Gate Research: FTSE Russell partners with Chainlink to bring data on-chain｜Donut Labs completes $15M funding round

Crypto Market Overview

• BTC (-2.49% | Current Price: 107,003 USDT): Bitcoin led the crypto market downturn, dipping to a low of $105,312, with a single-day drop exceeding 2.5%. The decline is likely driven by cautious market expectations regarding future rate cuts, suppressing demand for risk assets. Although some bullish signals exist, such as BTC outflows from centralized exchanges, overall market sentiment remains conservative, failing to support price gains. According to CryptoQuant, the current average wallet cost is $55,900, indicating most holders are still in profit, though profit-taking pressure is gradually building. Despite strong inflows, demand has not absorbed selling pressure, signaling a shift from greed to caution, and in some areas, local panic. Bitcoin’s supply distribution is tightening, approaching support levels established since the October 10 crash. A break below $107,000 could see BTC test $100,000.
• ETH (-4.36% | Current Price: 3,625 USDT): Compared with Bitcoin, Ethereum appears to be in a more fragile phase. Volatility remains low, but downward pressure is accumulating. ETH has failed to reclaim the 100-day moving average and is currently hovering above the 200-day MA (around $3,300). The 4-hour and daily charts show a high-volume decline, with price breaking below the lower Bollinger Band and continuing downward, while the 5-, 30-, and 100-day MAs are aligned bearishly. Ethereum has repeatedly tested the $3,600 level, a widely watched threshold; a break could trigger algorithmic selling or stop-loss orders, intensifying short-term declines. The $3,500–$3,300 range now represents the next key support zone.
• Altcoins: Compared with BTC and ETH, major altcoins have seen larger declines. In the past 24 hours, XRP fell 5.12% and SOL dropped 8.97%. The altcoin seasonality index has fallen to 25, down from last week, indicating continued weak market sentiment across altcoins.
• Macro: On November 3, the S&P 500 rose 0.17% to 6,851.97, the Dow Jones fell 0.48% to 47,336.68, and the Nasdaq gained 0.46% to 23,834.72. As of 3:00 AM (UTC) on November 4, spot gold is priced at $3,984/oz, down 0.42% over the past 24 hours.

Trending Tokens

DCR Decred (+68.28%, Market Cap: $525M)

According to Gate market data, DCR is currently priced at $30.79, up 68.28% in the past 24 hours. Decred is a blockchain project emphasizing community governance and decentralized decision-making, aiming to create a fairer and more sustainable crypto ecosystem. Its hybrid consensus combines Bitcoin-style Proof-of-Work (PoW) with Proof-of-Stake (PoS) voting, allowing holders to participate directly in network governance and protocol upgrades. Additionally, Decred features built-in privacy functions and a treasury system, supporting long-term community-driven development. On November 1, the privacy coin sector rose roughly 15%, with Decred leading the gains. The market sentiment was influenced by discussions on a potential EU privacy coin ban in 2027, combined with concerns about privacy risks in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Decred’s decentralized governance and optional privacy mechanisms make it a potential hedge against regulatory overreach. This rally reflects renewed market demand for financial anonymity, though stricter regulation or delistings on major exchanges could limit medium- to long-term upside.

UNITE Unite (+146.18%, Market Cap: $3.67M)

Gate data shows UNITE trading at $0.0006743, up 146.18% in 24 hours. Unite is a Web3 protocol focused on decentralized governance and community collaboration, providing efficient coordination and incentive mechanisms for projects, developers, and users. Through the governance token Unite, holders can participate in proposals, voting, and ecosystem incentive distribution, enabling a transparent, community-driven development model. On November 3, Unite proposed a governance measure to delay the token unlock schedule for team, investors, and advisors by 8 months, covering roughly 44.9% of total supply. The goal is to ease short-term selling pressure and strengthen long-term growth orientation. Currently, only 10% of the community allocation (30% of total supply) is unlocked, significantly reducing short-term supply pressure. The market viewed this as a sign of confidence from the team and investors, boosting the token price. If the November 5 Snapshot vote passes, the proposal could further reinforce positive market sentiment.

Braintrust BTRST (+78.96%, Market Cap: $47.88M)

Gate data reports BTRST at $0.2026, up 78.96% in 24 hours. Braintrust is a decentralized talent network platform connecting freelancers and enterprise clients via blockchain. Unlike traditional intermediaries, Braintrust is community-governed; users participate in platform decisions through BTRST tokens and share ecosystem growth rewards. This model helps enterprises access quality talent at lower costs while giving freelancers higher earnings and autonomy. On October 28, a widely circulated social media post suggested a potential partnership with Web3/AI crypto startup Zama, which previously raised $150M from Pantera and Multicoin. Although the partnership has not been formally confirmed, speculative buying on the “AI + Web3” narrative drove BTRST’s short-term surge. Overall, this rally is sentiment-driven, with fundamental support yet to be fully validated.

Alpha Insights

FTSE Russell Partners with Chainlink to Bring Index Data On-Chain

FTSE Russell announced a partnership with leading Web3 oracle provider Chainlink to bring its major global indices—including the Russell 1000, Russell 2000, and Russell 3000—on-chain. These indices serve as benchmark assets globally, with a combined $18 trillion in assets under management. FTSE Russell will leverage Chainlink’s DataLink institutional-grade data delivery service to distribute the data, ensuring 24/7 availability across multiple blockchains.

Through Chainlink DataLink, the index data will be published on-chain in an institutional-grade, verifiable, and always-available format, allowing DeFi applications, on-chain products, and traditional finance–blockchain hybrid products to access the same high-quality benchmarks. This initiative signals a shift of traditional financial benchmark data toward on-chain availability, enabling developers and institutions to directly use authoritative indices for tokenized assets, ETFs, and structured products, providing the same quality of data as traditional financial markets.

Balancer and Its Forks Attacked, Losing Over $120 Million

Balancer V2 smart contracts contained an access control vulnerability, which attackers exploited to drain funds across multiple chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Base. On-chain data estimates the total loss at approximately $128 million. The incident affected not only the original protocol but also multiple forks using the same codebase. In response, the Sonic ecosystem project Beets deployed a security mechanism, to be implemented in an upcoming network upgrade. Two attacker wallets (0xf19f, 0x0453) have been frozen pending further investigation.

Balancer is an Ethereum-based decentralized trading and asset management protocol, allowing users to create multi-asset pools with varying weights, enabling liquidity providers (LPs) to manage assets passively like an index fund while earning trading fees. Preliminary analysis indicates the attack exploited BPT price manipulation, distorting the price calculation and allowing attackers to profit from specific stablecoin pools in a single batch transaction. BAL token price fell over 5%, highlighting DeFi’s systemic risk from code sharing and forks, showing that even if the original protocol mitigates damage, forks can remain vulnerable.

Donut Labs Completes $15M Seed Round to Advance Crypto Trading Terminal

Donut Labs announced a $15 million seed funding round, with participation from BITKRAFT, Makers Fund, Sky9 Capital, Altos Ventures, and Hack VC, bringing the company’s total funding to $22 million. Donut Labs is a startup focused on combining AI with blockchain trading, developing the Donut Browser, an AI-driven “agent” browser capable of automating cryptocurrency trading, risk analysis, and on-chain strategy execution.

The funding aims to accelerate product development, expand AI model and browser agent capabilities, and enhance user experience and marketing. Donut Browser integrates wallets, DEX access, on-chain strategy execution, and trade automation, aiming to transform the browser into an AI-powered trading assistant. If successfully deployed, this approach could lower barriers for users participating in DeFi and on-chain trading, potentially expanding both transaction volumes and the user base.


References

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Investing, https://www.investing.com/currencies/xau-usd
• X, https://x.com/phalcon_xyz/status/1985302779263643915?s=46
• X, https://x.com/SonicLabs/status/1985401737096671549
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/11/03/donut-labs-raises-usd15m-seed-fnding-to-build-ai-powered-crypto-trading-browser
• Theblock, https://www.theblock.co/post/377357/ftse-russell-taps-chainlink-bring-russell-1000-other-index-data-onchain

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Disclaimer
Investing in cryptocurrency markets involves high risk. Users are advised to conduct their own research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products before making any investment decisions. Gate is not responsible for any losses or damages arising from such decisions.