Narrative
What's Up With the ICO Narrative?
ICOs were the only oasis in the barren crypto market. But that, too, seems to be drying up.
I've talked about the narrative multiple times in the newsletter. The one in mid-October lists good platforms where you can find them as well.
Earlier, we saw a clear pattern:
- $XPL did >30x for sale participants.
- Other recent ICO sales like MegaETH, Limitless, YieldBasis, Umbra, Stable, etc., were heavily oversubscribed.
But something has changed. Even the strongest projects are seeing slower demand.
1. Monad ICO isn't fully sold out.
Monad is an insanely hyped up high-performance EVM L1 chain. We've talked about it here.
Coinbase is conducting its first-ever token sale with $MON. They've reserved ~7.5% of supply (worth ~$187.5M) for the general public.
On paper, this should have been an instant sellout. (Hot project + ICO meta + Coinbase)
Right now, they have raised around 155 million dollars, which is only 82% of the target.
Even stranger, HyperLiquid premarket shows MON trading at a 3.4 billion dollar valuation. Since the token sale FDV is 2.5 billion dollars, this should be free profit for buyers.
But people are not piling in. Which tells us:
- Premarket prices aren't a fully reliable predictor for the launch price.
- Those markets are easier for whales to manipulate
- Many buyers are ignoring premarket signals instead of treating them as hedges
The sale ends tomorrow, and I expect a late surge. Still, demand is clearly weaker than past cycles.
2. The Aztec sale is also soft
Aztec has been building a private L2 for almost eight years. Privacy is a strong narrative, and the team is legit.
They're using an innovative token sale mechanism from Uniswap called Continuous Clearing Auction for the sale.
The floor price for the sale is $350M. But the implied FDV of current bids is only ~$270M. That's ~22% lower than the target price. It's also only ~20% of the valuation in the latest equity financing.
Aztec sale is also seeing much less demand than expected.
The token sale/auction is a bit more complicated than usual. (For nerds, it's a very cool mechanism to learn about.)
As with Monad, I expect more bids as the sale progresses. But the early numbers show that the ICO wave is losing momentum.
You can participate in the sale here. (Make sure to read terms. For example, there's a 90-day lockup.)
What's happening? First, the overall market is bearish. People are scared to lock money in tokens that might take years to recover. ICOs are not immune to macro sentiment.
Second, the recent winners thrived because of access and pricing. The hottest deals were cheap, early, and simple. Monad and Aztec are older projects that cannot price their tokens at early stage valuations anymore.
So the slowdown is not about ICOs disappearing. It is about price sensitivity and market fatigue.
I still think some of the best opportunities will come from KYC, regulated, ICO 2.0 style platforms. But the momentum is weaker than it was a month ago.
Sponsored by Hinkal
Hinkal: Wallet for Effortless Onchain Privacy
In the past few years, >50 kidnap attempts have targeted crypto holders..
Having your crypto life open to the public is a recipe for disaster. No one wants their payroll, investments, or medical payments visible to the world.
Without privacy, most people will never come onchain.
Common solutions like crypto mixers are insufficient.
They're often traceable with expert analysis, and regulators can blacklist any assets connected to mixing pools. Plus, using a mixer every time is clunky and inconvenient.
The solution? Hinkal Wallet.
Simply set up Hinkal, then transact onchain as usual. Hinkal automatically makes your transactions private. No mixers, no extra steps, no nonsense.
- On the backend, they use cryptographic magic. You can explore the tech details here.
- For stateful onchain apps, a public address is mandatory. So Hinkal has both public & private accounts for every wallet.
Imo, Hinkal offers the most effortless onchain privacy.
It also has a points program. Aka, you can literally earn money for just going private.
They also just launched on Product Hunt. If you like the app, give an upvote as well.
Updates
Devconnect: An Ethereum Ecosystem Update
Devconnect is one of the biggest Ethereum conferences. It's happening between November 17th-22nd.
It is usually a catalyst week filled with product previews, upgrades, and ecosystem talk.
I'm not there. But still, I've done some research into what's happening there. Here are some trends I've noticed.
#1. The Privacy Narrative
Vitalik has been pushing privacy a lot. He promoted Kohaku (a wallet SDK), which helped fuel the $RAIL pump.
Hinkal is another privacy wallet. They recently opened it up to everyone.
There were two other major announcements
- Zama introduced its Confidential Blockchain Protocol, which lets developers build confidential smart contracts on any L1 or L2.
- Aztec has been building a private L2 for the past several years. They released Ignition, the first fully decentralized L2.
#2. Solving Interoperability
Fragmentation is hurting Ethereum. With L2s, traders lost deep liquidity, devs lost composability, and users got a horrible UX.
Devconnect featured multiple teams trying to fix this. (You can click on the links to learn more about these.)
Additionally, L2beat also introduced the Interop Risk Framework. (For newbies, L2Beat is an organization that evaluates L2s & other infrastructures for their security.)
This is a technical battle, but Ethereum needs to solve it if it wants to stay competitive with unified ecosystems like Solana.
#3. Other Project updates & Vibes
There have been other announcements during this period.
- Aave dropped the v4 testnet.
- 1inch introduced Aqua. It's a liquidity layer that'll allow users to share assets across multiple strategies, without locking.
I haven't noticed any other game-changing announcements on the app layer.
But all over Twitter, everyone is saying there's a cultural shift in Ethereum where they've come down from the ivory tower to being more product-focused.
The core cypherpunk values are still present. Vitalik's opening talk was a good reminder of it.
The conference is not over yet, so more news may drop tomorrow.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
Ranger is a perp aggregator. They've announced an ICO on MetaDAO. The minimum amount to be raised is $6M.
Jesse Pollack, the founder of Base chain, launched his creator coin $JESSE on Zora. People are criticizing him for launching without sniper protection.
Phantom introduced Phantom Terminal, a platform for pro-level trading on the web. They're fast becoming a DeFi superapp.
Aave launched the testnet of Aave v4. A developer preview of its new interface, Aave Pro, is also live.
HyperLiquid introduced "Growth Mode" that HIP-3 deployers will be able to activate. When it's active, there'll be a >90% reduction on the all-in fees.
Coinbase introduced ETH-backed loans on the Coinbase platform. It'll be powered by Morpho on the Base chain.
Grass announced their first tokenholder call on November 24th, 2025. They'll share updates and upcoming initiatives in the call.
MegaETH announced the release of Frontier, its mainnet beta. It will be live for one month starting early December.
Umbra is integrating Range to add real-time risk and compliance. Compliance is very important for privacy applications.
Aztec launched the Ignition chain. It's the first fully decentralized L2 on Ethereum.
📰 Industry News
Circle introduced xReserve. It's an interoperability infrastructure that enables blockchain teams to deploy USDC-backed stablecoins seamlessly.
Fidelity launched the Solana ETF, $FSOL, on the NYSE. There have been quite a few Solana ETFs, which can increase inflow to $SOL.
Nillion, a network for privately processing sensitive data, is accusing its market maker of tanking the price of its token.
Maple Finance is in legal dispute with Core Foundation surrounding BTC products from both teams.
Coinbase teased many systems and product updates for December 17th.
🐦⬛ X Hits
- State of crypto leverage.
- The future of credit-based lending.
- Problems with current token launches & FUSE.
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
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.
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