Zama (ZAMA) Breaks Out 3.7% as Open Interest Jumps 8% to $16.5M
Zama (Zama) is trading at $0.04955, up 3.7% over the past 24 hours, while aggregate open interest across nine tracked venues climbed to $16.5M, an 8.1% increase in the same window. Trading volume also surged 90.5% to $31.1M, suggesting fresh capital, not just price drift, is driving the move.
News context: The Daily Hodl and other outlets reported that Zama has opened confidential access to existing DeFi yield venues, extending its privacy-focused tooling into established on-chain yield products.
Open interest builds unevenly across venues
Binance still commands the largest share of ZAMA open interest at 43.1% ($7.12M), up 8.2% over 24 hours but essentially flat over the last four hours (+0.8%). The faster money is showing up elsewhere: Bybit's open interest jumped 14.0% in 24 hours to $1.78M (10.8% share), MEXC added 13.1% to reach $991K (6.0% share), and Bitget grew 10.0% to $2.47M (15.0% share) — the three fastest-growing books by percentage. OKX, despite a 10.8% share, lagged with just a 1.9% 24h gain. Meanwhile Gate (-4.9%) and KuCoin (-2.6%) both saw open interest contract, hinting that capital rotated away from smaller books toward Bybit, Bitget and MEXC as the rally extended. Notably, total open interest slipped 0.4% in the most recent hour even as price held its gains, a sign the breakout's initial leverage surge has already cooled slightly.
Funding stays flat while takers lean more aggressively long than accounts
Funding is uniform at 0.005% per 8 hours across all ten venues tracked (Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, Gate, KuCoin, MEXC, Aster, Bitunix, WhiteBit), a baseline rate showing no sign of one-sided leverage overheating despite the price pop. Positioning data reveals a subtler divergence: 55.1% of accounts overall are net long, but on Binance specifically only 52.99% of accounts are long against 47.01% short, a 1.13 long/short ratio. Taker flow tells a different story: 56.9% of aggressive market-order volume is buy-side, outpacing the account-based long share. That gap indicates the marginal buyer pushing price higher right now is more aggressive than the average existing long position, consistent with fresh momentum buying rather than static longs simply riding the move.
Liquidations flipped from long-flush to short-squeeze
The 24-hour liquidation tape shows $37.4K wiped out in total, split $28.2K long versus $9.2K short, a roughly 75%/25% skew toward longs. But narrow the window to the past 12 hours and the picture reverses sharply: $7,844 in liquidations, with $7,149 (91%) coming from short positions and just $695 from longs. That sequencing matters for the breakout thesis: the earlier part of the session likely saw a shakeout that flushed leveraged longs, and the subsequent rally squeezed shorts caught leaning the wrong way, pushing price and open interest higher together into the close.
Verdict: the setup favors continuation as long as ZAMA holds above $0.0480 and aggregate open interest stays above $16M, a combination that keeps the taker-driven short-squeeze dynamic intact. The view is invalidated if price drops back under $0.0475 while open interest simultaneously falls below $15.5M, which would signal the squeeze has fully unwound and longs are exiting rather than shorts capitulating. Data as of 09:05 Beijing time on Sep 18, covering Binance, OKX, Bybit and other major venues.