Quant and Midnight Rally as Crypto Markets Show Divergent Trends

Quant’s rally followed a September 24 announcement from The Clearing House, which selected the company to power its On-Chain Money Initiative. This network aims to settle tokenized commercial-bank deposits by 2027, connecting with established infrastructure like RTP and CHIPS. Meanwhile, Midnight climbed 96.5% to $0.04988 after enabling permissionless smart contract deployment on its mainnet, allowing developers to bypass mandatory security reviews on testing networks.

Contrasting these gains, Lighter suffered the week’s steepest decline as Robinhood’s new U.S. perpetual-futures offering, developed alongside Bitstamp, altered market expectations for derivatives platforms. Further downward pressure hit Ethena, which dropped 14.7% ahead of a significant overhaul to its investor vesting schedule. Data from Unlocks suggests that approximately 1.41 billion ENA tokens are set for accelerated release, though some of these holdings will remain under the foundation’s control. Zcash also retreated 14.4% to $1,313.37, with market analysts noting that current valuations must account for a larger circulating supply compared to the asset's historical launch-era metrics.