APIA, Samoa, October 13, 2026 – The cryptocurrency market continued to experience sector rotation from October 5 to 11. Shifting away from the earlier memecoin-driven, high-beta rally, capital clearly rotated toward privacy technology, AI applications, DeFi protocols, and public blockchain infrastructure. Projects with tangible fundamental catalysts, such as network upgrades and product launches, performed more prominently.
According to data from HTX, STRK led the weekly gainers list with a 116% surge, followed closely by MAGIC with a 102% gain. BAT, CHIP, and MET climbed 56%, 47%, and 45%, respectively, while BTW, CFX, and TIA also rounded out the top weekly performers. Departing from the earlier memecoin-led rally, this week’s price action was primarily driven by technical upgrades and product-related catalysts.
STRK Leads with a 116% Gain: Privacy and Quantum Security Emerge as Key Themes
STRK, the native token of Starknet, emerged as the market’s top-performing asset over the past week, soaring 116% amid heightened investor interest in privacy technology, network upgrades, and quantum security developments.
A key driver behind the recent rally is the progressive rollout of the STRK20 privacy framework. The framework introduces confidential balances, private transfers, and private swaps across ERC-20 assets. It allows wallets and DeFi applications to integrate these features, turning privacy from a standalone product feature into a native network capability.
On the technical front, Starknet completed its v0.14.4 mainnet upgrade this week, expanding capabilities to support larger transaction proofs. Meanwhile, public remarks by StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson regarding quantum security and potential Layer 1 solutions further catalyzed market sentiment.
Together, these fundamental milestones delivered a powerful, event-driven impulse for STRK. However, following such an aggressive short-term surge, the market continues to watch whether these technical advancements will translate into sustained protocol usage and measurable network activity.
MAGIC Soars 102%: Strategic Shift from On-Chain Gaming to AI and Creator Economy
MAGIC, the native token of the Treasure ecosystem, surged 102% this week, becoming the market’s second asset to more than double in price during the weekly session.
MAGIC initially gained market attention as a token associated with blockchain gaming and metaverse ecosystems. Treasure is now pivoting its business focus toward AI-native interactive IP and agent networks. Under the project’s latest positioning, MAGIC can be used by agents to pay for computing costs, access on-chain services, and participate in ecosystem governance.
On October 6, Treasure launched Higgsmart, a tool that enables meme creators to create tokens on Solana and verify creator identity. By expanding Treasure’s footprint beyond AI-driven interactive entertainment into creator infrastructure and token issuance, Higgsmart provided a strong fundamental catalyst for MAGIC’s price appreciation.
Four DeFi Tokens Make the Weekly Gainers List: BAT Leads with a 56% Gain
DeFi was the most heavily represented sector on this week’s gainers list, with BAT, CHIP, MET and BTW all posting gains. The four tokens span several areas, including browser finance, AI infrastructure financing, Solana liquidity, and BTCFi.
● BAT (+56%): BAT powers the advertising, rewards, and creator ecosystem across the Brave browser. Under its updated roadmap, the project is expanding beyond traditional “attention reward” mechanics into agent payments, a unified Brave Wallet, the BravePay stablecoin protocol, a Rewards Card, and a creator contribution protocol, signaling a strategic entry into on-chain payments and DeFi. While no single announcement directly catalyzed this week’s surge, the price action reflects a valuation recovery driven by capital rotation and renewed market focus on Brave’s payment infrastructure and user economy.
● CHIP (+47%): CHIP is the governance and utility token of USD.AI. The protocol leverages AI infrastructure, including GPUs, to provide on-chain financing for AI enterprises, building stablecoin and yield products around USDai and sUSDai. sUSDai was integrated into Binance Wallet DeFi in late September alongside a $300,000 CHIP rewards initiative. The ongoing campaign continued to boost protocol visibility and incentivize user participation throughout the week.
● MET (+45%): MET is the native token of the Solana-based liquidity protocol Meteora. On October 6, Meteora announced DLMM Pro, providing configurable initial liquidity, dynamic fee rates, and market-opening solutions for new token projects. The release solidifies Meteora’s market position across Solana token launches and liquidity management, serving as the primary product-driven catalyst for MET’s weekly gains.
● BTW (+40%): Bitway is developing a Bitcoin-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, native BTC lending mechanics, and on-chain strategies to integrate Bitcoin liquidity into DeFi, payments, and financing applications. BTW has appeared multiple times on HTX’s weekly gainers list. It rose another 40% this week and reached an all-time high on October 11, indicating that BTCFi continues to maintain strong trading interest as a DeFi sub-sector.
The four assets represent different DeFi use cases, suggesting that this week’s sector rally was not driven by a single type of protocol but by a combination of product launches, ecosystem incentives, and niche market narratives.
Public Blockchain Infrastructure Remains Active: CFX and TIA Surge 32% and 25%
Beyond privacy, AI, and specialized DeFi protocols, public blockchains and modular infrastructure networks experienced heightened market activity over the weekly period:
CFX (+32%): Conflux operates as a Layer 1 network based on a Tree-Graph structure, with an ecosystem spanning stablecoins, payments, RWAs, and DeFi. In the absence of a distinct protocol-specific fundamental catalyst, CFX’s price appreciation primarily reflects a phase of capital rotation back into established Layer 1 assets.
TIA (+25%): Celestia specializes in providing data availability services for rollups and app-specific chains. In a recently announced end-to-end test of Fibre, the project reported average throughput of 3.07 Tb/s in a test environment comprising 120 validator nodes, drawing further attention to high-performance data availability infrastructure. Some of the test parameters have not yet been implemented in the initial mainnet, so the reported performance still needs to be validated under actual operating environments.
Event-Driven Momentum Dominates as DeFi Emerges as Core Focus
Overall, price action across the HTX top gainers list for October 5–11 exhibited a distinct event-driven pattern. While momentum across select assets yielded substantial short-term returns, current valuations may already price in some expectations surrounding the relevant developments. The sustainability of these price trends will ultimately depend on fundamental performance metrics, specifically product adoption, network data, protocol revenue, and actual token demand.
HTX will continue to monitor evolving market narratives, core ecosystem developments, and emerging digital assets to provide users with richer market information and more trading options.
