April Crypto Assets Market Review | Gate Research Institute

Summary

• In April, cryptocurrency prices were greatly affected by the U.S. government's tariff policies. After the tariff policy was announced on April 2, BTC and ETH experienced a drop of over 10% in a short period, with a significant increase in the amount of liquidation for long contracts and a large outflow of funds from spot ETFs. However, as the tariff policies became more moderate and the U.S. government engaged in tariff negotiations with multiple countries, market confidence gradually recovered. By the end of April, BTC returned to the $90,000 mark, and the Fear and Greed Index rose from 18 to 72. Overall, April was a typical policy month, with the U.S. government's policies largely dictating the price movements of cryptocurrencies and global financial assets.

• While cryptocurrency prices are heavily affected by U.S. tariff policy, the fundamentals of major blockchain projects are not affected by the policy. Before and after the U.S. tariffs, the Solana and Ethereum networks maintained more than 90 million and 1 million transactions, respectively. In terms of lending and staking protocols, Aave, Lido, and Eigenlayer all saw growth in TVL. In terms of DEX, April is still the pattern of Uniswap and Raydium competing for supremacy. In terms of DEX perpetual contracts, Hyperliquid trading volume reached $6.3 billion, up 13.4% QoQ.

• In terms of industry dynamics, performance improvement remains an important issue for various public chains. In April, the Solana network successfully implemented the network upgrade proposal SIMD-0207, increasing the computational unit limit per block to 50 million, an approximate growth of 4%. The Sony-supported blockchain network Soneium announced collaborations with AltLayer and EigenLayer, reducing its blockchain transaction final confirmation time from the original 15 minutes to under 10 seconds.
• In terms of financing, the total amount of projects in April was 2.37 billion USD, significantly decreased from March. Ripple's acquisition of Hidden Road for 1.25 billion USD became the largest single financing event of the month. This move not only quickly fills Ripple's gaps in the institutional services sector but also enhances its systemic capabilities in compliance, liquidity, and settlement efficiency in the cryptocurrency market.

• In terms of security, the Web3 industry experienced a total of 18 security incidents in April, with cumulative losses amounting to $21.1 million. The DEX perpetual contract project KiloEx faced direct losses of $8.44 million this month due to a security incident. The blockchain ecosystem still has significant systemic risks in high-frequency trading, oracle dependencies, and protocol complexity.

• Looking ahead to May in the cryptocurrency industry, first, several high market capitalization token projects will face a large unlocking wave. The unlocking amount of PYTH at $403 million ranks first, accounting for 28.33% of its circulating market value, bringing potential selling pressure to the entire market. At the same time, May will also be a period of intensive activities in the Web3 ecosystem. Significant events in the cryptocurrency industry include the Ethereum Pectra upgrade on May 7; the SEC cryptocurrency roundtable on May 12; and the Accelerate 2025 summit on May 22. These events will reflect changes in industry trends, and investors are advised to stay highly vigilant.

Disclaimer Investing in the cryptocurrency market involves high risks. It is recommended that users conduct independent research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products being purchased before making any investment decisions. Gate.io does not bear any responsibility for losses or damages caused by such investment decisions.