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I used to play Poker for fun in college. Here’s the most valuable lesson I learned: you don’t have to play so many hands.
I remember too many hands because I was bored – even if they were bad ones! There’s something called the action bias: “people’s impulse to act even when there is no indication that doing so will benefit them.”
Sitting around doing nothing is uncomfortable. But sometimes it’s the best move. So, I learned to sit on my hands more and wait until I was dealt a better hand.
It makes me think about the Crypto market now. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: the market sucks for trading right now. The biggest risk right now is trying to trade when the market sucks, and getting chopped up.
However, there are a few times a year when things are on “easy mode.” For example, if Trump gets elected in a few months or the Fed lowers interest rates.
Playing now is like trying to make 8-2 off hand work, when you can wait until you get Pocket KKs.
Until then, me and the crew will be here to help keep ya up to date on the markets.
Here’s what we got today:
- Matic’s Introducing $POL. Is it bullish or bearish?
- Rising GambleFi Protocol. Shuffle wagered volume hit an all-time high.
- Around the web. $USDe can now be restaked on EigenLayer, Kamino Finance shared the vision for Kamino Lend v2, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Mantle — the MNT pools are now live on Pendle.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Analysis
The $POL Migration: Bullish or Bearish?
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Polygon is migrating from MATIC to POL. Let’s investigate if this is simply a rebrand, or a game-changer for this token.
Polygon’s Background: Polygon team is the original team that helped scale Ethereum. Before all the craze about L2s began, they launched a sidechain called Matic Network in 2017.
In 2021, Matic Network was rebranded as Polygon. But they kept the $MATIC as the gas token.
After the 2022 peak of $MATIC, the token has underperformed. It’s down 87.1% from the all-time high.
Below is the $MATIC chart since 2022 January.
They had a major catalyst yesterday: POL replaced MATIC as the native gas and staking token on the Polygon PoS sidechain (it was done on a 1:1 ratio).
Is this upgrade Bullish?
Will the $POL upgrade pump the prices? The short answer is NO. The long answer is complicated. There can be bullish effects in the long term.
The bearish case: $MATIC’s circulating supply has almost hit its total capped supply of 10 billion.
But the new $POL will have a 2% per year inflation over the next ten years. 2% inflation isn’t much in the grand scheme of things.
The biggest issue is they’ve lost a ton of market share to competitors in the past two years.
In 2017, Polygon was the only well-known L2 on Ethereum. Since 2021, there’s been a barrage of L2s. Now, L2beats lists 74 Ethereum L2s. There are another 81 upcoming projects as well.
Polygon PoS is a sidechain. They’re technically inferior to rollups like Arbitrum. So, people have flocked to the new chains. While Polygon PoS only has ~$887 million in TVL. Arbitrum has around ~$2.6 billion in TVL.
(Polygon has zk-rollups as well. But it hasn’t gotten traction. In terms of TVL, Polygon zkEVM is only 17th.)
So, successful competitors are a huge bearish force on the Polygon price.
The bullish case:
In the last cycle, Polygon has one of the best BD teams in crypto. In the last cycle, they were constantly getting attention for various partnerships such as the one with Reddit. If the 1% emission to community treasury is used properly, it’ll have massive bullish effects.
Also, $POL will have a major new demand source. Below is the list of $POL demand sinks.
- Similar to $BTC, it’ll be the native token of the Polygon chains.
- Like $ETH staking, $POL will be used for staking by Polygon PoS validators.
- $POL will be used to stake and validate multiple chains in the Polygon L2 ecosystem.
Polygon is trying to build an L2 ecosystem that’ll feel like a single chain. It’ll have unlimited scalability and unified liquidity. AggLayer is the key technology for this vision.
But the full version of AggLayer isn’t live yet. Once the new utility (validate multiple chains) for $POL is live, we should see a massive increase in the demand for $POL.
So that’s bullish for the price in the long term. But it’s useless to start aping now. You’ll probably bleed out.
If you have $MATIC, what should you do?
- In the case of staked MATIC on Ethereum, it’ll be automatically upgraded to POL. You don’t have to do anything – just sit back and chill.
- If you have regular MATIC on Ethereum or Polygon zkEVM, you’ll need to use Polygon Portal’s migration interface to upgrade the token.
- If the MATIC is on Polygon PoS. It’ll be automatically upgraded as well. But the Symbol on your wallet might continue to be MATIC. In that case, you’ll have to change it in wallet settings.
There’s no deadline for the migration. So you can take your time.
If you want a step-by-step guide for any of the above points, click here and read the Migration Guides.
If you want to learn more about $POL tokenomics, click here.
Layer 2s are a blood red ocean right now.
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By entering $MNT in Pendle’s pools, you can earn up to 15% APY and gain exposure to $COOK, the future governance token of mETH (Mantle LSP), the 4th largest ETH liquid staking derivative with over $1.2B in TVL.
How does it work? Swap your $MNT for YT-MNT or LP-MNT on Pendle and earn $COOK.
Just hop on Pendle and swap your MNT tokens for YT-MNT and LP-MNT.
This is especially interesting for holders who do not want to stake directly on the Mantle Rewards station.
Okay, Edgy, I can get those extra rewards, but why does $COOK matter?
- $COOK is backed by the Mantle Treasury, the largest treasury in the industry holding over $2.6B.
- Mantle has a history of being an early backer of successful protocols (Ondo, Ethena, and EigenLayer, for example).
- The stage is set for a massive $COOK airdrop. Will you leave money on the table?
You can also participate by holding mETH and getting their reward points (Powder). There are several options for this:
- Keep $mETH in your Mantle L2 wallet (10 Powder per $mETH).
- Use $mETH in L1 dApps like EigenLayer, Karak, and others (5 Powder per $mETH).
- Use L2 dApps like Pendle, INIT, Ethena, etc. (20 to 40 Powder per $mETH, depending on the dApp).
If you’re new to Mantle DeFi, you should focus on the 1st option and simply hold $mETH to get natural ETH yield + $COOK rewards.
We can’t deny that Mantle is Cooking the ecosystem. Will you join in?
Chart of the week
Shuffle.com: Trending Gambling Platform
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Since I’ve been in Crypto, I’ve always thought one of the best use cases for it would be gambling.
Why? Because gambling’s shady. And having everything onchain could build confidence. What if I told you there’s a protocol that has attracted $2B in bets in a last month? It’s Shuffle.
What’s Shuffle? It is a platform that hosts crypto gambling games. A wide variety of games are available, including slots, live casino, game shows, shuffle games, and table games.
$2B in the volume of wagered bets shows that Shuffle is performing very well within the crypto space. Let’s look at some of the likely reasons for this performance:
- Airdrop Farming. Shuffle has been running season two of SHFL. And wager volume is going to be an important factor in airdrop allocation. 90k $SHFL has already been allocated for airdrops.
- Influencer Marketing. It seems that Shuffle is using influencers to attract users to the platform. Recently, Australian MMA fighter Craig Jones placed a $100,000 bet on himself in his upcoming match.
- Shuffle VIP Program. Users can earn XP by using the platform. XP allows users to access various levels of the VIP program. You can see the program’s benefits here.
- $100k Weekly Race. Shuffle is conducting a reward program in which the top 20 positions on the weekly wagered bets table win a share of the prize pool. This probably incentivizes a lot of betting.
GambleFi is a major narrative in crypto. Rollbit is the market leader. $SHFL is emerging as a strong Beta play.
Shuffle has been live since 2023. $SHFL was launched in March of 2024. It has a few value drivers as well:
- SHFL can be used to gamble on Shuffle.
- SHFL holders have some VIP perks on the Shuffle platform.
- A portion of the revenue will be used to buy back and burn the token.
- Shuffle has announced a future “SHFL Perpetual Lottery.” This is likely going to be a value driver in the future.
Shuffle isn’t completely an onchain platform yet. But the prices don’t seem to care about the centralization level.
So, their recent performance should put it on your radar.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Ethena Labs, alongside EigenLayer and Ethena, has added $USDe to the assets that can be restaked on EigenLayer.
Aave and Sky (previously MakerDAO) launched Sky Aave Force. They’re doing stuff like integrating USDS and Savings USDS (sUSDS) on Aave V3 with native token rewards.
Kamino Finance has introduced the vision for Kamino Lend V2. It promises novel primitives, powerful automation, and next-gen security infrastructure.
Elixer, a modular network built for order book liquidity, released their testnet v3. It’s the final testnet before their mainnet release.
Gnosis Chain is discussing the alternatives for $DAI as a gas token on their chain. This is due to Maker’s transition from $DAI to more centralized USDS.
Threshold Network is discussing merging of $tBTC with $wBTC. This follows controversy regarding Justin Sun’s involvement with $wBTC.
Clearpool and Liquid Lab introduced 1DFX. They’re offering perpetual contracts on RWAs such as Gold (backed by crypto collateral) as their first product.
GMX is discussing GMX Liquidity Vaults (GLV). It’ll bundle together multiple GMX pools into a single vault.
Stacks, a BTC L2, has announced the Nakamoto Upgrade. It’ll increase the DeFi capacity in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
AO has launched ArFleet. It is a temporary storage solution built on Arweave and AO.
Frax Finance launched the Frax Name Service. It is a service similar to the Ethereum Name Service, but on Frax Ecosystem
AffineDeFi introduced ultraETHs. They claim to be the first L2 native LRT based on Symbiotic, an EigenLayer competitor.
Binance will be releasing their Solana Staking Product in late September. It’ll allow users to stake SOL tokens, unlock liquidity, and earn dynamic rewards.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Linea, an Ethereum L2, has said that LXP drop is coming. They’ve asked users to complete their Proof of Humanity (POH) before September 8.
Aevo is distributing 75,000 $ORDER tokens to users who are eligible for Orderly Network’s Aevo Airdrops.
Bubbly Finance has launched its Galxe & QuestN Points Campaign. However, it’ll only translate to rewards and points in the upcoming Bubble Points program.
Gearbox Protocol is retroactively airdropping $GEAR to users. PURE Margin users and Arbitrum Gearbox users are qualified.
Hamster Kombat has decided to launch their token on September 26th. It’ll distribute 60% of its tokens to players as airdrop.
Toki Finance has released its incentivized testnet. They’re building the first IBC Protocol connection between BNB Chain and Ethereum.
Start.cooking has airdropped $COOK to its active users. You have until October 1 to claim the token.
EigenLayer announced Season 2 Stakedrop. The claims will go live by September 17th.
🚀 New Launches
Predict.fun launched on Blast. It is a yield-bearing prediction market.
Nimbora has opened to the public. It is a Starknet-based dApp that allows users to earn and borrow cheaply on multiple L1 protocols.
Arbitrum has launched Stylus. It provides tools for developing smart contracts in any programming language that compiles down to WebAssembly (WASM).
Lombard Finance has introduced the public beta for LBTC on Ethereum. This token represents BTC and has been integrated into many apps, like Etherfi.
Pear Protocol has shipped its intent-based trading engine. Now, you can access the whole Binance order book onchain.
Matchain mainnet is live. They describe themselves as a decentralized and scalable AI chain.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Consensus is formed on AAVE from multiple whales.
- Santiago’s thesis on the first mover.
- Asia is leading the charge in crypto ownership.
- Steph with another great DeFi strategy.
- Vitalik on possible new ETH technology?
🤖 Degen Dapps
This is an experimental section that shares new (so, risky) protocols that are trending.
Ethervista is a new trending dApp on the Ethereum mainnet.
It’s a new type of DEX with nostalgic UI and a novel fee/LP mechanism. If you want to learn more about it, here’s the whitepaper.
Here’s why it’s trending.
- It had a fair launch.
- The $VISTA token is deflationary. This is bullish for price.
- It has many features like Flashlonas, Futures, and Lending.
- It is becoming the center of Ethereum memecoin activity. So, many are comparing it to Pumpdotfun. However, it isn’t a Pumpdotfun fork.
So, keep an eye on the protocol. But don’t ape blindly. Since it’s new, it’s risky as well.
Until next time,
Edgy “went from being a Poker Degen to a Crypto degen“
p.s. New thread just dropped
