA, the native asset of the creator-focused platform, is down more than 4% today as Base-native sentiment hits rock bottom.

Olivia, senior editor at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

Unpacking Uniswap’s “fee switch” with Hayden Adams

The UNIfication proposal just passed with an overwhelming majority of voters in favor. On the most recent episode of The Defiant podcast, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams joins us to break down the proposal — a sweeping plan from Uniswap Labs + the Uniswap Foundation that would activate protocol fees, introduce a programmatic UNI burn, and realign how value accrues across the Uniswap ecosystem.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

NIGHT Jumps After Charles Hoskinson Backs XRP DeFi Integration The recently launched NIGHT token outperformed the broader crypto market on Monday after Charles Hoskinson suggested it could help expand DeFi across blockchain ecosystems, including XRP. NIGHT is up almost 300% since launching in early December. Why it matters: Developed by the firm behind Cardano, founded by Hoskinson, Midnight (NIGHT) is a privacy-focused blockchain built for confidential transactions and private DeFi
UNI Falls After Uniswap Labs Burns 100 Million Tokens Uniswap’s UNI token underperformed on Monday after Uniswap Labs confirmed it had burned 100 million tokens over the weekend, as part of its recently passed UNIfication proposal. Why it matters: UNIfication marks the end of a multi-year saga around Uniswap’s elusive “fee switch,” which was approved as part of the proposal.