So get this: an AI agent on Twitter recently pumped a memecoin 100x. And as if that's not enough, the memecoin itself was supposedly created by... wait for it... another AI.
The Solana based coin is called $GOAT - Goatseus Maximus. It's at this crazy intersection of AI x Memecoin. Now, don't blindly ape - it's already 100x, and a huge portion of it is sitting in the hands of another AI.
Here's what we got today:
New Uniswap L2. What's the impact of Unichain?
Upcoming hot chains. ETH L2s to keep on your radar.
Around the web. Astria teased the mainnet launch, $ynETH can now be used to borrow $crvUSD, and more
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Announcement
Unichain: How Will It Change the Game?
Source: Uniswap Blog
It's always a bad feeling when a band member goes solo. It's happening now with Uniswap leaving Ethereum to form their own chain. This is like Justin Timberlake leaving N'Sync, or Harry Styles leaving One Direction (Don't ask how I know this stuff).
What happened? Last week, Uniswap launched the Unichain testnet, a general-purpose L2 that's Optimism's Superchain. Naturally, this set off a heated debate.
Why Launch Unichain?
#1 "It's for DeFi users." Compared to ETH L1's high costs, Unichain is set to reduce fees by around 95%. Transactions on Unichain are lightning-fast too, with a ~250ms confirmation time - quicker than even Solana. This will be driven by "Rollup-Boost," a new technical innovation.
But is that the full story?
#2 "More control and profits." Building its own chain lets Uniswap control more of its tech stack, An L2 will help it create a better user experience and extract more value. For example, Unichain claims to eliminate bots that extract harmful MEV.
Many of the other top projects are launching or hinting at launching their own chain as well. dYdX, Frax, Maker, Aave, Ethena, are just some of them.
The appchain thesis is a similar idea. In 2022, it predicted that Uniswap will become an appchain.
#3 "Add utility for $UNI"
The Unichain will have a Decentralized Validator Network that verifies its blocks. It will require staking $UNI, which will be an additional utility for UNI.
Optimistic people are hoping that the fee from Unichan will go to UNI stakers. However, everyone didn't react the same.
How did People React?
#1 "Oh god, not another L2." It feels like there are more L2s than total crypto users. With over 100 L2s already listed on L2beat and only half showing any significant activity, people are tired of new L2s.
The $UNI price is at the same level as when the chain was announced, suggesting that the market didn't care.
#2 "This is bearish for ETH." Ethereum's "Ultrasound Money" narrative depends on dApps burning $ETH. Uniswap is Ethereum's biggest gas burner, having torched over 1,500 ETH.
Some worry that if Uniswap shifts liquidity to Unichain, ETH might take a hit.
#3 "Nah, not bearish for ETH." Despite L2s already processing 22x more transactions than Ethereum, 80% of Uniswap's liquidity is still on Ethereum.
There's no evidence that all Uniswap liquidity will just move to Unichain.
#4 "This is bullish for OP."
Currently, all the L2s are fragmented. Optimism has a plan to make a few of OP chains feel like a single chain. They're calling it Superchain.
Unichain, as part of the Superchain, will eventually contribute revenue and Liquidity to OP Superchain. So, it is bullish for $OP.
Is This Bullish for $UNI?
Uniswap is the dominant decentralized exchange. Among the top 7 DEXes, Uniswap controls >70% of the market share in key metrics like TVL, trading fees, and trading volume.
But with a market cap above $5.7 billion, it's already highly valued. So, fundamentals alone can't pump. Instead, we look to pumpamentals.
Taiki Maeda is very bullish on ETH. His thesis can be summarized as follows:
When Uniswap Foundation put out a proposal to turn on the fee for UNI stakers, the token pumped from $6 to $17.
The Unichain will have an option for staking. He predicts that Uniswap will eventually direct fees there.
Similar to how $UNI pumped to $17, we can expect $UNI to go up to $17.
For this theory to work, part of the trading fees should go to $UNI stakers. However, we don't have any indication of that yet.
There are two catalysts we can look forward to as well. The first one will be the Unichain mainnet launch. The second one is the Uniswap v4 launch. They can bring attention and pump the price.
However, if you're looking for explosive growth, $UNI might not be your best bet. It's more of a solid choice for long-term ETH DeFi exposure without active management.
The goal is to ensure that DeFi traders can get competitive prices and easily set up complex trading strategies while staying within the DeFi ecosystem.
Got it, Edgy. But how can I profit from the V3?
With $TANGO. Initially, 100% of the fees will go to $TANGO holders providing liquidity plus LP rewards.
Arbitrum has led the pack since Layer 2s were a thing. Many thought it would stay number uno - until now.
On October 13th, Coinbase's Base overtook Arbitrum in Total Value Locked (TVL), riding a surge of activity since September (Mainly due to the dominance of Aerodrome). There are a ton of ETH layer 2s out there right now. Here are a few that I'm paying attention to and why.
#1 Mantle
Mantle is an optimistic rollup that'll use EigenDA as the data availability layer.
What sets Mantle apart? A massive treasuryof over $2.38B. Incentives matter and Mantle has the muscle. For example, staking treasury ETH to increase the yield on their liquid staking token, $mETH.
Recently, they got attention for separating their Liquid staking & restaking token (LSTs & LRTs) from the Mantle L2 ($MNT) project. They introduced Meth Protocoland the $COOK token for the *new* staking protocol.
According to KaitoAI, after Base and Arbitrum, Mantle is the fastest-growing L2 in Crypto mindshare. There are several catalysts supporting Mantle's movement:
Their restaking token, $cmETH, is soon going to have cross-chain deployments.
Through the Mntbuildathon hackathon, they are attracting new devs to their platform.
They've partnered with Ignition to bring Bitcoin into their ecosystem with $FBTC.
The team claims that 20+ games are to be deployed on the chain. We might see a GameFi wave on Mantle.
Mantle usually provides great DeFi opportunities as well. For example, farming EIGEN with their mETH was one of the best strategies.
In terms of metrics, Mantle has done well in 2024. Let's look at data from January 2024 to right now.
26.3k Daily Active Addresses in January to 66.1k in September.
Total Value Locked increased from ~$23M to ~$454M. The chart is below.
Source: DefiLlama Mantle TVL
[One caveat: For Mantle, the data from Growthepie.xyz paints a much better picture. But to be safe, I used the data from Artemis & DefiLlama.]
#2 Scroll
There are two types of rollups: optimistic rollups and zk-rollups. As I have explained before, I think Zk-rollups are superior to optimistic rollups.
However, optimistic rollups were the first to enter the market. And so, they hold a significant percentage of the market share. Right now, Scroll is the only zk-rollup among the top five rollups by TVL.
Personally, I believe zk-rollups are the future. And as the leading zk-rollup, Scroll is in the pole position to dominate the category. Let's review some numbers:
From $56M in April 2024, Scroll's TVL has grown rapidly to ~$771M.
During the same period, its daily transaction count roughly stayed between 8-10 million.
The stablecoin market cap grew massively during the same period and now sits at an ATH of ~$1 billion.
They've achieved all of this while keeping transaction fees super cheap at $0.05.
Now, a lot of the above activity could've been driven by airdrop farming. Since the token has launched, they might lose some momentum.
But they've established themselves as the leading zk-rollup. So, keep Scroll on your radar.
#3 Optimism
While Optimism was once neck-and-neck with Arbitrum, it's now in third place by TVL. But don't count it out yet.
Metrics show that it has been steadily growing since August.
September recorded the highest number of daily transactions (21.5M) for the last year.
For daily active addresses, the lowest was in August (62.9k). Right now, it has grown to 76.5k.
According to Artemis, DEX trading volume has been in decline since May 2024. It hasn't recovered significantly.
On top of that, many recent announcements have made me bullish once again:
One of their weaknesses is that Optimistic rollups are technically inferior to zk-rollups. However, their latest partnership with Succinct fixes this. This collaboration will allow any OP chain to become a zk-rollup in a few hours.
They had recently announced OP Airdrop #5 for Superchain users. It retroactively allocated 10M+ OP to 54k+ unique addresses. They still have 550M $OP left for future airdrops. This method can incentivize genuine users on Superchain. Compared to Arbitrum DAO, where various teams are siphoning funds from DAO, Optimism's approach is much better.
Optimism governance will control the Superchain, which I explain in the first article. In return, Superchain will get a significant percentage of revenue from these chains.
Even Base, the current L2 leader, pays a share of its revenue to Superchain. So, $OP will benefit from other chains that are a part of Superchain.
Keeping up with the hottest ecosystems is crucial in crypto. In my opinion, the above three are the L2s that should be on your radar.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Kamino Finance introduced the "SOL Multiply." It is a one-click leverage product that offers up to 5x leverage, boosted yields, and 0 liquidation risk.
YieldNest announced that $ynETH can now be used as collateral on Curve Finance to borrow $crvUSD.
Astria teased the mainnet will be soon. All the current L2s can decentralize their sequencing by using Astria.
Sonic Network (aka Fantom) released Sonic Litepaper. It includes tokenomics details such as total supply and airdrop allocation.
Osmosis introduced Osmosis Pay. It is a card that allows users to spend assets from Osmosis. It is powered by Cypher.
PlutoLeverage, a DeFi leveraged yield machine on Solana, is now supported by Pyth Network. Pyth is providing the price data for PlutoLeverage.
DeepBookv3 and DEEP token are live on Sui mainnet. They claim to be the most performant order book in DeFi.
Puffer Finance has released the feature to stake and withdraw $pufETH on Puffer UniFi, a based rollup on Ethereum.
KelpDAO has released $wrsETH on zkSync. They're providing additional incentives to promote the growth of the token.
dYdX has released a perp prediction market for the current US election. However, its UX isn't as intuitive as Polymarket.
🪂 Airdrop Alpha
Story Protocol is a blockchain that focuses on Intellectual Property. Here's a zero-cost task you can do to potentially qualify for airdrop.
Mode Network has concluded season two of its airdrop program. The season three will start tomorrow.
HyperLiquid, through Hyper Foundation, will be launching $HYPE token. Users have to accept some terms before 11th November 2024 to participate.
Taiko, a based rollup on Ethereum, has released the claims for Trailblazers Season 1 rewards. Season two is already live and will run until December.
Ordinoxincentivized testnet is in epoch 4. They claim to be an L1 that'll unify liquidity across all chains.
🚀 New Launches
ZeroLend introduced Lever. It'll use DEX liquidity to borrow and enter leveraged short/long positions on memecoins. It'll first launch on Sonic Network.
Off The Gridearly access is now available on PC (Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. It is a game powered by Avalanche.
Fuel Network's Fuel Ignition is live on the mainnet. It'll be Ethereum's first stage 2 optimistic rollup.
Felix protocol introduced $feUSD. It is the first native stablecoin on HyperLiquid. It's design is similar to Liquity v2.
CrossFi launched its mainnet. They're trying to build a blockchain L1 that claims 100k+ TPS and synthesizes with traditional finance.
ArtRun, a platform powered by Zora, is live on Base mainnet. It's a platform for creating and trading *artcoins*. They'll be a hybrid of memecoins and NFTs.
📰 Industry News
Radiant Capital was hacked. Reportedly, their multi-sig keys were compromised. You should revoke permissions for their app.
Sui insiders are accused of selling $SUI in the recent pump. While they've denied it, Crypto Twitter isn't convinced.
TokenUnlocks has rebranded to Tokenomist.AI. They've promised that the website will share more tokenomics-related data.
World Liberty Financial, the DeFi project supported by Donald Trump, has started its token sale.
P2P.org, the leading EigenLayer operator, has announced that they'll share profit from the operation with those who delegate to them.
🐦⬛ X Hits
Scary story of AI agents creating $300 million worth of memecoin.
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