The market has been ranging for the past week.
And it might be slow for the next few months. Awesome, it’s a chance to plant your seeds.
- Build cashflow
- Fill in knowledge gaps
- Buy solid projects at a discount
Winning in the bull market happens months before the real action begins – it’s in the preparation.
Here’s what we got today:
- Points trading. A narrative primed for this cycle?
- Pyth Network. A data-driven analysis of Solana’s leading oracle.
- Around the Web. Fraxtal launch is near, Aevo launched a farming program, EigenDA integrated with Arbitrum Orbit, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Kelp DAO — a simple solution for restaking.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Trade Your Points in
We’re now in the “points” meta.
Protocols want to acquire users, and there’s no better way of doing that now than to tease an airdrop.
Refer people? Points.
Add liquidity? Points.
You’re hinting at free money plus adding in gamification.
Points aren’t that great compared to tokens for us. Actually, I’m starting to get a little annoyed keeping track of them.
However, it’s a great deal for the protocols.
- Far fewer regulatory risks. The SEC might come after your tokens. But before coming after points as well, Gary might think a little harder.
- There is increased flexibility in incentivizing user actions. You don’t even need to show which criteria will be used to award points.
- There is no need to worry about onchain risks. You don’t have to worry about getting hacked, maintaining liquidity, or even setting the emission schedule of the token.
Theoretically, devs can retain the points system until they have a product-market fit. At the same time, they are building a decentralized community of token holders, which might also lessen the legal headaches.
But what if you acquire a lot of points and need cash now? Or what if you want to speculate a bit and buy some points?
Enter Whales Market. This is a decentralized over-the-counter exchange. They allow users to trade “points.”
Trading happens in a peer-to-peer manner. There won’t be any liquidity pools or intermediaries. Sellers and buyers directly agree on the number of points and the price.
The trade is settled only after the actual tokens are issued. Once the tokens are issued, Whale Markets calculates how many tokens the points are worth.
You can see this now with people trying to sell EigenLayer and Friend.tech points.
Even if you’re not actively trading, this is an exciting piece of data. You can use it to help value a protocol before it goes live. .
Right now, the Whales Market is the only marketplace for token trading that I am aware of. We might see others in the future.
Check out Whales Market
(This is a referral link. It will give you a trading discount and help support us)
Use Kelp to Deposit in EigenLayer
EigenLayer has unpaused restaking today.
Restaking is the hottest narrative right now. Everyone is expecting cash floods from EigenLayer, LRTs, and AVSs. So, how can you get a piece of the action?
Enter Kelp DAO. This is your no-fuss solution for restaking. Simply deposit your LSTs into Kelp. In return, Kelp will give you rsETH, a Liquid Restaked Token.
You can now deposit the following LSTs: ETHx, sfrxETH, and stETH.
And your rsETH will get all the rewards: kelp miles, staking rewards, restaking rewards, and EigenLayer points.
Kelp miles is the points system of the Kelp DAO. Here are some tips for maximizing your Kelp points:
- Use their referral program.
- For every one rsETH that is minted, a user gets 100k bonus Kelp Miles.
- Five top daily restakers for each LST on Kelp get 200k Kelp Miles.
You don’t have to stash your rsETH away, you can use it productively in DeFi. Here are a few places to use it:
- Yield trading on Pendle.
- Curve $rsETH <> sfrxETH LP pool.
- Uniswap $rsETH <> ETHx LP pool.
As time goes on, the $rsETH utility will increase even more. If you mint it through the link below, you’ll get 20% extra Kelp Miles.
The Rise of Pyth Network
The above chart tracks the weekly number of transactions on the Pyth Network.
What is the Pyth Network? It’s an Oracle network that connects blockchains to external data and events in the real world. This might include price data, weather feeds, etc. Sort of like mailmen, but for blockchains.
The above chart tracks Pyth transactions on Solana and EVM chains since 2021. Transactions reached an all-time high of ~26M in August 2023. The network has demonstrated steady growth over the years.
The green bars stand for Solana transactions. Other colors are barely visible. It shows that the majority of Pyth transactions are on Solana.
ChainLink is the leading Oracle provider in DeFi. They have 54% of the TVL of all Oracles. But Pyth is completely dominating the Solana ecosystem. Let’s look at a chart comparing Pyth and ChainLink transactions on Solana:
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This shows the clear dominance of Pyth over ChainLink on Solana. For every 8.7 ChainLink transactions on Solana, Pyth is making 91.3.
But because no other chains are visible on the first chart, don’t assume that Pyth isn’t active outside of Solana. They are active on EVM chains as well. But those aren’t visible because of the dominance of SOL activity.
So, let’s exclude Solana transactions and look at the Pyth activity on EVM chains.
This shows the consistent growth of Pyth on EVM networks. They had virtually no EVM transactions in November of 2022. But by the beginning of 2024, they hit ~58k transactions.
The Pyth Network has established itself as the data pipe for Solana. And now they’ve started to grow on other chains as well.
Also, Binance Will List Pyth Network (PYTH) with Seed Tag Applied
Final Double Your DeFi is Here!
Double Your DeFi is a 5-week, comprehensive program designed to teach you my DeFi investing systems. The next cohort will commence in April 2024.
This will be our final time conducting these as we’ve decided to focus on other ventures afterward. So if you’ve been on the fence about joining, this is the last chance. It’s like seeing an old rock band on their final tour.
We’ve made a few improvements to give you the absolute most bang for the buck:
- An Exclusive Airdrop Masterclass. Patrick will conduct an A-Z of how to play airdrops. From discovering potential 5-figures airdrops to farming them with multiple wallets without risking being flagged as a Sybil attacker.
- Introducing the Airdrop Dashboard. The most complete, current, and step-by-step dashboard that has been designed to give you a way to track every airdrop you want to farm. 2024 is airdrop season, and we’re giving you the system to reap all the rewards with basically zero effort.
- *New Module* DeFi Yield Strategies. We’ll be diving into various DeFi yield opportunities. Starting from beginner-friendly ones and working our way up to more advanced strategies.
- *New Playbooks*. Taking profits and cutting losses, and trading psychology.
If you’re feeling unprepared for the bull market, this is like a hyperbolic time chamber that’ll get you up to speed.
We’re offering a $400 discount to the first 25 users. We have a few slots left at the discounted price, but it should be gone within the next few days.
Level Up Your DeFi Research →
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Mode Network has started the first phase of its points program. They’ve allocated 5.5% of the MODE supply for this campaign.
Aevo has announced details about its token, airdrop, and farming program. The farming Program will be centered around volumes, fees, and loyalty.
Stride Zone announced the launch of stTIA. They are airdropping 5% of the max supply of the STRD to those who’ll hold stTIA.
* This is a new section in the newsletter. Reply back if you like it.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Frax Finance is rumored to launch their L2, Fraxtal, in the coming few days.
Renzo Protocol introduced cross-chain restaking. Users will be able to restake natively from Arbitrum.
Conic Finance has shipped Conic v2. It introduces Liquidity Allocation Modules (LAM), which will make omnipool Liquidity Provisioning modular.
Dopex has decided to sunset its Single Staking Options Vault (SSOV). The core team will now focus on their flagship product, CLAMM.
Origin Protocol introduced $primeETH. It’ll be a Liquid Restaked Token that’ll accrue LST yield, and EigenLayer points.
Sturdy Finance has released Sturdy v2. Users can take on up to 10x leverage on LSTs and stable LP tokens.
ApeCoin DAO is voting on who will build ApeChain. Voting will end on Feb 15th. And currently, the Polygon team is leading.
📰 Industry News
EigenDA has integrated with Arbitrum Orbit. Rollup teams building Orbit chains can now use EigenDA for data availability.
Circle is issuing native $USDC on Celo. A proposal to enable users to pay for network gas fees on Celo using $USDC will be out soon.
Binance launched the Inscriptions Marketplace. Users will be able to mint, sell, & buy inscriptions from the marketplace.
Nayib Bukele, a well-known Bitcoin bull, won the re-election in El Salvador. He’s the guy who made Bitcoin legal tender in the country.
OPNX, the exchange started by Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, is shutting down. Customers are asked to withdraw their money by February 14.
🧠 Twitter Alpha
- Some insights on shorting.
- How to stake in six different ecosystems?
- Crypto won’t automatically make you rich.
- Activities to potentially qualify for Taiko airdrop.
- Chinese central bank is injecting liquidity into the system.
