Bankless co-founder David Hoffman said on Sept. 18 that the market is already in altcoin season and that the real move has arrived earlier than many expected. Odaily said Hoffman had fully exited ETH in May and rotated into VVV, NEAR, ZEC, HYPE, LIT, and other altcoins, adding that those tokens have since outperformed Ether.
The report said recent policy support from U.S. regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission helped lift the broader market. Bitcoin moved above $81,000, Ether climbed past $2,600, UNI jumped nearly 35% in a single day, and second-tier tokens such as ARB and NEAR rose more than 20%. Odaily argued that DeFi valuations are being repriced and used that backdrop to assemble an eight-token watchlist spanning on-chain perpetual DEXs, spot DEXs, lending, privacy coins, AI infrastructure, and meme launchpads.
HYPE: Hyperliquid’s token stays at the center of the perpetuals trade
Odaily described Hyperliquid as the clear leader in the on-chain perpetual DEX segment. Beyond consistently high trading volume, the article said HIP-3-related markets now account for a much larger share of activity on the platform than they did at the start of the year.
The report cited open interest of $16.36 billion on Hyperliquid, a record high. It also said HIP-3-based markets represented nearly 50% of perpetual trading volume on the platform in the summer of 2026, up from roughly 2% at the beginning of the year. TradeXYZ’s stock market was described as the dominant piece of that growth, including Nasdaq 100 index products and single-stock contracts.
On price action, HYPE broke above $94 on the previous evening and set another all-time high, while PURR briefly rose more than 20% in the same move. A month earlier, HYPE had been trading around $73. Odaily listed the current price at about $92.
The article said the main driver behind HYPE’s rise has been ongoing ecosystem buybacks. According to monitoring cited from HyperliquidNews, the cumulative amount used by the Hyperliquid assistance fund for native-token buybacks and burns has exceeded $1.3 billion, which Odaily called the largest ecosystem buyback program in crypto.
Odaily also wrote that U.S. President Donald Trump had previously mentioned Hyperliquid publicly, saying the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was pushing for the platform’s compliant entry into the U.S. market. The report added that the Hyperliquid Policy Center and the official team are steadily advancing efforts tied to the U.S. equities market, and said institutional demand for HYPE could continue to expand over time.
LIT: Lighter is framed as the No. 2 name in the same lane
Odaily presented Lighter as a rising on-chain perpetual DEX built around the idea of a compliant U.S. trading platform, with LIT as its platform token. In the article’s telling, Lighter has gradually become the second major name in the category.
The report pointed back to an Odaily article from July that laid out the token’s earlier rally case, when LIT was trading around $2.65. It now lists the token at about $5.2, roughly double that level.
Odaily said LIT’s price support comes from several sources. One is a buyback structure similar to HYPE’s. Another is community distribution. The token has a total supply of 1 billion, and 25% of that supply, or 250 million tokens, was allocated to an airdrop at TGE with no lock-up. The article argued that this distribution model, closely tied to the crypto community, helped Lighter win early market share.
The report also said Lighter has deep ties with Robinhood, giving it a degree of initiative in the stock-token meme pairing niche within the Robinhood Chain ecosystem. It added that a number of wrapped assets on launch platforms are sourced from derivatives contracts on Lighter.
Beyond those mechanics, Odaily said the market also prices LIT as a shadow proxy for Hyperliquid because of its position as the second-ranked project in the segment. As on-chain derivatives continue to attract capital, the article said LIT’s upside may even be more compelling than HYPE’s because of support from both trading volume and fee generation.
UNI: SEC innovation relief and fee-switch expectations move back into view
Among DEX tokens, Odaily singled out UNI as a key name to watch. The article said the heat around the Robinhood Chain ecosystem had already helped Uniswap, and that the SEC’s recent innovation exemption policy pushed the protocol directly into the market spotlight.
Odaily argued that the opening of a tokenized-equity window could directly benefit Uniswap’s business growth through models such as permissioned AMMs and reviewed TSVs. It noted that Uniswap v4 launched Permissioned Pools in July, with Superstate, Securitize, and Dowgo listed as partners. In the article’s view, that architecture update landed at the right point for a changing regulatory framework.
The report added that renewed expectations around the Uniswap fee switch have introduced a deflation angle to UNI’s move. Odaily said the rally is being supported by both policy developments and protocol fundamentals, and listed UNI at about $9.
PUMP: A buyback token tied to Solana’s meme launchpad leader
Odaily grouped PUMP with HYPE as another example of a buyback-driven token and said its repurchase scale is second only to HYPE. The article listed PUMP at roughly $0.004.
It said Pump.fun has repeatedly served as the first stop for capital entering altcoins during prior meme seasons. More recently, the platform introduced a stock-token issuance model that supports stock-token meme pairings. Against the backdrop of favorable SEC policy signals, Odaily said platform trading volume and token issuance could expand further.
At the same time, the report noted that PUMP still trades below its all-time high from last year. It argued that with altcoin-season sentiment often spilling into meme assets, and with the rest of the Solana ecosystem looking relatively weak, PUMP stands out as what it called the only real capital-attracting platform token in the Solana ecosystem.
MORPHO: Lending infrastructure with exposure to new ecosystem growth
Odaily described Morpho as an on-chain lending infrastructure layer. The article said that as Robinhood Chain activity has heated up, Morpho has provided strong support to lending within that ecosystem and built a deep connection there, showing a level of initiative that is uncommon in the sector when it comes to expanding into new ecosystems and extending business boundaries.
On design, the report said Morpho uses a hybrid model that combines peer-to-peer matching with pooled liquidity. Odaily argued that this gives the protocol relatively higher capital efficiency and more competitive borrowing rates than traditional lending protocols. It listed MORPHO at about $2.7.
The article also pointed to another tailwind: regulatory support for stablecoins and on-chain finance. As those frameworks become clearer, Odaily said Morpho, as a leading DeFi lending project, may have room to attract deeper institutional buying.
ZEC: Privacy coin strength becomes one of the sharpest altcoin stories
ZEC received some of the heaviest coverage in the piece. Odaily said it is the only privacy token in the current cycle to break above $1,000 and described its recent move as the strongest among altcoins.
The report said ZEC has gained more than 2,500% over the past year. Its intraday high reached $1,595, close to $1,600, and its market-cap ranking climbed to No. 8 in the crypto market. Odaily listed the current price at about $1,536.
In the article’s framing, privacy features may still face criticism in the post-Bitcoin era, but the privacy-token narrative around ZEC remains highly sought after. Odaily said institutional capital has backed the token as a compliant privacy asset and committed significant funds to it. It also wrote that, at current prices, the listed treasury companies tied to ZEC and HYPE may be the only two standout profit models left among altcoin treasury plays.
On ecosystem developments, the report said Fortitude, a mining company focused on Zcash, is advancing its listing process. It has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as chief executive and plans to list on Nasdaq. Odaily also said there have been notable projects in NFT and meme ecosystems linked to ZEC.
The article added one more market detail. Garret Jin, described in the report as the “10·11 insider whale” and long seen as ZEC’s biggest bear, disclosed holdings worth more than $300 million, or about 202,100 ZEC. Odaily said that revelation suggested his earlier ZEC short positions worth tens of millions of dollars may have been hedges.
NEAR: A shift from AI branding to a privacy narrative
Odaily said Near Protocol has long had a somewhat confusing market identity. During the AI boom, the project highlighted its founder’s AI credentials and followed up on its appearance as a partner at an Nvidia event. Now, with ZEC surging and product updates from the team, NEAR is being recast as a privacy-themed token.
On Sept. 18, NEAR Protocol said perpetual trading now has privacy protection enabled by default. Users can open positions with existing accounts, while others cannot identify who owns those positions. The feature is supported by Hyperliquid.
The article also cited Hoffman, who said NEAR is a generalized version of ZEC. In his view, ZEC encrypts money, while NEAR encrypts business activity. He argued that ZEC cannot cover many of the privacy needs that arise in daily life, while NEAR can extend privacy capabilities to a broader set of use cases.
Odaily said those factors together are helping repair growth expectations around the chain, lifting expectations for the NEAR token as well. The report listed NEAR at about $3.7.
VVV: AI privacy infrastructure on Base
VVV is the token tied to Venice AI. Odaily described the project as AI privacy infrastructure within the Base ecosystem and said it is one of the few crypto projects still building steadily through the cycle.
The article said VVV is used for network staking, governance, and payments for privacy-computing resources. The project is aimed at data privacy and model-access scenarios in the AI era, placing it squarely in the AI-plus-crypto theme that remains one of the market’s hottest narratives. Odaily listed the token at about $27.5.
The report also noted that VVV was the first altcoin Hoffman bought after exiting ETH. It said the token’s AI narrative and privacy-computing angle stand out in the current market, while rising valuations for AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI have also helped shape expectations around VVV’s use cases and market potential.
Market backdrop: glassnode says altcoin leverage is still below a risk threshold
In its closing section, Odaily pointed to three signals shaping the current mood: the Bankless founder’s public altcoin-season call, Bitcoin’s return above $80,000, and the SEC’s innovation exemption. Taken together, the article said, those signals have made the altcoin-season narrative much louder across the market.
It also cited data platform glassnode, which recently said altcoin leverage remains below a risk threshold. According to the report, the market is usually overheated when the gap between altcoin open-interest share and Bitcoin’s narrows to within a few percentage points. That condition has not appeared yet.
Odaily concluded that the eight tokens on its list cover a wide range of sectors, including on-chain perpetual DEXs, DEXs, privacy coins, lending, privacy-plus-AI chains, AI infrastructure, and meme launchpads. Their narratives and risk profiles differ, but the article said each still has some degree of potential long-term buying support. It also warned that even if altcoin season arrives as expected, sharp gains and total wipeouts will continue to coexist, making position sizing and risk control more important than token selection alone.