Markets are opening the week under pressure as renewed tensions in the Middle East push oil higher and bring inflation risk back into focus. BTC has remained surprisingly resilient, while crypto performance is increasingly concentrated around DEXs and tokens exposed to Robinhood’s growing onchain ecosystem.

We then turn to Hyperliquid’s priority fees. The mechanism has generated $3.94M since launching in April, but adoption remains limited to a small group of traders and a handful of contested markets. By measuring the persistent taker edge available across the exchange, we estimate that write priority fees could scale from their current $15M annualized pace to between $26M and $78M as competition spreads across the order book.

Market performance was mixed over the last week, with BTC moving in tandem with risk assets and ending the week up 0.96%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also posted modest gains of 0.72% and 0.35% respectively, while Gold was the laggard, falling -1.86%. However, all four benchmarks have opened the week lower as geopolitical tensions once again weigh on sentiment.

Despite the conflict in the Middle East, tech equities remained resilient last week, supported by continued strength in the AI trade. SK Hynix made its US market debut, raising $26.8B in the largest ever IPO by a foreign company in the US. Their shares finished their first trading day up 12.8%, though they gave back those gains on Monday, opening -15% lower. 

That optimism is now being tested. The conflict has escalated with renewed exchanges between US and Iranian forces, while Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. WTI crude has climbed 7.5% over the past week to around $74, bringing inflation concerns back into focus just two weeks ahead of the Fed meeting.

BTC, meanwhile, showed surprising resilience. Part of the strength likely came from Michael Saylor's $216M BTC sale, which appears to have eased concerns around Strategy's ability to service preferred dividend obligations and stabilize STRC. Early in the week, BTC ETFs also recorded roughly $550M of inflows, reversing a prolonged period of outflows before turning negative again later in the week. 

Across crypto sectors, DEXs were the standout performers, gaining 11% on the week, while the Meme index fell -8.7%. Despite strong performances from memecoins such as Cashcat and Ansem, the weakness across the meme index suggests liquidity remains concentrated in only a handful of tokens.

The DEX rally was led by Uniswap, which climbed 14.6% on the week as the primary DEX benefiting from Robinhood's growing memecoin ecosystem. 

Capital also appears to be rotating away from Solana ecosystem names such as JTO (-15.8%), JUP (-17.6%) and MET (-15.3%) toward tokens more directly exposed to Robinhood's chain. UNI, LIT (+7.2%), SYRUP (+12.2%), MORPHO (+3.7%) and ARB (+16.1%) all outperformed, lifting the broader Ethereum ecosystem index.

Looking ahead, all eyes remain on oil prices and ETF flows. A sustained rise in crude could quickly bring inflation back to the forefront, while continued ETF inflows will be critical if BTC is to maintain its recent resilience despite an increasingly uncertain macro backdrop.

 — Kunal

Projecting Hyperliquid’s Priority Fees

Priority fees keep printing. Since their April 13 launch, they have generated $3.94M: $2.15M from writes and $1.78M from reads. Write fees held near $50K/day over the latest week, while read fees rose to $41K/day, lifting the combined run rate to $91K/day from an $83K trailing-30-day average.

Even at that pace, priority fees remain a single-digit share of Hyperliquid's fee revenue, while ordering fees represent roughly 80% of REV on Ethereum and Solana. Our mental model for the gap: priority fees are a tax traders pay to access contested opportunities in Hyperliquid's order books. Traders pay as little as they can, and competition bids the fee toward their expected edge. And, as Hyperliquid’s fees are still nascent, the competition in priority fees reflect that.

Therefore to project how these fees can grow we estimate: how much taker edge the exchange generates, and how much of it competition forces traders to hand back.

Only 244 wallets paid a priority fee over the last 30 days, the top ten of them 87% of the total, and daily write-priority users are 0.14% of DAU. Usage is episodic rather than routine: across the top six HIP-3 pairs, the top 5% of five-minute windows captured 67–91% of fee revenue. Priority fees switch on around discrete, high-value moments; they are not yet an always-on execution tool.

Where they have switched on, the internalization is material. The top three payers in each measured market earned roughly $870K in visible gross returns and kept $560K after fees, handing a third back to the fee stack. In the two markets where competition has matured, SpaceX and Intel, takers already pay away one-half to two-thirds of their measured edge.

To size the pool those capture rates apply to, we measured persistent taker edge across the exchange: 30-second markouts on filled notional, counted only for wallets that stay profitable over 100+ fills. The pool runs near $285K per day, split almost evenly between HIP-3 markets ($144K) and crypto ($142K), and its two largest components, BTC at $49.5K per day and HYPE at $39.5K, remain effectively untaxed.

Holding that pool flat, assuming no volume growth, and varying only the capture rate: write priority fees alone can generate $26M annualized at the low end and $78M at the rates contested markets already exhibit, against roughly $15M at the trailing month's write pace. None of that counts the read side, which is growing on its own auction cycle.

Priority fees today are a mechanism that works, used by few. Reaching the top of the range requires no new design and no additional volume assumptions, only the competitive state visible in SpaceX and Intel spreading across the book, starting with the two deepest pools on the exchange. That is a question of how fast trading firms adopt a tool that wins fills, which is why we expect this line to keep compounding with the platform.

— Shaunda

The most underrated token type

A16z introduces arcade tokens as an overlooked token category designed for spending rather than speculation, comparing them to airline miles, loyalty points, and in-game currencies. The piece argues these tokens can help builders bootstrap digital economies, strengthen user loyalty, and manage pricing while remaining relatively price stable through controlled issuance and redemption mechanisms. Unlike traditional loyalty programs, onchain arcade tokens are interoperable and composable, allowing multiple applications to share the same rewards network and create stronger network effects without relying on speculative demand. 

Token Vs Equity, Venice AI, Robinhood Chain & Strategy's Recovery

Last week, we explored why Venice AI's equity raise reignited the token-versus-equity debate, what it reveals about crypto capital formation, and why better disclosures may be the industry's next major unlock. We also discussed Strategy's recovery, Robinhood Chain's launch, Venice's AI growth, MetaDAO's ownership model, and which tokens could benefit most from the next wave of onchain adoption