🔎10 catalysts to watch this week

A compilation of crypto catalysts, airdrop strategies and alpha articles

Dec 15, 2025

Vechain is the largest blockchain that rewards real-world impact. Explore Vechain’s new staking mechanism here.

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

10 crypto events to watch this week
A must-use crypto security tool
Some great crypto reads

Let’s dive in👇

Crypto catalysts to watch this week

Lighter TGE - Lighter seems likely to conduct its airdrop on Dec. 29, as the odds for this airdrop date skyrocketed from 10% to 44% on Polymarket
Jupiter’s JupUSD - Jupiter’s new stablecoin built in collaboration with Ethena will launch this week on Solana
Coinbase and Base’s major announcements - Coinbase and Base are confirmed to make a major announcement on Dec 17, respectively Dec. 18. Coinbase is expected to announce the launch of its prediction markets
SEC’s crypto roundtable with Zcash founder - Zcash founder Zooko will speak at the SEC Roundtable about crypto privacy on Dec. 15
Synthetix’s new perps DEX - Synthetix will launch its perps DEX on Ethereum L1 on Dec. 17
INFINIT’s Prompt-to-DeFi - INFINIT will launch Prompt-to-DeFi, an AI-powered way to create DeFi strategies, on Dec. 18 for early users. To access it you need to sign up to the whitelist
Football.Fun ICO - Football Fun ICO on Legion at a $60M FDV starts on Dec. 16
Macro events - Bank of Japan is expected to hike rates this week + US CPI data will be released on Dec. 18 + Trump will allegedly interview finalists for the next FED chair this week
MegaETH’s mainnet launch - MegaETH will open its mainnet to app builders this week. User onboarding will happen a few weeks after that
ZRO token unlock - 6.79% of LayerZero’s ZRO token supply (worth $38.31M) will be unlocked on Dec. 20

Together with Vechain

VeChain Staking Got a Major Upgrade

Hayabusa upgrade, which introduces StarGate - the biggest shift in Vechain’s staking model since the network launched - has just gone live.

In short, StarGate turns passive staking into active network participation.

For the first time, VET delegators have the ability to influence consensus, with their choices directly contributing to network security.

Here’s how you can participate:

Download Vechain’s VeWorld wallet
Send your VET tokens to your VeWorld address from an exchange
Go to the ‘Earn’ section in VeWorld to access StarGate and mint a Delegator NFT
Delegate your Delegator NFT to a Validator and start earning

Block rewards will start being distributed on Dec. 9th.

StarGate unlocks a fully modernised staking ecosystem for VeChain, bringing real decentralization, improved tokenomics, and more power for VET delegators.

Thanks to it, VET delegators can now get more rewards and contribute to the network.

Check out Vechain’s new staking mechanism today!

🛠️Crypto tool of the week

It’s scary how easily you can get hacked in crypto.

A few days ago, Jill Gunter, the co-founder of Espresso, revealed how she lost $30k due to a $5 transaction completed 9 months ago.

In short, she gave an infinite USDC approval to a bridge smart contract to bridge $5 nine months ago. In the meantime, a vulnerability was discovered in the bridge smart contract she interacted with, allowing a hacker to steal $30k (all her USDC).

This could have been prevented if she had revoked her smart contract approvals.

You can do that with Rabby’s Approvals tool.

My advice is to do this every few weeks:

Install Rabby Wallet if you don’t already have it
Import your EVM wallets there
Click on “Approvals” inside Rabby and revoke all approvals

In this way, if a dApp you interacted with before ever gets exploited, you shouldn’t be affected, as the hacker won't likely have access to your funds.