On December 16, 2025, the SEC under President Trump concluded a four-year investigation into Aave Labs, a case dating back to 2021. Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced the closure on X, and soon after, a governance proposal urged AAVE holders to assert DAO control over the Aave brand, domains, social channels, and developer gateways.

On December 16, 2025, Tether and ego death capital co-led an $8 million strategic funding round for Speed1, a Lightning Network and stablecoin payments platform handling over $1.5 billion in annual volume and serving about 1.2 million users. The deal aims to expand Bitcoin-native USDT payment infrastructure and deepens Tether's broader push into Lightning-based commerce and multi-chain stablecoin use cases.

Polygon's proof-of-stake chain has seen daily transactions climb back to multi-year highs, driven mainly by Polymarket activity and peer-to-peer USDC payments. A recent upgrade increased Polygon's throughput by 30% to about 1,400 transactions per second, while the POL token continues to trade near its all-time low around $0.11 with open interest close to $35M. Despite losing most play-to-earn traffic from the 2021 bull market, the network now functions primarily as a settlement layer for prediction markets and stablecoin transfers.

Coinbase plans to list Theoriq (THQ) on December 17 for spot trading once liquidity requirements are fulfilled, following confirmations from KuCoin, Kraken and BingX. THQ, an AI-native liquidity and yield protocol token, is trading at $0.09 with a $12.44 million market cap and a $29.84 million 24-hour volume, while its price shows a -49.77% change.

On December 16, 2025, Solana announced a partnership with Project Eleven to develop and test quantum-resistant digital signatures on a Solana testnet. The initiative includes a full quantum-readiness assessment of wallets, validators, and transaction flows. Solana's founder Anatoly Yakovenko has previously cited a 50% probability of quantum attacks against Bitcoin in the coming years, while current threats remain theoretical.

According to data from Pipe, Solana's network absorbed a distributed denial-of-service attack peaking around 6 terabits per second this week without downtime or notable fee spikes, a performance later confirmed by co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. The event coincides with a more than 35% drop in active validators in 2025 and growing concentration of stake among large infrastructure providers, even as Solana processes roughly $1.6 trillion in annual trading volume and supports about $15 billion in stablecoins.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that a four-year SEC investigation into the Aave protocol has concluded without enforcement action, signaling a notable regulatory development for DeFi. Following the news, the AAVE token climbed 2.28% to $187.45 on December 16, 2025, with a market capitalization of $2.87 billion despite a weekly decline.

On December 16, 2025, a large holder exited six AI agent tokens, reducing a $23 million position to $2.58 million and realizing a $20.43 million (−88.77%) loss. The drawdown included steep declines across FAI, AIXBT, BOTTO, POLY, NFTXBT, and MAICRO. The broader AI token sector has remained weak despite a brief daily uptick in market cap.