Attention drives everything.
And near the end of the year, the entire world’s paying attention to the U.S. elections between Trump and Biden. There’s a narrative that’ll let you capitalize on this.
Here’s what we got today:
- Intro to PolitiFi. The guaranteed memecoin narrative.
- Friendchain 101. Friend.tech is launching its own chain.
- Around the web. Arbitrum approved the 225M ARB GameFi fund, Optimism launched fault proofs, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Aperture — the intersection of AI and Intents.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
PolitiFi: The Hottest Memecoin Narrative of 2024
 |
There’s one narrative that’s going to skyrocket in the upcoming months…
PolitiFi.
PolitiFi tokens are memecoins associated with political figures such as Donald Trump and Joe Biden (duh). To state the obvious, these coins aren’t issued by actual politicians. They’re simply memecoins.
Usually, I’m not a big fan of memecoins. I prefer tokens that have more “fundamental value.” But memecoins were the top narrative of the 2024 crypto market.
So, I can’t help but pay attention to PolitiFi. And there’s no harm in playing that narrative with a portion of your portfolio.
Memecoins, like the rest of crypto, is heavily narrative-driven.
It’s election year in the USA. So, US politics will dominate the news cycle as well as X (formerly Twitter).
Crypto is a game of attention. More attention = number goes up. Every OpenAI announcement used to pump AI tokens. Similarly, as different political figures gain attention, we can expect their tokens to pump:
- $TRUMP boomed after Donald Trump voices his support for crypto.
- $POOWEL pumped in anticipation of FOMC meetings.
- $BODEN is associated with Joe Biden.
There are many ways to gain exposure to this narrative.
One way is to find newly-launched and low market cap coins on DEXScreener and Pumpdotfun. You’ll see a ton of PolitiFi tokens ranging from MoonTrump to BidenInu. You can filter the tokens by looking at their liquidity, volume, and social media activity.
I kinda hate this game because you’re competing against bots who are sniping these tokens. What’s your edge?
Instead, I like to buy the leading coins of memecoin narratives before they gain full steam.
There are many different tokens that you can long. Coingecko lists 33 coins to choose from.
3 to pay attention to are $TRUMP, $BODEN, and $PEOPLE.
When it comes to tokens, liquidity is king. There are many different Trump-themed tokens. Newbies might invest in super new tokens. But fragmentation is bad for prices.
- $BODEN on Solana is the consensus Joe Biden token.
- $TRUMP on Ethereum is the consensus Donald Trump coin.
$PEOPLE is interesting
- It allows you to take a neutral position without picking one or the other.
- It is listed on Binance and Bybit. Other PolitiFi tokens aren’t listed on major exchanges.
- It has a good origin story. It was the token of the ConstitutionDAO. It was originally built to buy an original copy of the American Constitution. But when that project failed in its mission, it became a memecoin.
As the election draws closer, we’ll see PolitiFi pumping. However, it’ll probably be a sell-the-news event. So, once the election is here, I expect them to dump.
You guys remember the World Cup a few years ago? There were a number of “fan tokens” that pumped leading up to the World Cup. I see the same thing happening here.
Remember to sell in time if you’re interested in this.
On a side note, Polymarket is a different way to gain exposure to the election. You can just bet on a candidate winning.
Earn Up to 120% APR with Aperture’s New Staking Feature!
One of the biggest cornerstones for DeFi mass adoption is User Experience (UX). Newcomers often get overwhelmed with wallets, seed phrases, new chains, and bridging funds.
Aperture Finance aims to solve this with AI.
They’re building an intent-driven chatbot to facilitate your crypto transactions. (For example, you can type in their chatbot: “Claim all the airdrops I’m eligible for.” – Boom, done!)
This staking feature is their first step towards the end goal, and it’s already live.
By staking $APTR, you can get up to 120% APR (60% USDC + 60% $APTR) based on $APTR FDV.
Stakers will also earn an exclusive NFT, offering:
- Protocol fee discounts.
- Future revenue share mechanism.
- Early access to advanced features.
Aperture may perform NFT buy-backs, increasing its value and scarcity.
The team attended the GMVietnam Blockchain Week as a Bronze Sponsor where they introduced users to new updates and future partnerships (including Base and more).
I’ve said it already: Mass adoption will come from simplicity. It doesn’t matter if the tech is complex if normies can’t use it.
Aperture north star is to make your crypto life easier. And you can start supporting this journey while earning a high yield.
Count me in.
FriendTech has a New Best Friend
 Source: Friend.tech X |
Friend.tech has announced a new Layer 2. This was the first major breakout protocol on Base, so this is big news.
What is Friend.tech? It is a dApp you log into via your X account.
Inside, you can buy or sell ‘Keys’ – think of them as shares – of other users. This, in turn, gets you into an exclusive chat with other Keyholders. There’s no guarantee that the X user will engage tho.
The twist? These Keys/tokens are minted on a bonding curve that increases prices as more are created. So, if you get in early on a user before everyone else does, you may profit considerably.
You can follow the story of Friend.tech in the following chart. It tracks the transactions on Friend.tech:
 |
Base and Friend.tech launched on August 9th and 10th respectively. And Friend.tech immediately became the top dApp of the Base chain. At one point, 36.2% of daily transaction fees on Base came from Friend.tech.
As you can see in the chart, it grew massively until September 13th. That day, it handled 539,810 transactions.
Friend.tech had a points-based system. And a large chunk of that activity was driven by airdrop speculations. But eventually, people got tired of speculating. And Friend.tech activity started to decline.
You can also see a notable spike in activity around May time. This was largely driven by their v2 and token launch. But those releases didn’t do much for the dApp. So, their numbers kept declining following the launch.
At the same time, Base has continued to grow massively. Recently, they even overtook the Optimism mainnet in TVL.
But now, Friend.tech is moving away from Base. The details of the migration aren’t live yet.
Friendchain by Friend.tech
They are launching their own chain called Friendchain. It will be built in partnership with Conduit, a rollup-as-a-service provider. Conduit is already behind rollups such as Zora, Aevo, and Orderly.
$FRIEND will be used as the gas token for this new chain. And while this might increase the token’s utility, there are risks too.
All major L2s use $ETH as their gas token for a reason. They have to pay Ethereum in $ETH. If they accept other tokens as gas tokens, there’s a risk that the token price will fall below the level required to buy enough $ETH.
This seems to be a solvable problem tho. We’ll see how it plays out.
Why their own chain?
Their own chain will give Friend.tech greater control over their tech stack. It might allow them to make changes faster and provide a better user experience.
Personally, whenever someone moves to their own chain, it’s usually a way for them to make more money 🤷♂️.
Friend.tech has been performing quite poorly. Both the dApp numbers and the token price have been trending downwards. So, this L2 might be a pivot to save the application.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Optimism launched Stage 1 fault proofs on its mainnet. It enables direct withdrawals of $ETH and ERC-20 tokens without trusting anyone.
Arbitrum has approved the 225M ARB Gaming Catalyst Program. It’ll be used to attract GameFi projects to the chain.
F(x) Protocol launched $arUSD. It’s a tokenized version of rUSD EtherFi Stability Pool vaults.
Gnosis DAO will conduct a $30 million buyback of $GNO. It is almost ~5% of the Gnosis DAO treasury.
Fantom Foundation has released Sonic Governance Vote 2. It presents plans for $S token airdrops for Opera & Sonic users.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
zkSync released its airdrop checker for their new $ZK token. You can claim tokens from next week until January 3rd, 2025.
Nubit launched the Alpha Testnet Incentivized Campaign live. It is a Bitcoin-secured Data Availability layer.
Io.net announced the $IO token launch. Users who participated in the Ignition Rewards Program can claim between June 11th and June 18th.
Taiko launched Trailblazers, their rewards program. They’ll distribute 12 million TAIKO as part of the program.
Bracket launched its points program. The actions to earn points are divided into three categories: TVL incentives, Time incentives, and Social incentives.
Karak Network has expanded to BNB Chain. You can restake slisBNB or lisUSD on BNB and earn 1.5x Karak XP + 3x Lista Stardust + staking rewards.
🚀 New Launches
Symbiotic, a new restaking protocol, is live on Ethereum. You can earn points by depositing LSTs on the platform.
Telegram launched Telegram Stars. It’s a payment system for in-app purchases within Telegram.
JellySwap is live on Sei Network. It is an official friendly fork of Balancer. They’ve also started distributing rewards for staking and LPing.
📰 Industry News
Terraform Labs and former CEO Do Kwon have agreed to pay the SEC $4.5 billion in penalties. It still needs to be approved by the judge.
Uniswap acquired Crypto: The Game. The game won’t be affected in a significant manner. Season 3 of the game will come as usual.
Berachain launched their public testnet bArtio B2. It adds more utility for $BERA tokens.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Largest daily selling of BTC from miners.
- Daily dose of Alpha during these rough times.
- Rules for a healthy trading from Koroush.
- Market Behaviours pre FOMC.
- Find your niche, get good at it.
🧠 Dashboard Depot
Analyzing wallets can help you find gems.
Wallet Profiler, today’s Dune Dashboard, will help you analyze wallets. It is one of the comprehensive wallet analysis tools. And now you can use it for free.
It is divided into eight sections. Here are the types of information you’ll get from each section.
- General information such as active networks and interacted tokens.
- Information about wallet’s Spot trades on DEXes.
- Deposits/Withdrawals section.
- Perpetual section will cover trades on Perp DEXes.
- Info about a wallet’s interaction with smart contracts.
- All the Airdrops received for a wallet.
- Information about NFT trades.
- Onchain messages directly associated with a wallet.
If you want a longer guide to this dashboard, click here.
But if you have some experience with Dune, this dashboard might be the most comprehensive way to analyze a wallet. Click here to access it.
