LAB Notes #5
MAD WORLD - The Psychic Warfare Dept.
Greetings, gratitude, and good tidings, MAD family <3 Remember back at the end of September when we thought “man, this is really wild. This has to be peak…”? Well, it turns out that there was, and may still be, a lot more wild and crazy in the tank.
It seems that most of our readers most appreciate the broader macro perspectives and philosophical ponderances of these pages, so we are focusing mostly on these sections/perspectives this time around. Please forgive the length of this one…:
On the first day of October, the US Government officially and completely shut down… which ended up sustaining for 43 days (October 1 - November 12, 2025), making it the longest government shutdown in US history. At home in the cosmos, we also opened whole cases of worm cans to start the month out, with founder Jae Kwon unstaking a very large ATOM holding from the Cosmos Hub on the same day.
The ATOM went through the traditional 21-day unbonding period, before it was converted into the native tokens powering AtomOne, Jae’s minimal fork (ATONE - used for staking and governance, and PHOTON - used for transaction and IBC fees), along with various stablecoins (presumably to covert to more $ATONE/$PHOTON in the future… The LP has been too shallow for these massive swaps without creating catastrophic volatility.) to close out the month.
Kwon has, fairly credibly, accused large swaths of the “developer” community, and the whole of the Interchain Foundation (ICF), of conspiring against him, and of corrupting the ecosystem & the original vision of the cosmos… all while ruthlessly extracting, misusing funds, and etc., multiple times over the years… of course, it is worth mentioning, though, that he is also largely responsible for inviting all of these “serpents” in, and for allowing them (full) control.
Positively, we are seeing a lot of passion and meaningful activity reawaken across the Cosmos, and these huge moves led to some record-breaking trading sessions, unprecedented protocol revenue & OSMO burning, and various other positive byproducts… “only on Osmosis”. Unsurprisingly, we also saw new ATHs for $ATONE and $PHOTON.
After such a bombastic start, and with the privilege of reflection and retrospect, the writing was on the wall… The very next week, on October 10th, crypto experienced the largest and deepest single-day liquidation event in history… an event pretty definitively linked to Binance and Changpeng Zhao (colloquially known as CZ; the founder of Binance, who previously plead guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to maintain anti-money laundering procedures, which led to him serving 4 months in prison last year). Yes, the same CZ who, days later, received a prominent presidential pardon from US commander in chief Donald Trump… Yes, the same Trump who, when asked about this pardon in an exclusive interview at the start of this month, insisted he (still) doesn’t even know who CZ is, and knows nothing about Zhao or his case… Despite granting him a pardon, and despite strong evidence suggesting deep connections between the two… but these are stories/depths for another time. Suffice it to say: “Crime season” is in full swing…
For those who are unfamiliar with the events of 10.10, a quick recap (mirrored even by vanilla media sources now):
- The evidence very strongly indicates that Binance’s infrastructure failures and/or gross manipulations were the primary drivers of the historic crash, with Trump’s simultaneous Chinese tariff announcement serving more as convenient “coincidence”/cover than as an actual cause.
- A sophisticated exploit targeting a pricing flaw in Binance’s “Unified Account System” appears to have been the true catalyst, with attackers dumping $60-90 million of USDe on Binance to crash its price to $0.65 while it remained stable elsewhere at $0.90-$0.95
- Days before, on October 6, Binance announced changes to how it would price wrapped assets like wBETH and BNSOL, creating a four-day window (Oct 10-14) where thin order books could be exploited.
- In the 24-48 hours before October 10, over $10 billion moved into exchange wallets, with researchers linking several inflows to Binance-labeled addresses.
- Market maker Wintermute moved $700 million into Binance mere hours before the crash, including $200 million in Bitcoin, while major market makers like Wintermute and Jump were missing from Binance’s order books during the drop.
- A wallet identified as “BitcoinOG”, known for making massive profits at other historic events, deposited $30M USDC into Hyperliquid at 10:00 AM on October 10 (just before the tariff announcement) and opened massive leveraged short positions, taking a tidy profit of ~$1.1 billion.
- Binance faced “outages” and virtually all traders were locked out mid-crash. Coinbase and many other CEXs manifested cascading failures, with virtually all of the new “perp DEXs” also experiencing catastrophic failures.
- Hyperliquid and Osmosis stand proudly in a very unique and elite group of platforms/protocols/ecosystems that maintained 100% uptime and performed beautifully… across the board.
- Binance almost immediately agreed to pay $283m to its affected users, initially, then increased compensation an additional $300 million in stablecoins plus $100 million in low-interest loans… seemingly an admission of culpability.
- Many market participants learned for the first time about things like ADL and other protocol-level protections built in to virtually all exchanges, centralized or decentralized.
- We are now witnessing some big conversations about “consumer protections”: The crypto liquidation was so severe, many argue, because crypto markets lack conventional circuit breakers, backstops, and regulatory frameworks of traditional markets. Of course, exchange outages amplified gains (insiders) and losses (everyone else).
But make no mistake: this was not an isolated “crypto event”… this is just the biggest single-day consequence of an ever-expanding “everything bubble” with chilling historical parallels to 1929, 1973, 2000, and other tremendously volatile years.
- The S&P 500 had surged 34% in just 6 months before October 10, a move seen only 10 times since 1930. This came after a historic $4 trillion+ crash in April as markets (seemingly) responded to “Trump tariffs” (Policy-Induced Instability: Trump’s tariffs raised average tax on US imports to the highest level since the 1930s, with Goldman Sachs estimating companies and consumers will collectively pay 77% of tariffs).
- However, even with all of the conventional protections touted by the “traditional markets”, at 10:57 AM ET on October 10, the S&P 500 had erased $1.2 trillion in market capitalization within 40 minutes. This would take a whole article to diagram, but/and, it seems all but impossible that these events were caused by a Trump tweet.
- In October 2025, the Warren Buffett indicator (market cap divided by GDP) stood at 218%… the highest in history (compare to 140% before the dot-com crash). The rise of largely unregulated private credit and private equity (“shadow banking”) makes it much harder for the public, and even large swaths of the insiders, to assess risk.
- Most S&P gains in recent memory come from just four tech stocks, which are invested heavily in AI (Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, Broadcom), with Nvidia alone driving one-quarter of gains…a new rhyming stanza/echo/ripple of the radio-stock bubble before 1929, the nifty crash in the mid 1970s (nifty fifty), the tech-crash of the late 1990s (which, few seem to remember, Michael Saylor and his company MicroStrategy played a key role in kicking off), the housing crash leading to the financial crisis of 2008 (another most brutal in history…you are here)… etc.
We continue to witness historic valuation extremes across all risk assets, and virtually all assets now move more or less in tandem, as one big risk/momentum asset.
The October 2025 events weren’t isolated… they were a convergence point.
To close the month out, on October 29, 2025, The Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by another quarter point to 3.75%-4%, without key government economic data… marking the first time officials set monetary policy while lacking an entire month of crucial government employment figures in the modern era. The decision drew two dissents: one supporting a larger half-point cut, and another preferring to hold rates steady. This is the first time since 2019 that there were dueling dissents, and October 2025 will likely forever remain a partial blind spot in America’s official record.
We also believe that it is rather interesting that the aforementioned “day of ATONEment” took place, as promised, exactly as Cosmoverse hit full swing on 10.31, and as a staggering slew of macro events continued to swirl in to being… We also believe it’s fair and right to say that we are now firmly in uncharted territory.
Things are getting ever spicier in November… Which kicked off with a massive Balancer hack, the same day that several large leverage loops blew up: likely collateral damage (pun intended!) from 10.10, and the cancerous looped leverage that has been allowed to run amuck, just before… But/and this section is already breaking records for being the longest in history 
We want nothing more than to just resume writing love-notes about our wonderful little corner of the cosmos, but/and, we are now decidedly in a place where these huge macro events are basically the head of the dragon, dictating the fate of the micro which now simply expresses the movements as the tail.
Some of us have been sharing lots of this kind of broader/deeper data in the Alpha channel back at the LAB… along with some technical analysis by yours truly. Please visit the shout-outs section below in community news <3
This is by no means a comprehensive retrospective of all that has happened in the world, in the cosmos, or even in the LAB… but we believe it’s vital to do our best to understand where we are and why. Many seem keen to pretend that these events didn’t happen, or didn’t really matter, but in our opinion, we are now experiencing the aftermath.
Some very good/insightful research and posts for those who want to dive deeper in to the happenings and prevailing themes of October/Early November:
A-book vs B-book
Fantastic ADL primer from Doug Colkitt
Jeff’s ADL retrospective
Insider Whale Research
DeFi’s Ouroboros
Rekt News research on the leverage loops
Just look at this sentence
Now… back to our regularly scheduled programming 
SPACES, ARTS, & UNIVERSITY
Spaces:
Spaces were a bit more limited this month due to Zerk (and Martinezz!) preparing for, traveling to & from, and participating in & around, Cosmoverse. A bit more on this below, and much more next month… As always, the recorded spaces were/are top-notch, with several more high-profile and timely/pertinent sessions slated for November <3
October 1, 2025 - Crow with Knife
October 15, 2025 - Neutron
October 22, 20025 - Wolfswap
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October 21, 2025 - CIS AMA
Also, for those who are unaware… Zerk and Trendy have started publishing a really excellent, fast-moving, unfiltered, broad-view podcast from the trenches!! It’s called Exit Liquidity, and we can’t recommend it enough.
It’s such a gift to have our fearless leaders fearlessly leading in such magnanimous and wise ways <3
Arts:
Cudo was rather quiet through October, along with most of the community art scene… though a mysterious new logo did appear at the beginning of the month, and we have heard some super enthusiastic chatter about some epic real-world merch, swag, branding, and…
As usual, various scientists, and especially prominent members of the RedRubyRebels, Chalk&Clones, and RedPlanetApothecary have continued to churn out some pretty great content.
Uni:
I know that it may have seemed that we were right on the edge of some very big, even imminent, moves and resolutions as of the last edition, but/and with the… everything now going on… we are in much the same place within the University, the LAB, and with our big props. At least “on paper”. Behind the scenes? For now, we would like to start weaving in wisdom from Sun Tzu:
“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.”
Please check in with the “PHILOSOPHER’S STONE” below for the full lesson…
Now, that’s not to say that things aren’t positively humming along. The big raffles have continued, rewarding many deserving students with many great prizes and rewards, as is our way. The “MU Bonus Calendar” continues to gain traction. The University, and the LAB, remain the crown jewels of the entire NFT realm, in our humble (and honest) opinion.
COMMUNITY
Along with the subtle new logo that appeared on social media, we also recieved some preliminary (and slighlty cryptic) hints about what MS is all about… Mad Strategy has strategically invested in the maxBTC/wBTC Supervaults LP and the Mad Strategy Hyperliquid Vault continues to print… notably not only surviving, but thriving through the chaos diagrammed above. The vault managers are fired up, and are committed to bringing more glory, wealth, protection, and experience to the fam <3
As mentioned above, as all of the MAD events of October were unfolding, Zerker and Martinezz prepared for, and attended Cosmosverse… for listening and studying and watching and representing and networking and… and co-created a really lovely experience on the MAD & BAD NFT panel on DAY 2, along with frens Cortlandt (of Badkids) and Puff (of Expedition). It was a really nice discussion, and it was so cool to see all of these legends on stage at the same time
It also appears that the boys were armed with some next-level MERCH, and we have heard tales that some lucky attendies were gifted various cudo-made treasures…
Even with everything else going on, the team hosted a big, MAD October event in the form of the “Spooky Science” competition 
to celebrate the season, awarding 3 lovely/lucky participants (also legends) with a nice bag of OSMO (500 each!) (: Big congrats, and deep gratitude for spreading such immaculate vibes, Xenia, B3lts, and p1Xyz <3
Speaking of legends and vibes… Absolute beauties B3lts and Zirpu (along with some other, less conspicuous individuals and groups) keep sweeping grails off of the marketplace floors at fire-sale pricing… and did y’all catch this insane Martinezz mint?! Even Baguette acquired a MS this month <3
I fear that this edition is going to run completely out of control if we say all that we want to about the community here… but/and we hope that y’all never doubt that you are the beating heart of the LAB and of the world. We are already considering/drafting a special edition honoring and amplifying the voices and deeds of the core community… Through this turbulent time, the core has strengthened and deepened. We are so grateful to be here with all of you, and we can’t imagine this space without you 
Specifically… a breif, big, loud shout to honor Zirpu, B3lts, ChaoticKoala, Xenia, R5ZM2, Juadrn, P1Xyz, icono, MadColbear (and of course, Martinezz and the rest of the team) for consistently showing up, for being important public voices, for your continued deep experimentation, for keeping things real, and for being you <3 If your name belongs on this list and you don’t see it, please don’t take it personally… just poke us instead. There’s always more names to mention… This is just where the mind is now (:
We’re planning a deeper dive of Zirpu’s exploits as things develop, and as time allows… in the meantime, we highly recommend familiarizing yourself with BouncersHQ and their token $BNBOObs, and all of the amazing work he has been doing with his new experiments both on-chain and off (including some juicy MS/NFT giveaways!) <3
We also highly recommend checking out the latest Chalk&Clones experiments/retrospectives, and supporting all of the active science clubs in their noble pursuits.
More to follow!
PARTNERS & PERKS
Since the last edition, $CYPR launched: scientists that used Osmosis Pay, make sure to claim your allocation! It appears that most received the equivalent of ~20-30% cashback <3
Beyond this, there really isn’t all that much to share here that we haven’t pretty thoroughly diagrammed in previous publications…
- Scientists can still claim $INTO for another several weeks, though the allocation decay has now begun. “Claim today to unlock up to 50% of your initial tokens! Decay concludes December 2nd.”
- Fatty is still operating their “Fatty Airdrop platform”.
Please refer to the PARTNERS & PERKS section of the previous LAB NOTES for the most recent minutiae.
Ongoing biggies:
XO
Technically a November item, but/and, XO Market has officially crossed from alpha testnet to mainnet beta!. Most notably, the transition has switched the base asset on the platform to (real-world) USDC, which you can deposit from ETH, BNB, and/or BASE, with support for more L2s coming soon. The platform saw $3.8m in volume in it’s first 7 days of mainnet, with >21k users creating >150 conviction markets… “live, on-chain, and with real stakes behind every trade”. Protocol fees are removed during Beta.
The airdrop program also went live: 20,000 USDC, streamed over 10 days to the top 50 Alpha traders. Staying active and maintaining volume remains the name of the game. “Each leaderboard cycle resets with a fresh opportunity to climb, so keep an eye out.” It appears that there will be plenty more opportunities to earn points and other rewards for those who wish to continue participating, and helping the team to scale the platform.
“The next focus is on expanding creator tools, rolling out fee-sharing for traders and holders, and introducing liquidity automation to make seeding effortless.”
TOKI
Our dear friends at TOKI.FINANCE had a huge month, from real-world meetups - hosted by our fren, fellow Scientist, and recently appointed “Principal TOKIAN”, warlord -, to major UI/UX updates across the Mainnet Beta platform in the form of Nest v.0.1.0, to a huge presentation at Cosmoverse from Founder Daiki. TOKI also received massive shouts, support, and prominent features from Magmar, the Mad Scientists, and several other important parties in the ecosystem… just as the first regulated Japanese yen (JPY) stablecoin, JPYC launched last month. Sovereignty is crucial, and IBC is the only protocol that makes it possible and has a proven track record.
Also, technically November items, but/and… The whole TOKI Core team has been doing some serious globe trotting, delivering high profile presentations and events in various high profile locations across the world… just as The first-ever IBC connection between Optimism and BNBCHAIN is now live, enabling secure and seamless transfers of USDC, USDT, and ETH between the two networks.
The TOKI points program is still chugging along, with more and more big news pouring in throughout November, as the imminent ICO and airdrop approaches.
From November 10 - December 10, TOKI is hosting another lucrative campaign, entitled The TOKI Daily Rally, offering a “Daily Transfer Volume Ranking Bonus” and a “Daily Lottery Bonus”, on top of the persistent points program. The transfer points kickback rate has also been modified from 1 point per $1 transferred to 1 point per $2 transferred, with session attendance rewards also being halved.
If you still haven’t onboarded to TOKI, you are still early… but time is running out, and rewards are becoming more scarce. I feel that we have diagrammed the points program and earning potentials pretty extensively in previous editions and across the LAB, so I won’t repeat it all here… but/and, as always, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions and/or if you need any assistance. We remain super bullish on this amazing team, tech, and project <3
NFTs
The Crushes Mint occurred on October 6
20 WLs were raffled for the Sausagaze collection
ECOSYSTEM
Unsurprisingly, October was a rather big month for our home chain… just as it was for the whole Cosmos, for the whole of crypto, and for the world (partially discussed above).
As always, we recommend checking out the wonderful Osmosis highlights from October <3 tl;dr:
- Osmosis has dropped the ‘zone’ from their social handles. It’s now just @osmosis… much cleaner.
- Osmosis ranks at #2 overall by code commits for DEXs over the last 3 years!
- New record high for the monthly Token Burn (600k); 5.5 Million total OSMO burned!
- Massive activity surge in October, including the highest volume day on Osmosis in a year (fee burn increase of 40,386 OSMO).
- Osmosis just notched its 10th month processing over $100 million in Bitcoin trading volume.
- Osmosis co-founder Dev Ojha (@valardragon) publicly discussed bringing self-custodial and private DeFi across all chains with @LitProtocol
- Dev also interviewed on Professionally Curious, discussing SOON, ongoing developments from Osmosis, and why privacy will define the next era of crypto.
- Two experiments, one goal: Make Osmosis better than ever… Bitcoin on Osmosis; Privacy on @Polaris_App.
- Lovely guides on Osmosis and the eco/LAB
During the events of 10.10, the DEX (and Polaris) performed remarkably well, even under extreme (surprise) loads. It gave liquidity at prices far higher than any CEX, while Binance wicked ATOM, for example, down to ~$0, triggering excessive liquidations.
On 10.31, as the only venue for trading $ATONE (and $PHOTON and $LAB and… “Only on Osmosis”) The chain was clearing multi-hundred tx blocks continuously, with no one getting their txns delayed, at 1.2s blocks. Again, pretty unsurprisingly, these events were huge contributors in helping us to break some fresh records: Protorev 60k OSMO burned in 1 day! Osmosis as a chain, and as a liquidity execution layer, is purring away more efficiently than ever.
Another technical marvel, Osmosis has introduced some major new assets, most notably, bringing Native Zcash on to the decentralized Dex, while also promising ZCash-level privacy EVERYWHERE. This is thanks to the excellent work of the Osmosis devs in collaboration with the wonderful Bitfrost, which also powers native deposits assets like DOGE, SOL, BTC, XRP and more, directly to Osmosis. Pretty cool that the same team that is “unlocking the next wave of Hyperliquid spot markets” is also helping to unlock the next wave of Osmosis spot markets <3
It seems that many still don’t understand what an absolutely stunning achievement Polaris continues to become, even as the vision becomes more and more clear, and as the tool becomes more and more powerful. True freedom comes in the form of self custodial privacy for 25+ chains and 35000 assets!… Highly recommend checking out this link
Increasingly (and rightly so, imo) the only meta that matters: Protocol Revenue: “It’s what happens when a protocol works and people want to use it.”
We’ll talk a bit more about this next month, as this prop has now passed, causing the update to go live on-chain: v31 upgrade - now complete. tl;dr: A big, tokenomics-focused release that makes staking rewards smoother, taker fee buyback and burn automatic, and revenue collection more efficient.
We are planning a dive in to the happenings of Cosmoverse for the next edition. For now/October, the biggest broader Cosmos news (outside of the ATONE saga already visited above), is that RoboMcGobo is now the lead of ecosystem growth at the Cosmos Hub! We are all rather familiar with this individual at this point, and no matter how anyone feels about all of the other happenings, we have only heard resounding, public praise and excitement for this hire
ALPHA/ALCHEMY
Given the length and relative depth of the other sections, we are going to keep this one short in this edition… The “alpha” is above and below
The October/November transition has brought us to an absolutely critical inflection point… As deep uncertainty prevails. We are all trying to figure out what we are experiencing. The biggest, trillion dollar questions are all begging for answers… Is the cycle thesis holding? Does this mean that the cycle top is already in? Will we have an “Alt season”? Are we ready for freedom and sovereignty and privacy and integrity? Or are the masses going to continue vehemently supporting and acquiescing to the very parties that have turned this space in to such a sinister carnival?
Our conviction has only deepened… In Osmosis, Hyperliquid, and our MAD fam… along with our true friends and… The future that we want to see…
PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
Now, for our monthly philosophical ponderings, we believe it rather fitting to share some lessons about/from The Art of War, which we have been studying deeper again recently. We ask that you read between the lines, and reflect on how these lines could apply to the LAB and to yourselves. Not to get too weird with it, but as we’ve said more and more recently, this journey is feeling more and more like some kind of spiritual/symbolic battle/challenge/training ground… Everything is deeply interconnected, and everything matters <3
Remember, in the midst of chaos, there is also infinite opportunity…
Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory:
- One will win who knows when to fight, and when not to fight.
- One will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
- One will win whose army is animated by the same spirit, throughout all its ranks.
- One will win who, prepared, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
- One will win who has the capacity, and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
“When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of its momentum. When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing.”
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
“Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots.”
“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
A true leader leads by example, and not by force. We remain unspeakably proud of our leadership, and of our whole MAD family… and we believe that we will win. Keep growing, keep learning, keep believing… <3
*Everything is an Experiment*
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