As a professional translator, I am tired of the lack of innovation in the crypto market and would like to see more novel projects. This week, it was difficult to find investment-worthy protocols, but Sanctum and Elixir are worth paying attention to. The crypto market needs to attract the masses with new consumer applications like Fantasy Top and Polymarket. Farcaster and Lens are promising platforms that can reward early users through airdrops. The Gamefi sector is also gaining attention, with attractive token economies in games like Nyan Heroes, Metalcore, and Shards. While the crypto community is excited about these games, more effort is needed to attract mainstream users.
Title: In Search of Bull Market Catalysts: Crypto Consumer Apps
Author: IGNAS | DEFI RESEARCH
Source: Substack
Translation: Lynn, Mars Finance
I’m tired of seeing yet another L2 launch with a $5 billion FDV. I’m even more tired of seeing Uniswap, Aave, or Liquity forks on these new L2s. And I’m no longer excited about buying another infrastructure protocol (data availability, Oracle, blockchain-as-a-service, etc.) at a high valuation because these protocols don’t bring any value accrual to tokens. I want innovation! Where is the innovation?
In this current cycle, I have found some innovative ecosystems. But first, let’s take a look at this week’s farms:
This Week’s Airdrop Farms
It’s getting increasingly difficult to find protocols worth farming.
Blackwing: Still underdeveloped. It’s a modular blockchain that enables leveraged trading of long-tail assets (such as memecoins) without liquidation. Deposit LRT (weETH, rswETH, sUSDe, or Pendle assets, etc.) to earn Blackwing XP and LRT+Eigen points. Built on Initia, so we might get Initia airdrop too. Tip: Trade BXP to TESTNET BUSD and trade to earn more BXP, even if you’re not a whale (or if your PnL is negative, you’ll lose). Just raised $4.5 million from multiple VCs. → Invite-only. Use my permanent code here: ignas0
Sanctum: Best farm on Solana. That’s it. My favorite strategy (and pet) is INF LST because it 1) earns 9% APY and integrates well with Kamino and Marginfi for capital efficiency (leverage!). Speculation: The more pets (LST) you have, the higher your allocation. → Sign up with my referral here for a chance to win EXP rewards.
Elixir – Order book liquidity network raised $8 million at $800 million valuation from Crypto Hayes, Sui, Amber, etc. Elixir enables liquidity provision to order book exchanges and rewards, including Vertex, Bluefin, etc. The alchemy (potion) system is live, where you can lock up your ETH and mint elxETH for mysterious chests. Your ETH will be locked until the mainnet launch in August. → Join here through my invitation.
Looking for Bull Market Catalysts
In my previous blog post, I talked about the dull state of the market and shared potential external catalysts that could drive the market up. ETH ETFs and changes in the US government’s stance on cryptocurrencies will play a role, but more external catalysts like interest rate cuts will push the bull market further.
The Boring State of the Market and What’s Next #2
IGNAS | DEFI RESEARCH
· May 15
Read full article
However, I really enjoyed the positioning of the 2020-21 bull market. It was a perfect storm: governments had to print money due to Covid (external catalyst), and people were bored at home speculating on NFTs, farming 1000% DeFi yields, Metaverse, and playing games on Axie Infinity or other play-to-earn games. We had several innovations in the crypto space that kept us engaged.
But so far, this bull market has been a bit dull. I believe to turn this bull market into a supercycle, we need strong internal innovations (beyond the macro) to attract retail investors and keep them interested as we all see our gains on paper inflate. If we can’t spark the energy of internal crypto casinos, even crypto natives will opt to simply hold BTC, ETH, SOL because the risk/reward ratio makes no sense to trade on PvP markets.
Currently, we are just farming points or speculating on memecoins. Memecoins are fun, and there are signs that some new retail users have joined the market. But the opportunity to make money through memecoins is limited if you don’t have a special advantage. Influencers, market makers, and pump groups take advantage of naive traders.
Points are a dwindling airdrop trend, where the rich get richer because rewards usually depend on 1) the funds deposited and 2) the trading volume. You can earn more airdrops by creating multiple wallets and executing manual trades. But most airdrops are linear now, and LayerZero’s anti-whale effort may change the game. Oh, Ruslan…
So, what innovations in this cycle can reignite retail enthusiasm? You know I’m bullish on the re-collateralization narrative because it’s a playground for printing new tokens, and re-collateralization boosts ETH yields and demand. But re-collateralization is not an attractive story for retail. Few people truly understand or care about “generalized work tokens.” No, re-collateralization is a game for whales. Although the innovative AVS might attract more tech-savvy retail.
Re-collateralization Navigation: Eigenlayer Active Verification Services Guide
IGNAS | DEFI RESEARCH
· Jan 30
Read full article
BTCFi with Ordinals and Runes is my second favorite innovation/narrative in this cycle. I explained why in my previous posts.
Rune Protocol Launch Guide: Beyond Initial Hype
IGNAS | DEFI RESEARCH
· Apr 16
Read full article
But due to technical complexity and lack of clear value proposition, even tech-savvy Ethereum/Solana supporters are not very interested. Although there are interesting videos of Chinese grandmas trading BRC20.
No. We need something to revive our animal degenerate spirit and attract a large number of new retail users who can actually make money (unlike most memecoins). It’s hard to predict what NFT/P2E will look like in this cycle, but I’m betting on the new generation of consumer applications.
Signs of this phenomenon have already emerged.
Hot Consumer Apps
On May 7, four new social apps briefly entered the top 15 protocols by fees generated:
Fantasy Top
Friend Tech
Pumpdotfun
YOLO Game
“The user numbers are still small (none have DAUs above 20,000), but from a revenue perspective, their success represents a shift in crypto-native business models towards building proprietary distribution on the application layer.” – Excerpt from “Consumer Ecosystems” report by Our Network newsletter.
Honestly, I’m very skeptical about Blast L2 (backed by Paradigm) as it’s just another L2 that lets you farm points. And I don’t plan on depositing any ETH to earn points. But Fantasy Top got me to join Blast. Turns out, I don’t care that much about another L2. I care about applications on L2.
Fantasy Top can speculate on Twitter influencers. You can earn Blast Gold + FAN points or trade your hero cards. If you want to try Fantasy Top, join through my referral link: DefiIgnas. It’s a niche protocol that combines speculation with crypto Twitter. But just like how Facebook started as a platform for Harvard students and expanded to other Ivy League schools, Fantasy Top might expand its coverage to include famous Twitter or Instagram influencers. Elon Musk cards will be hot.
Growth outside the crypto circle is my expectation for this cycle. Which application is most likely to achieve this?
Friend Tech briefly succeeded in attracting OnlyFans girls, but they didn’t stay long. Friend Tech is currently at a crossroads of reshaping itself and launching another point program for its local L2.
Pumpdotfun is a great platform. Yes, I don’t like speculating on memecoins, but Pumpdotfun has found a good product-market fit in the current market.
YOLO Game is also primarily based on speculation, but one consumer app combines speculation and social elements better than others: Polymarket.
Polymarket Prediction Markets
Polymarket is a prediction market that allows trading binary event-driven options with settlement prices of $1 or $0. You can choose to exit your position before expiration. For example, you can bet on who will win the US presidential election or whether ETH will replace BTC by 2025.
I like it because it taps into the collective wisdom of crowds for real-time sentiment analysis. It helps to get a clearer understanding of world events. Vitalik has praised Polymarket multiple times.
During the ETH ETF approval speculation frenzy, Polymarket had around 2000 daily users. It’s still too few, but there is growth potential.Polymarket has just raised $70 million from Vitalik Buterin and Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm. I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch an airdrop soon.
There’s only one consumer app that I’m more optimistic about: Farcaster. Farcaster is a decentralized Twitter that has reportedly raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation!
Compared to other fundraisings in 2024, Eigenlayer raised $100 million, Optimism raised $89 million, and Berachain raised $69 million.
Farcaster is a 0 to 1 innovation in this cycle, combining the functionality provided by social media (Twitter) with the best features of cryptocurrency. It could become a super crypto app that combines social interaction with financial transactions like payments and trades.
That’s already impressive, so if X suddenly disappears, all Crypto Twitter users can immediately switch to Farcaster.
Join Farcaster through my referral link and get 50 WARP tokens for free.
In February, Farcaster saw a significant increase in user numbers when $DEGEN community tokens were airdropped to early users. Surprisingly, daily active users continued to grow and reached 59k.
Lens Protocol is another layer of decentralized social media with 19,000 daily users.
Although Lens has fewer users, it is actually the only network that stores user content and identity on-chain. Farcaster’s posts and interactions are off-chain (while user profiles are on-chain).
Lens unexpectedly announced a migration from Polygon PoS to zkSync, one of the ZK Stack chains. This is a significant win for zkSync and a loss for Polygon.
Which consumer apps do you still have high hopes for? I asked on X and received some interesting comments.
I’m optimistic about consumer apps because they innovate in user reward mechanisms and token economics, providing a solution to the low liquidity, high FDV problem that plagues this cycle.
The problem is that there are still too few popular consumer apps!
Furthermore, speculating on the growth of Farcaster or Lens may seem complicated, but one thing I know about cryptocurrency is that it always finds unique ways to reward early users.
As an early user of Farcaster, I received thousands of dollars worth of DEGEN airdrops. In fact, Farcaster has 47 “Scenecoins” (social memecoins) that you’ve probably never heard of.
Lens has its own memecoin, but I’m confident that Lens will eventually launch an airdrop of $LENS tokens. I’m less certain about Farcaster.
Your airdrop will depend on your level of engagement, so posting once or twice won’t bring you much profit. However, these platforms provide a way to escape the current “rich get richer” point system, where your airdrop depends on the size of your pockets.
Even on Fantasy Top or Polymarket, the rewards are more focused on elitism: if you’re smart enough, you can earn extra returns.
These consumer apps may have different token economics and can break free from the low liquidity, high FDV trap. Friend tech airdropped 100% to its community. I hope other consumer apps will follow FT’s footsteps.
A fair and generous Polymarket will shake the market and potentially attract more venture capital funding and attention from users, from infrastructure products to consumer apps.
Honestly, we really need more successful consumer apps in this cycle! For our industry. I like Picolas’ point here, he believes we need something to break the current stagnation in cryptocurrency.
There is also potential in other areas to attract a large number of new users, such as the integration of Telegram <> Ton and new crypto games.
You can read more optimistic points about the Ton ecosystem and dApps here.
Top 5 Low-Key Layer 1s to Watch
Ignas | DEFI Research
· May 1
Read full article
Another sector is Gamefi.
To learn about the latest popular GameFi games and their innovative token economics and incentive mechanisms, I collaborated with our Pink Brains researcher Skipper.
Be sure to follow him on Twitter for more GameFi content.
GameFi: 3 Top Web3 Games Worth Early Adoption
Let’s face it. Most previous GameFi projects lacked the “play” in “play-to-earn”.
Furthermore, the “earn” element often involved paying utility tokens to users that didn’t generate any value – because these unplayable games lacked appeal.
This will change in 2024.
We are seeing for the first time player-centric Web3 games gaining mainstream attention.
Here are 3 early Web3 games worth your attention:
1. Nyan Heroes
Nyan Heroes is like “Overwatch” but with cats piloting giant mecha fighters. This Solana-based first-person shooter game attracts players with its rich arsenal of weapons and dynamic actions like climbing.
Just after 2 quarters of pre-alpha testing, Nyan Heroes made it to the top 5 games on the Epic Games Store.
The free-to-play game launched $NYAN tokens on May 21, with a market cap of $25 million. It has been listed on Bybit, Gate.io, HTX, MEXC, and Backpack Exchange – a good sign for future price trends as long as the team keeps up the effort.
The studio behind the game, 9 Lives Interactive, raised $3 million in a funding round in early March.
Nyan Heroes’ bullish catalysts:
Ranked among the top 30 games on the Epic Games Store.
Over 200,000 downloads within two weeks of the pre-alpha release.
Full game integration with NFTs to be released in early 2025.
How early players can earn rewards:
Wait for the announcement of the next pre-alpha season.
Play the game in the third season.
Earn CATNIP points by increasing your MMR ranking.
Nyan Heroes Twitter here.
2. Metalcore
Metalcore is a fusion of “Battlefield” and “Star Wars: Legends” supported by a Web3 open economy with play-to-earn potential.
Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, Metalcore is one of the first Web3 games that can truly compete with mainstream games in terms of graphics and overall aesthetics – the game is still in closed testing phase.
This first/third-person territorial warfare shooter game combines PVP and PVE elements.
Metalcore’s bullish catalysts:
Highest graphics quality in Web3 games thanks to UE5.
Winner of the Global Blockchain Awards 2024 for Best Blockchain Game.
Metalcore has raised a total of $20 million and has the support of Delphi Digital, Arrington, and Spartan Group.
How early players can earn rewards:
Start playing Metalcore when access is opened.
Focus on high-quality cooperative gameplay, not just scoring.
Players can also earn $MCG tokens through strategic gameplay and tactical decisions.
Metalcore Twitter here.
3. Shrapnel
Shrapnel is a first-person shooter game developed on Unreal Engine 5 with play-to-earn elements.
This Avalanche-based FPS is still in early development, but its game airdrop activity with a prize pool of over $100,000 has garnered great interest from Web3 creators and is starting to attract attention from Web2.
Shrapnel’s bullish catalysts:
$100,000 prize pool for the game’s airdrop activity.
Emmy-winning team members from works like “Halo,” “Call of Duty,” and “Westworld.”
Shrapnel has one of the largest creator communities in the Web3 gaming space.
How early players can earn rewards:
Purchase Shrapnel Extraction Pack NFT to play.
Play during the next game airdrop activity (to be announced).
Top 1,000 players on the leaderboard share the prize pool.
Don’t get too carried away
Consumer apps need to attract mainstream users beyond the crypto community.
But Brave provides a valuable lesson: the success of a protocol is not necessarily correlated with token performance.
Despite being one of the most successful consumer apps, the BAT token is still trading at 2017 prices.
Any dApp mentioned in this blog has a low chance of surpassing BAT in the long run.
So do your research when it comes to profitability.
Tags
2023 market trends
BAT
BUSD
gamefi
LEND
SOL
tokens
Ethereum
platform coins
Bitcoin
bull market
airdrop
Source link:
https://news.marsbit.cc/20240601151010609510.html
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute investment advice.
Original article link:
https://www.bitpush.news/articles/6834242
Related News
【BitPush Daily Market Dynamics】BTC Continues to Retrace, Future Trend Depends on the Fed
In-Depth: How is the Cryptocurrency Industry Regulated in Taiwan and Southeast Asia?
Facing 34 Charges, “Cryptocurrency Overlord” Trump Could Face Prison or Return to the White House?
New Ways to Earn Money: Exploring AO Technology Principles and Ecological Potential
Weekly On-Chain Data Report: Cross-chain Bridges, DEXes, NFTs, Token Unlocks