This week's theme: trading is turning into a game. Sports bets with XP and card packs, competitions against AI agents, portfolios copied in one click. And the plumbing underneath is growing up.

9 early-stage projects, from a way to buy Waymo without the rest of Alphabet to private transfers on Bitcoin.

Lido unveiled Lido Lend, a lending market on a modified fork of Morpho Blue for passive holders who want yield without hidden risk. Launch is planned this quarter, pending a Lido DAO vote.

Each market is isolated and focused on blue-chip, price-correlated pairs like stETH/ETH, built for looping borrowers on one side and conservative lenders on the other. Deposit screening is meant to filter out hacked funds, and lenders get reliable exits even when a market is fully utilized. Lido points to $25B+ staked as stETH and six years without a major security incident.

Technical specs, market parameters and audit reports will be published before the governance votes.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Base is partnering with SMBC Nikko on an institutional DeFi gateway for Japan that lets regulated investors use onchain pools with compliance built in. It is targeted for mid-2027.

SMBC Nikko, one of Japan’s major brokerages, signed the MOU on October 2 with Nethermind, Uniswap Labs, Base and Nyx Foundation. SMBC Nikko handles regulators and compliance, Nethermind builds the tech and security, and Uniswap v4 hooks embed AML and counter-terrorism financing checks directly into liquidity pools. Both firms will keep Japan’s FSA updated as it is built.

SMBC Nikko set up a dedicated DeFi Technology Department in February. Base runs on infrastructure managed by Coinbase.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

GSR launched Hare, a desk that curates onchain credit vaults, built with Turtle. GSR commits $100M, mostly as a multi-year credit line that anchors the first deposits.

The first two vaults, coming soon, run on Aave: Hare USD Earn takes major dollar stablecoins, and Hare Gold Earn pays yield on Paxos’ tokenized gold, PAXG and PAXGy. Paxos Labs, Chainlink and Hypernative also back the launch. “Issuers get liquidity from day one, and allocators see GSR’s own capital in the same vaults as theirs,” says Hare CEO Connor Milner, formerly of Re7 Capital.

Vault curators now manage about $8.6B across 788 vaults, per Vaults.fyi data cited by CoinDesk.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Nine early-stage projects that hit our radar, real products rather than memecoins. The theme: trading is turning into a game, and the plumbing underneath is growing up. On one side, sports bets with XP and card packs, trading competitions against AI agents and token baskets you copy in one click. On the other, best-price routing, stablecoin yield for fintechs, risk scores for DeFi vaults and private transfers for Bitcoin. Follower counts are small on purpose, you are seeing these early. With a link to each.

1/ Daybreak (Tokenized Stocks)

You can buy Google, but you cannot buy Waymo. Daybreak splits a tokenized stock into partials that track each business segment, so you back only the part you believe in. One xStocks share mints a full set and a full set redeems the share, which keeps prices anchored. Launched October 1 on Solana with SpaceX and Alphabet, part of Alliance's ALL15 cohort.

2/ PolyStation (Social Betting)

Sports betting rebuilt as a social game. A live match screen with bets and mini-games, a feed where you can follow, copy or fade any Polymarket wallet, and XP, levels and daily card packs, so even a losing bet counts toward progress. The founder says invites to the private beta start rolling out this week, earliest supporters first.

3/ RIFT (Execution API)

Enter any swap, bridge or vault deposit and RIFT checks 20+ venues, from Uniswap to Across and NEAR Intents, then executes at the best quote in one click. It adds zero fees and only earns when its own liquidity beats every other venue. Relaunched as an onchain API on October 1, backed by Paradigm.

4/ [alloc] init (Bitcoin Privacy)

A cryptography research team working on what Bitcoin can do without a soft fork. Its Shielded Bitcoin paper describes Zcash-style private transfers on Bitcoin L1 using witness encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, and the announcement drew 1.5M views. Still research, not a product: a private transaction would cost roughly 4x a normal fee.

5/ Ground (Stablecoin Yield)

One API that lets neobanks, fintechs and payment companies put idle stablecoin balances to work in tokenized T-bills, credit funds and lending vaults, with a risk engine that can exit a position automatically when liquidity dries up. Founded by Superstate co-founder Reid Cuming, with a $3.6M pre-seed co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi.

6/ Philidor (DeFi Risk)

Independent risk scores for DeFi vaults on Aave, Morpho, Maple, Kamino and more: every vault gets a 0 to 10 score under an open methodology, plus live incident alerts. Its dashboard covers 900+ vaults and $57B+ in TVL, and it recently flagged a $6M vault drain on Base.

7/ Voltrade (Trading Competitions)

Runs trading competitions for venues like dYdX, Lighter and Derive: you keep trading where you already trade, Voltrade tracks the leaderboard and pays the prizes. Its site shows $900M+ in competition volume from 2.1K traders. Its newest game, Double Top, pits humans against AI agents in 3-minute Bitcoin rounds on the same chart.

8/ Indexify (Social Investing)

A self-custody app where creators build Stacks, onchain token baskets on Solana that followers buy in one click while the creator earns a small fee. The same wallet also trades Hyperliquid perps and tops up by card through MoonPay.

9/ ComfyFun (Agent Launchpad)

A token launchpad on 0G: one transaction, no bonding curve, and gas covered for accounts linked to X. Creators earn a fee on every trade and can route part of it to AI compute, with an agent marketplace coming next. Since going live on September 28 it has processed 7.7M 0G across 260+ launches.

The pattern this week: the front end of crypto is turning into a game. Bets come with XP, competitions put humans against AI, portfolios are copied in a click and launches cost nothing. Underneath, the plumbing gets more serious: best-price routing, yield rails for fintechs, independent risk scores and private transfers for Bitcoin. These are early-stage projects, several pre-token, in beta or still in research, so higher upside comes with higher risk. Do your own research, nothing here is financial advice.

Which one are you watching?

In the last few days, both teased a token. The market believes Predict fun's "Soon." (81.5% odds this year) more than Coplan's "exploring" at Token2049 (14%).

Here's the comparison. Polymarket does 7x the volume and 16x the fees, and out-earned even Hyperliquid in September. But Predict fun is growing: +36% vs August, Polymarket -9%.

Noah closed a $38M seed round after adding $16M from Endeit Capital, FJ Labs, LocalGlobe and Felix Capital, on top of the $22M it raised in June 2025.

The London startup connects stablecoins to local payment rails, so businesses can send money across borders in one click. It works in 150+ markets and 60+ currencies, and added 150+ customers this year, from global platforms and remittance firms to payroll providers. Revenue is up 538% year to date, growing 31% a month.

The money goes to new licenses, engineering and compliance hires, deeper local payment rails and a New York office for its US push.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Ledger launched Crypto Loan in Ledger Wallet: users post cbBTC or wBTC and borrow USDC or USDT without selling their bitcoin. It is rolling out to eligible users now.

Loans run on Morpho, with Yield.xyz building the integration. Users can simulate a loan, track the loan-to-value ratio, add collateral, repay or borrow more, and every key action needs confirmation on the Ledger signer. Ledger signers can now also connect to Morpho directly, without a browser extension or software wallet.

Ledger says it secures nearly 30% of retail-held bitcoin. Morpho already powers Coinbase’s bitcoin-backed loans, with $1.4B outstanding as of September 22.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Jito’s JTX plans a mobile app this fall, Jito Foundation President Brian Smith told The Block. Tokenized stocks and ETFs ship within two weeks, perps maybe this winter.

JTX launched in July as a self-custodial spot exchange on Solana, trading cbBTC, SOL, HYPE and memecoins. Smith pitches it as a “permissionless Robinhood” for longer hold times and competitive fees, saying rival apps feel like “walking into the floor of a casino.” The team is also building an onchain data discovery feature.

80% of JTX trading revenue goes to the Jito DAO for JTO buybacks and burns, 20% to referrers. For now the focus stays on spot rather than racing Hyperliquid in perps.

Partner Offers | Get Your Instant BTC Cashback | Your Gateway To Crypto | Arcus Private Whitelist

Fifteen new projects opened waitlists over the past two weeks. We put them all in our Waitlists Radar, with sign-up links, backers and risk notes.

Most of this round is about trading: AI desks and terminals (Arlo, Meridian, SmartX Terminal), funded and prop perps (Bungee, Northbook) and new prediction markets (functionSPACE, Omnibook). Outside trading, there is a post-quantum L1, a ZK compute network and a fantasy game built on real traders.

All of them are very early, and none has a token yet. Joining now usually means priority access at launch. Check each project’s verified or caution badge before you sign up.