Here's the TLDR: MegaETH is an ETH L2 that purely focuses on performance. But it's making a pretty extreme trade-off: permanently giving up sequencer decentralization. It's a problem because if the single sequencer fails, the entire chain will stop. Sequencer operators can also theoretically trade against users.
The current testnet boasts 20k transactions per second, 1.7 GigaGas per second, and 10ms block times. They're promising even crazier numbers in the future: 100k TPS, 50 GigaGas/sec, and a 1–2 millisecond block time.
What's the big deal? MegaETH will enable applications that feel like web2.
Current Web3 applications feel clunky due to limitations of computational complexity and speed.
Current blockchain applications have limits on how much computation they can use. Even Base, the current leader, only allows 60 Mggas/second. MegaETH will enable applications with more computational requirements.
Slow block times ruin the user experience. Every 100ms of latency costs Amazon 1% in sales. That's ~$1.6 billion in lost revenue annually. MegaETH testnet is 20x faster than Solana, which is the current market leader.
To get the full web2 experience, other infrastructure innovations like account abstraction will help as well.
If you use MegaETH applications right now, it won't be as smooth as web2 applications. But that's primarily due to the time it takes to click through wallets and app-related infra. The actual on-chain execution is extremely fast.
We need the infra and UX patterns surrounding crypto apps to grow more.
After the MegaETH launch, some people couldn't use MegaETH due to some RPC infrastructure issues. But that's solved right now and you should be able to use it now.
Playing around on testnets was usually rewarded by airdrops. But MegaETH probably won't be doing a direct airdrop based on testnet activity. They might qualify you for some other benefit like the ability to mint an NFT that'll receive airdrop.
Most apps on MegaETH are truly novel apps not possible anywhere else. These apps might airdrop tokens to testnet users. But again, that's not guaranteed. It's just speculation for now.
What are some apps that got my attention?
#1 Noise. Memecoins were the strongest narrative of this cycle. Memecoin traders were basically trading the mindshare of many different trends. But it was a broken system with cabals extracting money from gamblers. Noise fixes that.
Noise allows users to "trade trends". Trends will be assets and their value will be driven by mindshare. It'll be priced in real-time based on independent third-party data streams from media platforms.
Since trends change "real-time", trend markets need "real-time blockchain", aka MegaETH.
It's live on MegaETH. But there's a waitlist. So it'll take time before you can try it.
#2. GTE. Currently, prices of assets are discovered on centralized exchanges. If we want the onchain ecosystem to flourish, we need the price discovery onchain.
We couldn't do it because of performance issues. Being fast is really important for traders. So most traders use CEXes. And price discovery happens there.
MegaETH changes the game. It promises to be as fast as CEXes in the future.
GTE is taking advantage of that and bringing price discovery onchain. They're building Binance onchain. Everything related to trading, from token creation and issuance, to spot and leverage, will be available on GTE.
You can already try it on testnet.
There are 13 applications live on the MegaETH testnet. If you want a comprehensive list of MegaETH applications, here you go.
Which Protocols for the Fundamental Based Investor?
Crypto investing is usually about chasing attention and trends. One day it's dog coins, the next it's AI tokens, and who knows what comes after that. But the winds might be shifting.
It looks like investing based on fundamentals could finally be the winning strategy.
So, let's dig into some of the top projects that are actually growing instead of just pumping.
#1 Fluid
It aims to be a DeFi super app. It currently combines a DEX and a money market into one sleek package.
What sets it apart? Its mechanisms like smart collateral and smart debt give users better rates. You can dive into the geeky stuff in their documentation.
Here's the exciting part: it's crushing all the relevant metrics.
Its fee is growing rapidly. It grew 21% in the last 30 days, 155% in the last quarter, and 21202% in the last year.
While it's only live on Ethereum and Arbitrum, it's already 6th in terms of DEX trading volume.
Fluid has flipped market leaders like Uniswap in most big markets (like ETH-USDC) it enters. This will continue due to Fluid's better capital efficiency. I've talked more about it here.
Its lending arm is also doing pretty well. Currently, it's the fifth largest lender at $671M in active loan value.
Despite solid growth in fundamentals, $FLUID price has been slipping.
The community is soon expecting a $FLUID buyback program. It can become the catalyst that moves the market.
#2 Hyperliquid
HyperLiquid started off as a perps platform. Now it has become the most successful new L1 of this cycle.
Sure, its architecture and decentralization model stirred up some drama. Still, it managed to create a massive cult-like following. The generous airdrop was a big factor. Cultish community is a big pumpamental booster for any project.
But it's not just about pumpamentals. The fundamentals are strong:
It has ~407k users. Even top crypto projects cannot boast that number.
It did >$5 billion in perps trading volume. That's ~60% of the total onchain volume.
It generates a ton of fees. $1.24M in the last 24 hours. Solana is the only other chain that generated more than HyperLiquid. On the weekly, it generated ~$7M. It was the leader among chains.
Fees collected on Hyperliquid are directed to the Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE back from the open market.
While HyperLiquid is an L1, it doesn't have a diversified ecosystem like other L1s. Most of its activity comes from perp traders. So, a bet on HyperLiquid is a bet on increasing HyperLiquid perp volume.
Currently, most of the perp volume happens on CEXes like Binance. So HyperLiquid has a lot of room for growth.
The chart below compares the volume of Binance vs HyperLiquid. We can see a clear trend of HyperLiquid's eating into Binance's share. (The comparison isn't exactly 1:1. But it makes the point.)
#3 Pendle
It's a "yield trading" protocol. It enabled a lot of new DeFi activities:
Earn fixed yield on assets
Bet on yield going up on certain assets by purchasing those yields
Earn more yield without additional risks by providing liquidity
And more advanced strategies by mixing the above components.
You can learn yield trading at Pendle Academy. Or if you want to understand Pendle mechanics, here's its documentation.
The fact is it's an innovative protocol that provided a new DeFi primitive. And it has been established as the go-to protocol for yield trading. It has almost become a DeFi blue chip.
In the last year, it made $32.94 in fees. It's the first among all yield protocols.
Trading volume on Pendle has exploded over time. Cumulatively, it has done >$18.6B in volume. While the volume has reduced from January, that's in line with general market performance.
Its dominance in its yield trading niche is massive. While Pendle has ~$4.3B in TVL, Spectra, the runner-up in the sector afaik, only has ~$175M in TVL. That's almost 25x lead.
If we broaden it to general yield protocols, it still has a massive lead. It has >50% of TVL and it's still ~5x bigger than Convex, the 2nd largest yield protocol.
Upcoming catalysts are important for projects to attract attention and liquidity. And Pendle has a lot coming in 2025 like "Boros" and "Citadel". You can learn about those catalysts here.
#4 Ethena
We've talked about Ethena multiple times. It started off as a stablecoin protocol.
Now, it has several products with more in the pipeline.
USDe is their first stablecoin. It's the largest semi-decentralized stablecoin with a market cap of ~$5.4B.
sUSDe is the yield-bearing version of USDe. It used to consistently provide the best yield on stable at ~10-15%.
USDtb is another stablecoin backed by BlackRock's BUIDL, USDC & USDT. Within three months it has already crossed $1B in market cap.
iUSDe is their coming product that exports sUSDe to traditional finance. I've discussed it's potential here. It's a new $20B market for Ethena.
USDe market cap
Recently, they announced their own blockchain: Converge. Its goal is to become the settlement layer for institutions and traditional finance.
Normal blockchains have permissionless validators. In contrast, only permissioned actors can validate Ethena's new chain. Not everyone's thrilled about that, but Ethena argues it's better for institutional adoption.
Stablecoin is the most successful crypto product. A decentralized stablecoin that retail can invest in has massive potential. At it's peak, $LUNA had ~$38B. Ethena has the same niche. But right now, its market cap is only $2.1B.
#5 Jupiter
Jupiter is the go-to tool for trading on Solana from the computer. It has several verticals. The most important ones are spot aggregation, perp market, and a dollar-cost averaging tool.
They've been crushing it as well.
It's been printing fees. $3.12M in the last 24 hrs, $15.2M in the 7 days, and $84.35M in the last 30 days. It's ranking fourth among all crypto protocols.
It's the leading perp exchange after HyperLiquid with ~$788M 24 hr volume and ~$4B 7 day volume. It controls ~10% of onchain perp market.
It has done $2.3 trillion in aggregator volume. It's the 2nd largest aggregator after Bitget swap, which doesn't have a token. It controls ~22% of the aggregator market.
Recently they had burned 3B $JUP. And 50% of all the fees will be used to burn JUP.
Additionally, they've also announced JupNet. It'll be their blockchain that aggregates all L1s, from Ethereum to Sonic.
The pumpamentals are still part of the crypto game. But right now, I'm looking for projects that I can accumulate with conviction. And for that, you need projects with fundamentals.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Polymarket is expanding. Solana users can now deposit money into their polymarket wallets from the Solana chain. The markets will still be on Polygon.
Berachain has started phase 1 of proof-of-liquidity. There was limited rollout within specific BEX pools. Now new vaults will start getting emissions.
Superform announced Superform v2. Among many updates, it introduced SuperUSD, which gives yield on USD using many vaults.
Eclipse, an Ethereum L2, introduced the Giga Scale Virtual Machine (GSVM), a new SVM client. The goal is to optimize performance as much as possible.
Resupply introduced the reUSD stablecoin. It's a stablecoin backed by yield-bearing lending pool tokens.
Infinex has integrated Sonic. Infinex tries to be the one-stop solution for accessing all onchain opportunities.
Drift Protocol announced Swift Protocol. It's a trading platform that'll aggregate liquidity from multiple sources — AMMs, order books, and private market makers.
Usual Protocol increased the cap for its USL stablecoin to $186M (+$14.5M). USL can be accessed via Euler Finance on Ethereum.
Cetus Protocol is now live on Phantom. Cetus will power the Phantom in-wallet swaps that'll happen on Sui.
Nillion has released the alpha mainnet and $NIL token. It claims to be "internet's base layer for all private data".
DyDx is launching a $DYDX buyback program. 25% of net protocol fees is allocated to systematic monthly buybacks,
📰 Industry News
Fidelity has filed paperwork with the SEC for a tokenized version of its US Dollar money market fund. The first deployment will be on Ethereum.
Binance introduced a community-driven delisting mechanism. It allows users to vote on removing the projects that carry the Monitoring Tag.
Chaos Labs introduced Chaos AI. It's an AI-powered researcher that focuses on crypto. You can request early access right now.
Sei Network has launched the "Sei More" campaign. It'll give rewards to "yappers" on the Sui KaitoAI leaderboard.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing. Whenever you're ready, here's how we can help you:
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