Deribit’s options market for Solana’s SOL token has become active, with whales engaging in bearish bets as the token’s price continues to decline ahead of an impending multi-billion dollar unlock.

Last week, SOL block trades totaling $32.39 million in notional value crossed the tape on Deribit, representing nearly 25% of the total options activity of $130.74 million. The remainder of the activity comprised screen trades, according to Amberdata. That’s the second-highest proportion of block trades to total activity on record.

A «block trade» in options refers to a significant, privately negotiated options transaction between two parties involving a large number of contracts. Such trades, typically associated with whale activity, are executed over-the-counter and outside the regular order book and then booked on the exchange, allowing for a minimal impact on the market prices.

Options are derivative contracts that give the purchaser the right but not the obligation to buy or sell the underlying asset, in this case, SOL, at a preset price on or before a specific date. A call option gives the right to buy, while a put option provides the right to sell. On Deribit, which accounts for over 85% of the global crypto options activity, one options contract represents 1 SOL.

Last week’s spike in SOL block trades featured a preference for put options, which traders use to hedge against or profit from a potential price slide.

«Nearly 80% of the block-trade volume was concentrated in put contracts. Compared to only 40% puts for BTC and 37.5% puts for ETH during the same timeframe,» Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, said.

The whale demand for put options comes as SOL’s outlook appears grim following the 46% price slide to $160 in just over five weeks. The activity on the Solana blockchain, which became a go-to-place for memecoin traders last year, peaked with the launch of the TRUMP token on Jan. 17, three days before Donald Trump was inaugurated as the President of the U.S.

Since then, the number of daily transactions on Solana and the cumulative daily volume on the Solana-based decentralized exchanges has declined significantly, according to data source Artemis. That has weakened the bullish case for SOL.

Plus, the impending SOL token unlock on Jan. 1 presents a significant headwind, per Deribit’s Asia Business Development Head Lin Chen.

«Solana (SOL) will have a major token unlock event on March 1, releasing 11.2 million SOL tokens, valued at approximately $2.07 billion. This represents 2.29% of the total supply. A significant portion of the unlock comes from the FTX estate and a foundation sale,» Chen said.

Chen explained that the large unlock could breed market volatility as it accounts for nearly 59% of SOL’s daily spot trading volume. Hence, its natural to see a lot of hedging flow in put options in anticipation of a potential extended SOL price slide.

«Many traders would also take this opportunity to long Vol[atility] to generate good yield,» Chen noted.

Bybit has returned to a 1:1 backing of client assets and has fully closed the “ether gap” it faced after an unprecedented $1.4 billion hack hit the exchange late Friday.

The exchange has received 446,870 ether (ETH), worth $1.23 billion at current prices, through loans, large deposits, and ether purchases in the past two days, on-chain tracking service Lookonchain said in an X post on Monday.

Address activity suggests more than $400 million were purchased through over-the-counter trading, with another $300 million brought directly from exchanges. Nearly $300 million were sought as loans; the rest are from addresses apparently belonging to crypto funds.

ETH prices rose upto 4% over the weekend amid the apparent buying activity, but are down 2% in the past 24 hours as sentiment isn’t fully lifted.

Meanwhile, Bybit said late Sunday that all deposit and withdrawal activity had “fully recovered to normal levels — with total deposits “slightly exceeding” withdrawals as on Saturday in a sign of market confidence.

Friday’s attack targeted one of Bybit’s offline “cold” wallets, which are typically considered secure due to their lack of internet connectivity, in a heist that allowed $1.4 billion in ETH to be withdrawn.

Hackers gained control by exploiting a sophisticated method involving a manipulated user interface (UI) and URL. This allowed the attackers to alter the smart contract logic, redirecting the funds to an unidentified address. The stolen assets were then split across multiple wallets and swapped on decentralized exchanges.

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT linked the hack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a state-sponsored hacking collective notorious for crypto thefts. Lazarus was behind several high-profile crypto attacks, including the $600 million Ronin Network hack in 2022, and a $230 million drain on Indian exchange WazirX in 2024.

On Friday, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was allegedly hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus group, which drained nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the exchange.

Following the hack, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and claiming to be a major ether (ETH) holder, wrote a post on X to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on whether he will “advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official.” Meanwhile, in an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that his team had also reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to see if it was something the network would consider, noting that such a decision should be based on what the network’s community wants.

Hayes’s post immediately provoked a fierce reaction from the Ethereum community, which was firm in its belief that it wouldn’t happen. Some even questioned whether the BitMEX founder was joking. CoinDesk reached out to Hayes over X to clarify his comments.

Ethereum members, like the core developer teams, are vastly against “rolling back” the network because it would override core elements of decentralization. If Buterin decided on his own that it would happen, then that would be seen as the end of Ethereum’s ethos, which heavily involves various developer teams and other community members when it comes to the health and state of the blockchain.

“Rolling back the chain would give ETH no purpose. What’s the point if you can just change rules,” said user @the_weso in a post on X.

Some outside the Ethereum community pointed to the 2016 DAO hack as an example when $60 million in ETH was stolen. The network went forward with a hard fork, splitting the old network into two, and the new chain continued on as Ethereum.

That hard fork was not a “rollback,” though; it was known as an “irregular state transition.” Ethereum technically can’t “roll back” the network because it relies on an account model, where accounts hold users’ ETH.

At the time of the hack, developers upgraded their nodes to a new client or software. Those who didn’t upgrade their nodes were still on the old chain, which became known as Ethereum Classic.

When the nodes upgraded to the new software, the stolen ETH could move from one Ethereum account address to the next.

“The ‘irregular state change’ that they implemented at the time of the DAO hard fork was this: they airlifted all the ETH in the DAO smart contracts out to a refund contract that would send you 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens you sent in,” wrote Laura Shin of Unchained in a post on X.

Read more: Arthur Hayes Floats the Idea of Rolling Back Ethereum Network to Negate $1.4B Bybit Hack, Drawing Community Ire