Four Pillars Research

: : [Newletter] MSTR and COIN (Week 26, 2026) 🗞 Major News - [Crypto] Are MSTR and STRC Okay? Crypto Assets as Financial Products - [Institution] Coinbase’s Tokenized Stocks: Are They Really Tokenized Stocks? 📊 Data Spotlight - ALT DATs, Are They Still Alive? ✍️ Four Pillars Weekly - A Look at Built-In Privacy on General-Purpose Chains - Neutrl and the Fund Era of Stablecoin Yield - Korean Stocks Now Trade 24/7: Markets.xyz and the Retail Opportunity - SPCX, SPACE, SPX?: The Gap Between the Everything Exchange and Korean CEXs - Collector Crypt Has No Collectors - Monad Six Months After Launch - Monthly EIP - May 2026 (ft. The Staking Issuance Debate and the Responsibility of Scale) 🌎 Full Newsletter FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Comment] Can the Ethereum Foundation Finish the Job Before Making Itself Obsolete? Written by Rejamong

Ethereum ultimately aims to outgrow the Foundation. But as budgets shrink and core researchers leave, can the EF finish the job before making itself obsolete?

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: : [Tech/Article] Monthly EIP - May 2026 (ft. The Staking Issuance Debate and the Responsibility of Scale) Written by Jay - The EIP landscape in May saw a wave of core and ERC proposals aimed at redefining long-held assumptions around transaction, asset, and authorization models, highlighting Ethereum’s continued evolution toward expanding and reshaping its design space. - In May 2026, amid key personnel departures and growing external coordination efforts, Vitalik argued that the Ethereum Foundation should be viewed not as the center of Ethereum but as a purpose-driven node within a broader ecosystem, underscoring the need to redefine its role around long-term sustainability and core values. - Meanwhile, the debate over Ethereum’s staking issuance policy, reignited by accelerating institutional capital inflows, ultimately raises a deeper question: how can Ethereum preserve its credible neutrality while managing the growing influence of large-scale staking infrastructure through voluntary norms and self-imposed constraints? 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Institution/Comment] Why Mirae Asset Chose Ondo Finance Written by Eren

Ondo Finance has signed a MOU with Mirae Asset Global Investments, a Korean asset manager. Mirae Asset is Korea's largest asset manager, yet it skipped its home market as the first stage of tokenization, and Ondo has entered the race to capture the tokenization rail for the Asian market. What does this unusual pairing signal for the market?

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: : [Tech/Article] Monad Six Months After Launch Written by Rejamong - Monad takes on the blockchain trilemma not by proposing a new model, but through extreme engineering. It keeps the EVM interface and redesigns consensus, execution, network propagation, and storage underneath to optimize each one. MONAD_NINE and MIP-3, MIP-4, and MIP-5 show that Monad is running a high-performance EVM variant, tuning resource pricing and execution rules to fit its own runtime. - The price of high performance is complexity. Asynchronous execution, parallel execution, reserve balance, and the split between block states in RPC all create complexity specific to Monad. Monad works to abstract this down to a level developers and infrastructure can handle, using the MIP process, tooling, RPC specs, and precompiles. In other words, Monad's performance is the result of system engineering across execution, memory, storage, and network propagation together. - Monad's next task is to move past the identity of "a faster EVM." The job ahead is not to be a fast chain, but to build a new identity that gives builders and users a reason to stay as blockchain demand keeps expanding, backed by a long-term vision. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Comment] Are HIP-3 Newcomers Cooked? Written by Ponyo

TradeXYZ may have already consolidated HIP-3’s listing layer, leaving the opportunity to frontends that can bring new demand.

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: : [Investment/Issue] Collector Crypt Has No Collectors Written by Ponyo - Of CC's $635 million in all-time gross revenue, 90.6% was returned to users as instant card buybacks, leaving $43 million in net revenue at a 6.7% hold rate. - Secondary trading across every channel, eBay plus peer-to-peer marketplace, totals under $5 million, and the eBay share of gacha flow has fallen from 1.23% to 0.10% over six quarters. - Total token value accrual across burns and buybacks amounts to $1.4 million, or 3.4% of net revenue, while the operational wallet has off-ramped $45.7 million in USDC. - Net margins halved from 11.2% to 5.8% as volume tripled into high-tier packs where the house edge is thinnest, and each new denomination ladder step pulls the blended margin lower. - The ~$535 million FDV prices CARDS at 7.3x net revenue for a margin-compressing casino with roughly 420 daily players, a 20.5% float, and 72% insider supply vesting through November 2027. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Asia/Issue] SPCX, SPACE, SPX?: The Gap Between the Everything Exchange and Korean CEXs Written by c4lvin - On June 16, 2026, Bithumb listed Spacecoin and Upbit listed SPX6900, after which Bithumb listed SPX6900 as well. The Korean community tied these listings to the SpaceX IPO, which had debuted on the Nasdaq four days earlier on June 12. A low-profile token and an aging meme coin were listed at this exact moment under names that bring SpaceX to mind, and many read the situation as the exchanges riding the hype to pull in trading volume. - This reading gains weight against the backdrop of weak results at Korean exchanges. Dunamu's first-quarter revenue in 2026 fell roughly 55 percent from a year earlier, and Bithumb swung to a net loss. Both exchanges draw their income almost entirely from one source, trading fees, so when volume drops, earnings collapse with it. - Korea classifies tokenized stocks as securities and bars crypto exchanges from handling them, and it does not permit crypto futures, derivatives, or spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) either. Over the same period, Binance, Kraken, and Bybit expanded into tokenized stocks and direct trading of overseas shares, generating billions of dollars in related trades on the day SpaceX listed alone. The fact that a "similarly named spot token" is the only channel left for Korean exchanges to join a narrative the rest of the world has joined is a bleak one. - Regulation designed to protect investors paradoxically pushes the exchanges into the market's most speculative corner. With revenue streams and product lines such as derivatives, tokenized stocks, and ETFs all closed off, the only lever left to an exchange is spot listing, and the drier volume becomes, the more it tilts toward higher-profile, and therefore more speculative, listings. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Issue] Korean Stocks Now Trade 24/7: Markets.xyz and the Retail Opportunity Written by Ponyo - Korean retail net bought ₩32.4 trillion in equities through early June, with Samsung and SK Hynix absorbing 73% of that flow and accounting for 42% of the KOSPI, the most concentrated semiconductor bet in a generation. - Perpetual contracts on Samsung (10x), SK Hynix (10x), Hyundai (10x), and EWY (the MSCI Korea ETF, 20x) already trade 24/7 on Hyperliquid. - Markets by Kinetiq has generated $3.75 billion in cumulative volume from 9,278 users since launching in January 2026, averaging $404K per user. - Markets builds trading as a social product. Every position posted carries a verified onchain PnL history and copy trading/counter-trading are each one tap. - Every trade on Markets earns kPoints toward KNTQ allocation, with Season 2's final snapshot on September 29, 2026. 100% of platform revenue flows to sKNTQ staker buybacks. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Issue] Neutrl and the Fund Era of Stablecoin Yield Written by Ponyo - Pure basis is losing its edge as funding rates compress and the trade commoditizes. The stablecoin yield set has now converged into a narrow band: Aave v3 USDC at 3.19%, Sky sUSDS at 3.6%, Syrup USDC/USDT at 4.5%, Ethena sUSDe / stcUSD at 5.02%, and Neutrl at 5.2%. - The protocols that sustain premium yields from here will increasingly look like multi-strategy credit funds rather than single-strategy vaults. - Neutrl’s liquid reserves provide the base, basis trades capture speculative demand, and OTC locked-token positions monetize forced selling. The edge sits in the active sleeve’s ability to access return streams that reserve-only products cannot. - Basis and OTC are negatively correlated by construction. When basis compresses, OTC opportunities tend to expand. When OTC dries up, basis tends to be rich because speculative demand has returned. - The next leg sits in distressed credit, a $190.5B market with no scaled onchain fund analogue. Neutrl has not built the product yet, but the skill-set transfer from its OTC desk is direct. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Tech/Issue] A Look at Built-In Privacy on General-Purpose Chains Written by c4lvin - Recently, Sui and Starknet each rolled out privacy features, Confidential Transfers and STRK20 respectively. Both chains put privacy front and center, but they made nearly opposite design choices on what to hide and who holds the authority to disclose. - Starknet's STRK20 uses a shielded pool model that hides the sender, the recipient, and the amount, severing the transaction graph itself. Auditors are given only read access for tracing and cannot seize assets. Sui's Confidential Transfers, by contrast, hides only the amount while leaving the sender and recipient public, and it follows an issuer-centric structure in which the issuer holds the power to freeze, seize, and audit, all at the code level. Starknet set out to build user-sovereign privacy aimed at DeFi users who want to protect their assets, while Sui aimed for compliance-friendly privacy targeting stablecoin issuers and institutions that cannot give up compliance. - Privacy is no longer the preserve of dedicated chains. It is becoming a standard feature of general-purpose L1s. As general-purpose chains begin to absorb privacy that is good enough to use, privacy-focused chains with only middling liquidity and technology are bound to lose ground. The space where they can survive will be the far ends of the spectrum that general-purpose chains struggle to reach by design, such as comprehensive privacy that also covers metadata and the network layer, or private computation. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Newletter] Signals from Wall Street and Japan's Securities Industry to the Crypto Market (Week 25, 2026) 🗞 Major News - [Asia] Japan's Diet Advances Bill Reclassifying Crypto Assets as Financial Products - [Institution] Digital Asset Raises $355M Led by a16z to Expand Canton Network 📊 Data Spotlight - Crypto Card Payment Dashboard - Why Japan Is Betting Big on Tokenized Stocks ✍️ Four Pillars Weekly - Citrea Ecosystem and its Liquidity Coordination Asset, CTR - Ethena Interview: What’s Next for USDe and ENA? - MapleStory Universe & $NXPC: A Validated Future via Year 1 Data - Time to Buy a Japanese Exchange 🌎 Full Newsletter FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Comment] If Prediction Markets Are Gambling, What Does That Mean for Tokenization? Written by Steve

As law enforcement scrutiny of prediction markets intensifies, it is once again worth examining the ambiguous boundary between what is considered legal and illegal under the current legal framework.

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: : [Asia/Issue] Time to Buy a Japanese Exchange Written by Heechang - Japan has one of the world's deepest licensed exchange rosters, 30 registered CAESPs, yet the FSA itself acknowledges that roughly 90% of them operate at a loss under current compliance costs. - The 2026 FIEA package adds disclosure handling, annual cybersecurity self-assessments, liability reserves of ¥2B-¥40B, and insider-trading surveillance on top of an already heavy cost stack, making sub-scale independence structurally unviable. - Demand is about to inflect: the 20% flat tax from 2027, the 105-token FIEA whitelist, targeted 2028 spot ETF approvals, and institutional allocation intent (80% of Japanese institutions plan 2-5% of AUM in crypto within three years) all route through licensed venues. - A license is no longer just a trading venue: embedded-finance "CaaS" distribution, gateway status for foreign stablecoins like USDC, and crypto card programs with rising usage each stack B2B and payments revenue on top of trading fees. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Issue] MapleStory Universe & $NXPC: A Validated Future via Year 1 Data Written by Jun - MapleStory Universe (MSU) departs from the conventional Web3 game playbook of issuing tokens first and waiting for users and the economic ecosystem to follow. By integrating ownership and economic systems onto the 23-year-proven MapleStory IP and its robust gameplay loop, it has successfully shifted the demand for $NXPC from mere speculation to actual consumption-driven gameplay. - The primary source of future supply pressure for $NXPC stems from ecosystem contribution rewards, which account for 97.4% of the upcoming circulating supply. However, this is counterbalanced by a tightly interwoven sink structure designed to effectively absorb market supply. This includes in-game expenditures (character growth, equipment enhancement, and marketplace transactions), NFT lock-ins via Fusion and Fission, and a quarterly revenue-linked burn model. - The published first-year performance data proves that this structure is more than just a theoretical hypothesis. MSU recorded approximately $31 million in ecosystem revenue, with 90.5% generated directly from core game business models (BM). Notably, in Q1 2026, user token consumption surpassed the volume of reward distribution for the first time, validating the tokenomics' sustainability. - Furthermore, MSU 2.0 and Vibe IP represent an ambitious step to expand the utility of $NXPC from a mere in-game currency to the foundational settlement unit of a Nexon IP-based creator economy. As creators leverage AI-based production tools and game data, and as licensing and settlements are seamlessly processed on the Henesys chain, it establishes a virtuous cycle where the user pool, revenue pool, and token burn volume scale together. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Investment/Issue] Ethena Interview: What’s Next for USDe and ENA? Written by Ponyo - Ethena does not think USDe should be understood only through APY. If USDe works, the more important metrics become collateral usage, velocity, utility, and how deeply it is integrated across DeFi and CeFi. - Backing diversification is not meant to turn USDe into a higher-risk rewarding product. Ethena’s stated goal is to broaden rewarding sources while preserving USDe’s behavior as a predictable synthetic dollar. - The team sees capacity as a market-structure problem, not an AUM target. USDe becomes capacity-constrained when Ethena’s hedging flow starts moving funding rates, increasing execution costs, or concentrating risk in specific venues and assets. - Distribution will increasingly happen through exchanges, wallets, protocols, and partner products. Ethena may become the underlying rewards engine for other platforms, but the team is also building products that preserve a direct customer relationship. - The next collateral ceiling depends on trust under stress. For USDe to become core dollar collateral, institutions need confidence in redemption integrity, peg stability, liquidity, and a risk structure that remains simple enough to underwrite. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Issue] Citrea Ecosystem and its Liquidity Coordination Asset, CTR Written by c4lvin - Citrea reversed the usual sequence of issuing a token first and then waiting for an economy to follow. From the mainnet launch in January 2026 to the TGE in May, lending, trading, yield products, and prediction markets were already running on top of two assets, cBTC and ctUSD. CTR arrived to hand the community the wheel of an economy that was already in motion. - CTR positions itself not as an ordinary governance token that merely sets a protocol's operating policy, but as a coordination asset that decides where capital flows, that is, one that selects the standard routes Bitcoin capital will travel again and again. The non-transferable xCTR that holders receive by staking CTR directs liquidity incentives through a vote-escrow model, gauges, and a dual treasury. Notably, the same structure recurs at the level of individual applications such as Satsuma, and the design of the coordination asset is becoming the shared grammar of this economy. 📱 X Post 🌎 Full Article (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Investment/Comment] Can Hyperliquid’s Weekend Trading Predict Monday Opens for Korean Stocks? Written by Ponyo

Across 62 weekends, Hyperliquid’s Korean equity perps (Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Hyundai, EWY) matched Monday’s opening direction 45 times, or 73.8%, with Samsung standing out at 15 of 16 correct calls, though the sample remains too small to establish a reliable leading indicator.

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: : Crypto Card Payment Dashboard Is Now Live A single view into the entire crypto card payment market: total volume, transactions, users, and breakdowns by project, chain, currency, and card network. Dashboard by Heun, supported by PaymentScan 📱 Summary (X Post) 📊 Dashboard (Website) FP Website | Telegram (EN / KR) | X (EN / KR)

: : [Crypto/Comment] Morpho Midnight: DeFi’s Boring but Necessary Future Written by Rejamong

Morpho has introduced Midnight, a fixed-rate, fixed-maturity lending protocol. As DeFi comes to look less like a crypto-native invention and more like traditional finance, is that a step backward, or an inevitable evolution?

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