[BizHanKook] This week’s top gainers reacted more to individual project product launches, network upgrades, and token supply adjustments rather than a broad recovery in market risk appetite. While Bitcoin’s dominance increased and the total market capitalization of altcoins decreased, buying interest selectively shifted toward payment, restaking, privacy, and AI infrastructure tokens. The fact that U.S. inflation data came in higher than expected, heightening interest rate jitters, also limited the overall rise of altcoins.
According to CoinMarketCap, a global cryptocurrency market data aggregator, Phybex recorded the highest weekly gain of 28.95% in the cryptocurrency market from 6:00 AM on November 6 to 6:00 AM on November 13. The current price of Phybex is 2,151 KRW, up 0.58% over the past 24 hours. Phybex aims to be a Web3 payment infrastructure that connects blockchain transactions to verifiable invoices and receipts.
Ether.fi ranked second with a weekly gain of 17.87%. Its current price is 833 KRW, having experienced a short-term correction with a 4.03% decline over the past 24 hours. Ether.fi is a non-custodial liquid restaking protocol designed to allow users to participate in Ethereum staking while maintaining control over their assets.
Knight Token rose 15.17% over the week, taking third place. Its current price is 60 KRW, down 4.56% in the last 24 hours. Knight is the token for the Midnight network, which is designed to selectively disclose only necessary information using zero-knowledge technology.
Kite placed fourth with a weekly gain of 9.22%. Its current price is 167 KRW, up 1.02% in the last 24 hours. Kite is a blockchain infrastructure that helps verify the identity and permissions of AI agents and executes automatic payments within pre-set limits.
Jupiter rose 8.94% over the week to rank fifth. Its current price is 353 KRW, up 2.31% in the last 24 hours. Jupiter is a decentralized exchange aggregator that compares various liquidity paths in the Solana ecosystem to support efficient token swaps.
The 6th ranked Just rose 4.62% for the week and is trading at 195 KRW. The 7th ranked Internet Computer rose 3.73% to 3,396 KRW. The 8th ranked Pyth Network rose 3.42% to 88 KRW, and the 9th ranked World Liberty Financial token rose 3.32% to 63 KRW. The 10th ranked Celestia is at 571 KRW, a weekly gain of 2.62%.
Phybex, Ether.fi, and Knight surge on partnerships, new products, and network news
Phybex combines payments with audit logs, allowing AI agents to find services, pay for them, and leave transaction proofs. On November 11, the project announced a strategic partnership with Pomeme, a token issuance platform on the BNB Chain. The partnership aims to connect Phybex’s agent execution infrastructure with Pomeme’s on-chain issuance ecosystem. A significant portion of the weekly surge occurred as trading volume rapidly increased prior to the announcement, making it difficult to attribute the entire rise solely to this news. However, the theme of combining AI agents with on-chain payments drove the price, with the late-week partnership announcement helping to sustain the buying pressure.
Regarding supply, it is important to note that the 12-month lock-up period for the team and investors ends on November 14, with linear vesting scheduled to begin. While estimates of the actual volume being unlocked vary by source, the potential increase in tradeable supply could heighten short-term volatility. Since this week’s rise was largely driven by trading concentration and thematic buying, the key will be whether demand holds up after the supply changes.
Although Ether.fi started in restaking, it is now expanding its business into an on-chain financial platform encompassing payment cards, loans, and USD-based investment products. This week, it launched a ‘Liquid Bold USD’ vault utilizing the credit protocol Capped and real-world asset manager Midas. This product allows users to deposit dollar assets and access yield strategies without managing the investment process themselves. While this new product boosted the weekly gain, Ether.fi’s liquid sector TVL (Total Value Locked) decreased during the same period. This is why the price rise cannot be attributed solely to actual fund inflows. The 4.03% decline in the last 24 hours can be seen as profit-taking after the market priced in expectations for the new product and a general market rebound.
The Knight token is used by holders to participate in network validation and governance, and it generates a separate non-transferable resource called Dust to execute transactions and smart contracts on Midnight. On November 6, Midnight applied the Ledger 9 upgrade to its mainnet. This upgrade focuses on making it easier to connect assets from other blockchains to privacy-focused applications by adding signature/hashing methods and contract-to-contract call functions widely used in the Ethereum ecosystem. While the network upgrade served as a concrete catalyst for the weekly gain, the 4.56% decline in the last 24 hours suggests that short-term buying sentiment has eased.
Kite delays supply burden, Jupiter expands product line... spread of rotational buying
Kite’s rise was influenced by a change in its token supply schedule. The Kite Foundation decided to delay the start of the unlock for team and investor tokens by one year, from November 2026 to November 2027, and changed the distribution cycle from monthly to quarterly. While the total issuance and allocation ratio remain the same, the supply burden has eased as the amount immediately available for the market has been pushed back. The ‘Agent Passport’ provided by Kite allows users to set spending limits and authorized services for AI, reducing the risks associated with unlimited automated payments.
On November 11, Jupiter unveiled four new products, including a token basket, yield-bearing vaults, asset discovery services, and portfolio management features. This move signals an expansion from a service that simply finds optimal swap paths to a comprehensive on-chain financial platform that provides asset discovery, management, and lending in one place. In particular, the inclusion of JUP stakers who meet certain conditions as initial users for the vault service linked token holding to product usage. The continuation of the upward trend until the last 24 hours also aligned with the timing of the product announcements.
Rankings 6 through 10 included Just, which provides TRON-based lending and stablecoin finance; Internet Computer, a general-purpose smart contract platform; and Pyth Network, which delivers external financial data to the blockchain. The World Liberty Financial token is a governance asset in the DeFi ecosystem, while Celestia is a modular data availability network that helps blockchains store and verify transaction data separately. This shows that the rebound was not limited to payments or AI, but rather diversified across DeFi, oracles, smart contract platforms, and modular infrastructure.
However, it is premature to view the rise of the top 10 tokens as a shift toward a full-blown bull market in the crypto space. During the same period, the tracked altcoin market cap decreased, and Bitcoin’s market dominance increased. Even on November 11, the total market capitalization remained flat, and only about one-third of all tokens saw a price increase. The Fear & Greed Index remained in the ‘Fear’ zone, which is far from a market environment where capital is spreading broadly across altcoins.
Ultimately, this week’s ranking was closer to selective rotational buying, where tokens with specific news reacted more strongly within a weak market. Phybex benefited from concentrated trading and the AI payment theme, complemented by a new partnership; Knight was supported by a mainnet upgrade; Kite eased supply concerns; and Jupiter and Ether.fi expanded their service offerings. On the other hand, some tokens like Ether.fi and Knight saw a pullback in the final day after double-digit weekly gains. It remains to be seen whether these individual announcements will lead to new medium-term trends, which will depend on whether they are followed by actual product usage, increased TVL, and shifts in token supply.
※ This article was co-written by BizHankook and MetaVX’s generative AI.