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“There is no off-season. It is called pre-season. You better use it to prepare yourself.” – John Brown
Bear markets and choppy markets are wars of attritions. The lack of action can wear you out, and bore you out of the markets. That’s what happened to me in 2018 and is one of my biggest regrets in this space.
What should you do?
• Take the time to revisit your long-term theses about Crypto.
• Find a sustainable pace. I’m seeing a lot of Crypto bros talking about locking in, and grinding 18 hours a day. It’s hard to grind when you’re not getting positive feedback loops. So, it’s ok to go on vacation and play some video games. You don’t want to burn out before the real action’s here.
• Find ways to have fun. Explore your curiosity. I’m taking this time to load up a burner wallet and trying out new dApps. It’s hard to beat someone who’s having fun.
Cya in Valhalla when the market shifts.
Btw, if you want to work with me as a Research Analyst, applications are due tmrw!
Here’s what we got today:
- All eyes on Tron. This is a bigger comeback that Robert Downey Jr.
- BET Protocol. The innovative prediction market from Drift.
- Around the web. Worldcoin announced a new partnership, Flashbots released the testnet of SUAVE, and more.
Today’s email is brought to you by Fluid — the base for the future financial system.
Here’s your Edge 🗡️!
Trends
TRON: The Hottest Ecosystem Right Now
It seems that few months, a new ecosystem is in the Spotlight.
Arbitrum had its moment, then Blast, followed by Base making waves for a few months. Its like we’re playing hot potato.
What if I told you that the hottest ecosystem isn’t a NEW chain? But rather one that has been around since 2017? It’s true – everyone’s paying attention to Tron now.
Here’s a look at the price action for the past 30 days.
$TRX has been on a steady rise since August 13. And in the last 7 days, it is up 16.4%. Even though it fell a bit yesterday, it’s already going back up.
Also, Kaito AI’s analysis shows that TRON matched Solana’s mindshare last week.
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Why the sudden resurgence? Let’s take a look.
#1 Metrics that matter
Money matters.
So, let’s check out a chart comparing the top five blockchains by revenue.
It tracks the percentage share of fees for each chain among the top five over the last 90 days.
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At the beginning of the 90-day period, TRON was pulling in just 44% of the revenue. Now, TRON accounts for a staggering 93% of the top five’s revenue.
Ethereum (the pink bars) has been the king of revenue for a long time. During March 2024, >73% of the revenue was generated by $ETH.
TRON just told $ETH to move over—there’s a new king collecting the revenue taxes!
And that’s not all — TRON’s metrics are nothing short of impressive:
- TRON ranks second in stablecoin supply, holding $59.75 billion.
- It boasts the highest number of token holders at 143.5 million.
- TRON is second in stablecoin transfer volume, with $20 billion.
- Over the last three months, TRON recorded 2.11 million stablecoin transfers, again placing it second.
- It is the leading chain ($160M for August) for fees as well.
- TRON has the second-highest Total Value Locked (TVL) among L1 chains, with $8.17 billion.
In short, TRON has been crushing it on all the key fundamentals.
#2 Memecoin Mania
Memes were the best-performing narrative of this cycle. But it wasn’t the hottest narrative on TRON. Not at least until recently.
The launch of Sun Pump, a competitor to Pump.fun, sparked a memecoin mania on TRON (Sun Pump makes it easy for users to launch and trade memecoins.)
The results have been explosive.
It launched on August 9th only. And in just two weeks, Sun Pump has:
- Created more than 24.9 K tokens.
- Generated over $1.5 M in revenue.
- Listed 499 tokens on Sunswap.
This wave of degen activity is a big reason why TRON is suddenly so hot.
So, what can we learn from this?
- Don’t have blindspots. I’ve seen a lot of people confused about Tron’s usage. Their stablecoins are used extensively in South America, Asia, and Africa.
- Older projects can resurge. Think we all have a bias for the new, shiny ecosystem. However, Tron shows that strong fundamentals can drive price. Also seeing some interesting price action on other older protocols like Aave.
How long can this pump last? Stay tuned.
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New Protocol
BET: The Next-Gen Prediction Market
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Disclosure: We have zero exposure to this protocol, and this piece isn’t sponsored. Your boy is writing about something he thinks is cool.
The next generation of the prediction market is here. This week, Drift Protocol released BET.
What are prediction markets? They allow people to place bets on any event in the world. You can bet on sports, politics, pop culture, and more. For example, you can bet on who’ll win the US Presidential election.
Polymarket is the leading crypto-based prediction market. It is probably the best consumer app on crypto. Here are some numbers.
- Trading volume of ~$319M in August alone.
- In 2024, the TVL grew from $9.6M to $102.3M.
- ~65K new accounts were created in July alone.
- The total size of all positions on Polymarket is ~81.5M.
And they did all of these without releasing a token or fancy points program. So, using Polymarket and waiting for that multi-million airdrop can be a valid strategy.
If so, why look at BET?
#1 It is the first prediction market on Solana.
Polymarket is based on Polygon PoS. Solana is a completely different market.
Solana’s daily active users stand at 1.9 million, dwarfing Polygon PoS’s ~607K. Furthermore, there’s probably less overlap between Solana and Polygon users, especially when compared to ETH L2s.
BET will be able to attract a new set of users to the prediction market.
#2 It is attached to Drift Protocol, a spot & perp trading market.
Prediction markets can be used to hedge investments. However, many traders aren’t used to the idea.
Drift Protocol is an established platform for spot and perp trading. Drift v2 already had 197,609 cumulative users.
Since BET is part of Drift UX, it’ll funnel traders to the prediction market.
Drift also helps them innovate prediction markets. The following points are specific examples.
#3 You can earn while betting.
The collateral you use for betting can keep on earning yield. For example, you can use PYUSD to bet on the US presidential election and at the same time, earn a yield on it.
You can have your cake and eat it too.
#4 You can bet with a lot more assets.
Polymarket only allows you to bet with $USDC. On BET, you can bet with any asset listed on Drift Protocol. Whether it’s SOL, JTO, or JUP, you can use them all as collateral.
#5 Drift has a token
Polymarket doesn’t have a token. So, you can’t easily get exposure to the platform. In the future, you can use $DRIFT to get exposure to the prediction market as well.
Now, BET from Drift isn’t as developed as Polymarket in some aspects.
- As of now, there are only three markets on BET.
- BET hasn’t integrated a dispute resolution mechanism.
- Drift only has markets with single Yes/No questions. Polymarket allows multiple Yes/No questions in one market.
- Also, neither can create markets permissionlessly.
BET isn’t a serious competitor for Polymarket yet. It is still in the Alpha stage.
However, we can see the team shipping a superior product very fast. This one is definitely on my radar.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Swell Network introduced $swBTC. It’s the first Bitcoin LRT to offer restaking yield from the Ethereum ecosystem.
Renzo Protocol introduced $ezSOL. It was a Liquid Restaking Project on Solana powered by Jito.
Arbitrum is voting on a new proposal to add $ARB utility. It includes the creation of a Liquid staked-ARB token (stARB).
StarkNet DAO is going to vote on introducing staking for $STRK holders. They’re hoping to launch staking by October.
Worldcoin has partnered with the Malaysian government’s R&D arm to integrate Worldcoin technology into the country’s digital infrastructure.
Babylon, a variation of restaking protocol using $BTC, is starting phase 1 of the $BTC staking mainnet launch.
Zeroway introduced the Multi Gas Refuel feature on Hyperlane. It’ll allow users to move assets across multiple networks from one interface
Solayer has introduced the Solana Restaking [endogenous AVS] standard on the mainnet. This will enable new forms of programs.
Paraswap, a DEX aggregator, is launching an intent-based trading protocol. The aim is to protect users from MEV attacks.
Stargate DAO is discussing changes to the staking system and ve-tokenomics. The proposal is for a simpler system without the lock.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Ignition launched its airdrop campaign with Mantle, PumpBTC, and Dodo. You can complete various onchain quests and earn rewards.
Zerion started its Points Drop campaign. You can earn the points by doing activities like sharing on social and holding Zerion NFTs.
Grass has asked users to link their preferred wallet to the Grass account. You won’t be able to change it after tomorrow.
Neon EVM, the EVM that enables devs to build & develop Ethereum-native dapps on Solana, has started its points program.
📰 Industry News
Flashbot launched the first public testnet for SUAVE. SUAVE is described as a decentralized network for fast and private compute.
Optimism has fallen back to using the permissioned system for fraud-proof after discovering vulnerabilities in the permissionless system.
Parcl‘s official website and Twitter account was hacked. The website frontend would’ve drained tokens from your wallet and displayed fake TX.
CoinDesk accused EigenLayer of pressurizing LRT protocols to airdrop tokens to EigenLayer employees. EigenLayer has released its response as well.
🚀 New Launches
Dumpydotfun is now in open beta. It is a protocol for shorting memecoins. Right now, they have 12 memecoins on the platform.
Base launched Basenames, a protocol similar to ENS. The Basenames are being sold via Dutch auction.
Gravity Alpha Mainnet is live. It’s the chain associated with Galxe, the leading platform for hosting “quests” in crypto.
Clearpool introduced Ozean. It aims to integrate RWAs in a compliant and user-friendly manner.
XNET, who are aiming to expand mobile coverage through DePIN mechanisms, went live officially.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- Great discussion on L2s by Vitalik.
- A note to all the future builders.
- Punk6529 notes are probably why we love web3.
- Daily WAGMI dose on crypto by Hoeem.
- The value of a token and what it does.
😂 Meme
