Crypto APAC GTM Playbook: Navigating the Asian Landscape APAC (Asia Pacific) is a diverse and complex region, with each country characterised by its own language (sometimes overlapping), culture, and social norms. Navigating the landscape requires local knowledge, cultural sensitivity, and tailored localisation strategies. From China's stringent bans to the more established regulatory frameworks in Japan and Singapore, success in the APAC region hinges on embracing local culture and communication platforms like WeChat and Line. Strategic partnerships with key regional KOLs and grassroots communities are essential to authentically amplify the project’s vision and foster better engagement through local media and events. This guide breaks down APAC into key regions, starting with a write-up of each market and strategies including media outlets, KOLs, VCs, and key events. The flow for project founders: identify local media to amplify upcoming catalysts, work with KOLs or local agencies to craft important narratives and simultaneously build mindshare, raise from local funds for strategic value-add, partner with CEXes (web3 wallets) and host grassroots events to connect with users. - - - - - - - - 1. 🇨🇳 China • Focus: Speculation, Metrics • Messaging Apps: WeChat, Telegram, Weibo • Top Platforms: Binance, GMGN • Key Strategies: > Work with strong KOLs to amplify catalysts and news > Use Binance Square Chinese media for distribution > Promote via WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, and Discord (via VPN) > Tap into speculative culture with memes, DeFi, and PVP narratives Despite regulatory challenges and clampdowns, China remains influential in the crypto space through offshore activities. This is because China is where the money is at —> most of the whales and retailers here are very degen and crypto native. Highly sought after market for both trading volume, TVL and user metrics. To maximise exposure, partner with a Chinese media to maximise exposure and work with good KOLs to amplify upcoming catalysts. Most if not all of the media outlets require payment in USD. Partnering with the likes of OKX and Binance wallet is good for retail exposure and cross-marketing. Also can opt to make use of Binance Square(social networking content platform) together with KOLs to amplify project updates and news. In China, people use a combination of Twitter, WeChat, Weibo, Telegram and Discord for communication and private crypto (trading) groups to share alpha and the latest projects. Keep in mind that most sites are still banned by the Chinese government, so users will need to use VPN. Users rely heavily on Chinese KOL and content creators for information, and read news portals to stay up to date with the latest news. Consumer dApps may want to explore marketing on other Chinese social media (apart from WeChat) such as Douyin (Chinese TikTok) and Xiaohongshu (lifestyle focused app). Chinese users are very PVP and highly speculative (fomo) because of the finance-driven culture, making money is the ultimate goal. Strong preference for memes and DeFi ponzi to ensure wealth effect. They are usually quite fast to things (BRC-20, ordinals, memes, bitcoin eth). Most of the biggest CEXes in the industry are from China, they care a lot about metrics (revenue, on-chain volume, user growth) bringing in new users (user adoption) before considering a listing. All require some sort of payment (tokens or stables) to list. With CEXs wallets becoming more popular, a popular strategy is also to partner with Web3 wallets (Binance, OKX, Bitget wallet) to increase mindshare and leverage it as targeted user acquisition. 拉盘 a) Media / marketing • Chinese and English: @WuBlockchain, @bwenews, @TechFlowPost, @ChainCatcher_, @Foresight_News, @PANewsCN • Chinese: @OdailyChina, @BlockBeatsAsia,, @ChainNewscom, @BiteyeCN b) Accelerators None c) KOL agencies • @iamyourchaos • @snow949494 • @EnHeng456 • @Cipher_Dance • @ShardingCapital d) Venture Funds • Legacy: @fenbushim, @ofrfund, @YoubiCapital, @QimingVC • Active: @waterdripfund, @genventurecap, @skyvisioncap, @Sky9Capital, @MetaWebVC, @CsquaredVC, @Mint_Ventures, @SevenXVentures, @JSquare_co / @DFG__Official, @iobc_capital e) KOLs • General: @phyrexni, @hebi555, @BTCdayu, @broleon, @wolfyxbt, @yuyue_chris • Trading: @brc20niubi, @0xSunNFT, @0xcryptowizard f) CEXes • T1: @binance • T2: @okx, @Bybit_Official • T3: @bitgetglobal, @Gate_io, @kucoincom, @HTX_Global, @MEXC_Official, @BingXOfficial g) Conferences None due to regulatory issues. Most of the biggest conferences will take place in Hong Kong anyway (China’s sandbox). Work with local local KOLs/agency to arrange smaller events/meetups

So far we have: • Anthropic's Mythos coming to nuke us all in DeFi • SpaceX liquidity vacuum IPO this week • Some people screaming that AI bubble is popping • Crypto founders dumping tokens and calling it "exploiting" • Celebrities and trading cards once again being tokenised as useless tokens • Ponzification of Bitcoin • Quantum coming to break everything

Crypto VC observations Many Asian VCs either closing down or unable to raise new funds letting employees go / employees left for a better future Meanwhile US funds aggressively hiring to expand their team and continue to raise fresh funds Other trends worth noting: • US companies captured over 70% of capital and 43.5% of deals in Q1 2026 • AI eating both the talent and LP attention; some funds have even pivoted to investing solely in AI and/or robotics (quantum next?) • 2020-22 vintage funds are out of capital and expected to closed by 2026 • Token model broke, which is why LPs won't recommit funds. Projects cannot raise on some dreamy vision anymore. Low-float high-FDV launches underperformed, secondary markets punished projects, and the absence of DPI distributions made LPs cautious • Series B capital surged ~1,020% YoY while pre-seed eased back ~38% --> focus shifted to high-conviction mega-rounds • Capital concentrated into trading/exchange (perp dex) infra, stablecoins, RWA, prediction markets; no more fancy X to earn or muh shiny L1

List of accounts sharing interesting information/updates about everything in Singapore 🇸🇬 @notyetadegen @Usoppu @bowtiedcrake @0x_ZHUANG @Zac_labs @DRTnky @hoeflatoor @wassielawyer @abigbluebird @Chicky_Think Mostly sharing hot takes, experiences, and analysis on SG life, property (HDB/BTO, real estate as wealth), policies, governance, economy, society, and daily life

Project Darkbloom: Turning Idle Macs Into AI Infrastructure Every time an AI tool is used, the request travels through multiple layers of infrastructure before reaching the actual hardware doing the work. The flow usually goes across different layers of Data centers, cooling systems, GPU hardware and layers of margin → All baked into what you're paying. The @eigenlabs team calls this the Inference Tax. Darkbloom is their research initiative to address it. The premise: 100M Apple Silicon Macs already exist, already paid for, sitting idle most of the day. What if that compute could be organized into a usable inference network, with real privacy guarantees and better economics? - - - - - Why Apple Silicon Apple Silicon isn't just abundant, it is also technically well-suited for inference in ways that matter: • Unified memory: CPU and GPU share the same pool, eliminating discrete GPU bottlenecks • Model efficiency: Apple Silicon only processes the parts of a model actively needed per request, rather than the whole thing → Larger models run faster and cheaper • Power efficiency: ~30W to run a 60B model, versus multiples of that on data center GPUs • Marginal cost to a Mac owner: Primarily electricity, since hardware is already bought - - - - - The Hard Part: Making It Trustworthy One basic question is that If the prompt runs on a stranger's Mac, what stops them from reading it? Darkbloom's answer is to make snooping architecturally impossible, not just contractually prohibited: • Debuggers: Blocked at kernel level • Memory reads: Denied via Hardened Runtime • Binary tampering: Breaks code signature and then macOS refuses to run it • Nodes will be re-verified via 4-layer attestation every 5 minutes → Secure Enclave, Apple MDM, Apple-signed device certificates, continuous challenge-response The only way to break these protections is to physically reboot the machine, which immediately kills the process and wipes everything. Apple uses the same approach on their own Private Cloud Compute infrastructure. - - - - - What This Means for Eigen Darkbloom will not act as a standalone product, but as a proof of concept and signal about where Eigen is heading in the AI infrastructure stack. EigenLayer's core thesis has always been restoring trust to decentralized systems. Darkbloom extends that into AI compute, making inference verifiable, not just available. If it proves that 3rd party consumer hardware can be cryptographically trusted for sensitive workloads, it opens the door to a new class of decentralized AI infrastructure that doesn't rely on trusting a cloud provider or data center operator. This marks the beginning of Eigen playing within the privacy-as-infrastructure market. - - - - - Some Thoughts A few things worth keeping in mind as we went through the Darkbloom research paper: • The coordinator remains a trusted central layer for now; Team is transparent about this, but it's not eliminated yet • Security model currently assumes no unpatched macOS kernel vulnerabilities • Network traffic patterns can still reveal rough details about your request (e.g., how long it was, how complex) even if the content itself is hidden The real test is whether the privacy guarantees hold as more nodes join the network and whether people actually trust it enough to run sensitive workloads through it without incentives. Keyword: without incentives The biggest hurdle is trust; Getting someone comfortable enough to run their data and prompts through a stranger's machine. It's a hard sell and very few projects are even attempting to solve it seriously. Despite all that, the maths seem to work out quite nicely out when the team at @mementoresearch sized it out → Check out attached pages Disclosure: Project Darkbloom is a research initiative by Eigen Labs: Access here darkbloom.dev I am a $EIGEN holder

The newest player in the prediction market space, @42space, just announced its partnership with @Binance and integration into @BinanceWallet Long form research on what this means to the wider prediction market space below ↓ Most prediction markets today are still closer to static, casino-like betting interfaces than actual living markets that are closer to a truth oracle. The flow: You pick YES/NO → You enter → You wait → You pray you’re right Think this is great for event settlements, but falls short of a “trading-like experience” What if projects start to price in future events as a new asset class: “eventscoins” - - - - - The idea: • Each outcome becomes an Event Token • That token trades continuously before resolution and reprices as information, attention and capital move before the event ends • Positions can be entered or exited at any time • The market then settles objectively when the event concludes → Trade how belief evolves over time before the truth is settled Traditional PMs have a few constraints now: • Fragmented liquidity: YES/NO markets split depth and often rely on external MMs (liquidity is also often subsidized by VCs and market makers burning cash for user acquisition) • Niche markets can’t shine: Unique, long tail markets (where PMs should theoretically shine) have zero liquidity because they are too risky for market makers to touch • Yield farming treatment: Users opt for safer bets and treat it more like a yield payout, rather than doing actual forecasting • Capped payouts: Fixed odds flatten upside, so being early or more convicted does not get expressed that well • Weak payout expressiveness: Belief gets compressed into a one-dimensional bet Instead of fixed odds and passive waiting, 42 enables: • Dynamic, curve-based pricing • Unified flow across outcomes • Open-ended upside • Deterministic settlement In other words: they seem to be allowing users to trade events more like a launchpad which most crypto native users are more familiar with but settles like a prediction market → Building a launchpad for future events. Launchpads are good for speculation, getting in early to ride the upside and relies a lot on momentum but they are bad at fair end-states. While prediction markets on the other hand are better at objective outcomes, real-world anchoring (Bloomberg for truth events) and fair end-states but bad at rewarding timing/conviction properly and scaling long-tail markets without external liquidity support. 42 tries to merge the best of both worlds and in this way it opens up their addressable market to 2 distinct types of users: a) Traders who want to capture repricing, arbs, rotation, and flow b) Predictors who want to hold the correct outcome through settlement, but also want their early conviction / contrarian views to be rewarded fairly (i.e. not capped at the same $1 per-share payout) The interesting part is that on 42, you do not need to be right at final resolution to make money. If you just entered early, got a better cost basis, and sold into later demand, you can still realize PnL. If their product works, 42 could turn future events into something much closer to a real asset class that is tradable, continuously repriced, and objectively settled. That being said however there are real hurdles that they have to solve: • Beating the “just another PM” label → Main hurdle is educating users on the “eventcoin” concept early on and how 42 should be perceived as a real event asset launchpad • Will be a tough battle against the bigger competitors like Polymarket, Kalshi and Novig that raised multi millions and have a bigger warchest for UA. Tons of education needs to be put into differentiating 42 among its competitors, or even localising its strategy as well • There will be skepticism around curve mechanics and whether it solves the problem that existing PMs face Disclosures: Friend of the team, they got us to help amplify their narrative in an objective manner and what they are building!

Wrapped up a China trip, heres a chinamaxxing alpha if you are keen to visit You MUST visit China once in your life if you haven't: • Electrical vehicles (cars and motorbikes) everywhere (partly due to govt policies of mandating everyone to buy EVs) which make the road very quiet • Food delivery service directly right to your hotel room • China service is top tier at any restaurant/hotel/ malls • Cashless EVERYWHERE with no cashiers and just a QR code for payment • 24/7 spa where they have FREE FLOW food/drinks/fruits and nap pods and gaming rooms • Hyper efficient and modern service the moment you step off the plane (taxi locator service at airports/train stations) Download/setup everything before you land 1. VPN • China blocks Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, etc on local WiFi (if you use roaming/ eSIM its fine) • Good ones are SurfShark, LetsVPN and probably Mullvad 2. Connectivity - eSIM or Local Data • Your country's roaming plan or eSIM (cheap & reliable) • Airalo (ref.airalo.com/gwrW) or Holafly (unlimited data) • Getting a local sim with a local number could be worth it as well, apps like MeiTuan need a local number to use (or just ask your hotel for their number to plug into the app kek) 3. Payments - Fully Cashless society (Alipay WeChat) • China is 99% cashless. Street vendors, taxis, trains, restaurants - everything is QR code. • Alipay → Easiest for foreigners. Link your foreign Visa/Mastercard directly (no Chinese bank account needed). Has English translation • WeChat → Also works great now for payments (WeChat Pay) card linkage and English translations available • SET BOTH UP BEFORE YOU ARRIVE, everything relies on these 2 apps 4. Other must-have apps to download • Didi (usually accessible via WeChat/Alipay mini-program): China’s Uber • Meituan: A must have for food delivery, hotel deals, attraction tickets, restaurant bookings, local services. We even used this to ask someone to help us take a ticket to QUEUE for bubble tea (Ah Ma Handmade is alpha btw) stand in queue deliver to our hotel (directly to our hotel room) • Taobao: Amazon of China. Cheap everything (electronics, clothes, gadgets). Foreign card works via Alipay/WeChat • Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book): UGC goldmine to find PROPER alpha of places to visit, and good food to eat. Compared to Instagram/tiktok the recommendations here are much better • AMap Global: Best navigation app for foreigners • Douyin: Chinese TikTok 5. Getting Around • Trains and metro are insanely efficient and cheap. Use AMap to navigate • Tbh just use Didi everywhere as ride hailing in China are super cheap 6. Food & Exploration • Use Xiaohongshu for everything Meituan to get delivery • Use WeChat/Alipay to pay at every restaurant (even fancy ones) • Crime in China is obv super low (everything is traceable/trackable) • Avoid: Golden Week / major holidays (insane crowds and prices)

USDT 💳

Ethena updates its transparency page @ethena just announced an update to its USDe backing transparency dashboard, providing a detailed breakdown of reserves after planned diversification beyond traditional crypto basis trades DeFi lending is the largest allocation at roughly 48% ($2B ), with significant exposure to protocols like Aave, Morpho, Kamino, and Jupiter, while crypto basis now represents only about 1% app.ethena.fi/dashboards/bac…

Quite interesting how (fast) @ethena is building out actual product rails on @solana Just this week alone: • $ENA goes live on Solana via @sunrisedefi • @kamino launches a dedicated Ethena market • $USDE Growth Initiative goes live where users can run the USDe/USDG loop with auto-compounding, isolated risk, and liquidation protection around temporary depegs • @JupiterExchange Lend launches a dedicated Ethena market curated by @Bitwise on @0xfluid infra • People can now use $USDE to deposit, borrow against, and lever on Solana at scale Ethena has usually done p well with their GTM and distribution (i.e. integrating USDE into CEXes like @Bybit_Official) and then usage compounds after that and this integration gives them something very different from Ethereum which is probably faster retail flow Plug USDe directly into Solana’s money rails via Bitwise to get a more institution-friendly lending venue on Solana too If Ethena wants to become a real cross-chain dollar network, this week was a good example of what it can actually looks like in practice $ENA holder

Walrus just moved to fixed USD pricing for storage, paid in native tokies Price is now fixed in USD (but payable in $WAL) The amount of WAL payable adjusts automatically as price moves. This allows developers to budget with certainty. Why it matters: • At $0.023/GB/month, Walrus’s pricing is comparable to AWS S3, but with 4.5x built-in redundancy, no egress fees, cryptographic verifiability and programmable access control • Removes one of the last real objections for developers evaluating Walrus vs. traditional cloud options aka the inability to budget & forecast Whilst previous partnership with @AlliumLabs & @Tatum_io strengthen data partnerships, predictable pricing allows for the commercial story to be operationalised and even more credible Disclosure: working for my $WAL bags

Four months into 2026 and $WAL has been putting in work Key Highlights: • MemWal launched in beta → persistent memory for AI agents allowing agents to store and recall context across sessions on-chain • Allium, used by Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase, brought 65TB of institutional-grade blockchain data onto Walrus in Q1, → resulting in over 450 TB of data stored on Walrus to date • @Tatum_io @RealBlockPI live in April → Ethereum, Bitcoin, BSC datasets 1,000 nodes across 70 networks now feeding verifiable data directly. No more reconstructing chain data block by block What’s Next: Keen to see if team would release more product related announcements post-Sui Live (e.g., full launch of MemWal & maybe an extension for Slush Strategies?) Disclosure: working for my $WAL bags

INFINIT: The Execution Layer of DeFi - - - - - Most people who've spent time in DeFi know the routine A potential yield farming strategy sounds good, but before deploying comes the actual work → Bridging, swapping, approving each protocol interaction, manually calculating your LTV buffer, across three interfaces while the market moves By the time you're done, it’s 1 am and probably slightly rekt along the way. Whilst the capital and DeFi strategies currently exist, the key is figuring out how to get from intent to execution without it becoming a part-time job Today’s long form deep dives into what INFINIT is building towards and how it will be the execution layer of DeFi - - - - - The Problem With How DeFi Operates Today Each Dapp has its own risk parameters, different mechanics, different nuances → All are different in their own right and style Wallets like Rabby have made progress here, helping to aggregate protocol positions into a single interface, giving users a cleaner view of what they hold and where But it’s still an interface upgrade, not an execution upgrade. You can see everything in one place; yet execution is still manual. Current tools tried exploring different approaches via a cleaner UI for one Dapp, or an AI chatbot layered on top. But again, neither gets the original intent exactly from "I want to deploy capital across three protocols on two chains" to actually doing it cleanly - - - - - How INFINIT Is Addressing The Issue INFINIT builds a coordination layer underneath, where specialized agents (not a single generalist model) handle execution across the stack Agent Swarm • 30 specialized agents, each purpose-built per protocol - Aave, Pendle, Venus, Morpho, Euler, PancakeSwap, and more • Agents coordinate through multi-agent frameworks rather than one model trying to know everything Multi-LLM Router • Powered by Google Vertex AI Model Garden • Dynamic routing to different LLMs, matched to what the task actually needs Data Stream • 200 real-time on-chain and off-chain sources feeding agents live • Recommendations reflect current conditions, not cached / previously saved state - - - - - The Verifiability Piece One of the biggest concerns with AI-powered financial tools is hallucination. One wrong miscalculated LTV, wrong sequencing, bad liquidity assumptions results in actual rekt-ness (aka testing in prod) INFINIT's answer: AI interprets intent → deterministic compiled code executes • The AI handles reasoning and strategy sequencing • Then, Execution compiles it down to deterministic, auditable code to ensure no improvisation at the transaction level • Before anything runs, a full preview of every protocol, token and expected outcome is shown before signing Most AI finance tools skip this separation entirely and just hope the model behaves. - - - - - What It Looks Like Describe a strategy in plain language: • "Lend USDT to Venus, borrow BNB at 75% LTV" • “Delta-neutral position across Aave and Pendle" • "Optimise yield across these three chains" The Agent Swarm builds it, surfaces a full execution preview and the user approves the transaction.  There's also open strategy publishing where experts build and publish strategies, earn fees every time someone executes. $IN stakers sit in the middle, earning a share of protocol fees plus access to premium features - - - - - Personal Take A few considerations: • TVF crossed $31M in April, still early relative to the addressable market, with some activity likely incentivized due to current rewards program • The creator fee switch is not fully live yet so the flywheel hasn't really been stress-tested at scale • Cross-chain complexity means smart contract risk will still always present; non-custodial ≠ zero risk The real test is whether the execution layer holds up as TVF scales when the fee switch turns on incentivised activity truly results in organic usage Disclaimer: Smol INFINIT, thoughts are my own

The @virtuals_io team seems like its trying to build out a coordination layer for physical AI (robotics) Keeping my eye on solana:3iQL8BFS2vE7mww4ehAqQHAsbmRNCrPxizWAT2Zfyr9y and the Virtuals eco - - - - - 1. @eastworlds_io - embodied AI accelerator • Virtuals' expansion into physical AI • Full-scale facility, 30 @UnitreeRobotics humanoids, dedicated physical testing environments, teleoperation infra • A working facility designed to shorten the cycle from training to real-world deployment • 3 pillars: an accelerator Robots-as-a-service learning on real world data 2. @caspius_ai - the data supply • (unsure if this is by Virtuals team, just speculation below) • Caspius ($CAS) launched on Virtuals today where they pay people to record everyday tasks on an iPhone, build the largest egocentric manipulation dataset in the world, sell it to whoever's training embodied AI • If this project is linked to the team, they can link it to their 30 humanoids and a roster of robotics teams who need data to train • Caspius has a network of contributors generating that data 24/7 from millions of phones. Eastworlds is the demand. Caspius is the supply 3. @coinbase listing • VIRTUAL spot trading is also going live on Coinbase April 29 • Crypto narratives need 3 things to cook: a thesis, products that prove the thesis, and liquidity for us to express our thesis • VIRTUAL is now the underlying coordination token for an eco that owns: >> A large crowdsourced data network for physical AI (Caspius) >> A working robotics deployment business with real revenue (Eastworlds) >> The accelerator that recruits the next generation of robotics founders (Eastworlds) Flywheel: every robotics team that joins Eastworlds is a potential Caspius customer. Every Caspius dataset improvement makes Eastworlds-deployed robots better. Every Eastworlds deployment generates new data that competes with or complements Caspius. And every new robotics project on Virtuals needs VIRTUAL liquidity - - - - - caspius.ai/ eastworlds.io/ Smol $CAS and solana:3iQL8BFS2vE7mww4ehAqQHAsbmRNCrPxizWAT2Zfyr9y holder

The @WalrusProtocol team had its research paper accepted at ACM CSS 2026 (one of the "big four" academic security conferences), marking an important milestone as the network moves toward mass usage Paper objective was pretty much straightforward, trying to answer: Can decentralised storage compete on speed, reliability, and cost for modern applications? Key findings suggest progress in that direction: • Faster or equally as fast uploads and downloads • Lower storage overhead vs. older designs • Resilient architecture even if nodes rotate or go offline • Better fit for active workloads, not just passive archiving Quick primer on what's novel → Red Stuff, the encoding protocol behind Walrus: 1) Less storage overhead • Storing 1GB on Walrus costs the network ~4.5GB of capacity to keep it safe. On Filecoin / Arweave class designs the same 1GB needs ~25GB 2) Storage proofs that are robust in complex networks • Decentralised storage need a way to verify nodes actually hold the data they claim to hold, otherwise they are just farming rewards for storing nothing • Walrus tries to solve this where this verification works even when the network is laggy or messages arrive out of order Personal Thoughts Most storage networks were built for “store and forget” use cases. Walrus is aiming for something broader, powering data-heavy applications such as: • AI memory and agents • Websites and frontends • Media delivery • On-chain apps needing quick access to off-chain data Whilst Year 1 on mainnet focused on proving technical ability and foundation, Year 2 onwards pivots to proving long term growth and sustainability Disclosure: Smol $WAL holder

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Data layer for AI with a focus on trust and verifiability ELI5: • AI models are only as good as their training data • But, today’s pipelines are mostly black boxes → @PerleLabs aims to replace that with expert-verified data full onchain traceability That means: • Tasks are handled by real domain experts, not anonymous crowd workers • Every annotation is captured at creation with full lineage and checked for accuracy → allowing for contributors to build reputation on-chain over time Implication: Building the key foundational infrastructure for auditable & reliable AI data for different real-world use cases Perle Partner