Weekly DeFi Rabbit Hole by zj.valz
Welcome to the weekly 🐰 hole (3 September 23) of liquidity movements & DeFi analysis, where we uncover key trends and insights into the top protocols and hidden gems.
🐰 Contents:
- Stablecoin flows
- Smart Money Movement
- Top L1/L2 Financials
- Top DAPP Financials
- Movement Analysis
- TLDR
1. Stablecoin flows:
Total Stablecoin MCAP = 123.15 bil, with 0.59% weekly change.
Top 10 Chain (In terms of Stables Mcap)
Top inflows:
- Base
- Waves
- SXnetwork
- Secret
- StarkNet
Top outflows:
- Wanchain
- Hedera
- Kava
- Flow
- DefiChain
2. Smart Money Movement:
Top Smart money inflows (including stablecoins):
- stETH
- Dai
- Curve USD
- Wrapped ETH
- USDT
Top Smart money outflows (including stablecoins):
- wstETH
- USDC
- Wrapped BTC
- Unibot
- Linq
Top Smart money inflows (excluding stablecoins):
- stETH
- Wraped ETH
- tBTC v2
- Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH
- Olas
Top Smart money outflows (excluding stablecoins):
- wstETH
- Wrapped BTC
- Unibot
- Linq
- cbETH
3. Top L1/L2 Financials:
Fees-Generated
- ETH
- Tron
- BTC
- BSC
- zkSync Era
Revenue
- ETH
- Tron
- zkSync Era
- Polygon
- Arbitrum
DAUs
- Tron
- BSC
- Bitcoin
- Near
- ETH
Active Developers
- ETH
- Polkadot
- Cosmos
- Solana
- BTC
Code Commits
- ETH
- Polkadot
- Solana
- Cosmos
- BTC
4. Top DAPP Financials:
Fees-Generated
- Lido
- Uniswap
- OpenSea
- MakerDAO
- PancakeSwap
Revenue
- MakerDAO
- Lido
- Maestro
- Synthetix
- Metamask
P/F Ratio
Relative valuation of protocols (Lower the no. the “better”)
- DackieSwap
- SpookySwap
- Equilibre
- Solarbeam
- Level Finance
P/S ratio
FDV Mcap/Annualized Revenue (Take this metric with a pinch of salt as revenue figs used could be annualized and not actual revenues earned)
- Equilibre
- Level Finance
- QiDao
- X2Y2
- SpookySwap
Holders Revenue - Cumulative revenue attributable to holders 24 Hours
- Convex Finance
- PancakeSwap
- Venus
- Radiant
- Velodrome
DAUs - Daily
- Pancakeswap
- Uniswap
- Stargate
- 0x
- Metamask
Trending Applications
- Gnosis
- BUSD
- Project Galaxy
- Thirdweb
- Starknet
Trending Categories
- Infrastructure (Polygon)
- Tokens (BNB)
- Memecoin (ETH)
- Layer 2 (ETH)
- NFTs (Polygon)
Raises - Recent funding rounds
- Stroom
- Tako Protocol
- DeForm
- FirstMate
5. Movement Analysis:
Stablecoin flows:
- Total stablecoin market cap remains relatively flat this week with a 0.5% increase, which is a good sign despite the recent price action.
- Base, Waves and SXnetwork saw the most significant stablecoin inflows.
- Wanchain, Hedera and Kava saw the most significant stablecoin outflows.
- Base continues to dominate crypto’s attention with the launch of Aerodrome, leading to large stable inflows into the chain.
Smart Money Movement:
- Smart Money has pivoted to being slightly defensive with an aggregated portfolio allocation of 40% ETH/ETH Variant, 35% Alts, and 25% Stablecoin. Alt positions have decreased slightly compared to last week due to the weak price action of majors like ETH and BTC.
- Olas, HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu and Shia received the most Smart Money inflow this week.
- Unibot, Linq and cbETH saw the largest Smart Money Outflow this week.
- A mini shitcoin season seems to be back while BTC and ETH price action continue to range sideways.
L1/L2 movement:
- Base maintains its dominance in TVL growth, boasting an impressive 112% increase, due to the success of Aerodrome. Note that there are inaccuracies in the reporting of Base's fees and revenue figures on Defillama this week.
- Arbitrum remains dominant in terms of top DEX volumes. However, it is gradually ceding ground to new L2s like ZkSync and Base, signaling a shifting in the DeFi user’s preferred chain.
DAPP movements:
- Friend.tech is gradually losing fees and revenue as user migrates to alternative SocialFi solutions like Shares Finance, Qrollii and SharesGram offering revenue sharing incentives via their native tokens.
- Maestro retains its dominance as the go-to DeFi bot tool for on-chain degens, securing the 3rd position in terms of revenue generated, closely trailing behind Lido this week.
- The continued dominance of Maestro highlights the product market fit of the bot meta in the crypto space, signalling that Dapps capable of significantly enhancing on-chain user experiences will remain essential and in demand in this ecosystem.
- MakerDAO continues to benefit from the RWA integration as T-bills I/R continue to increase.
- Alpha drop by @apes_prologue
- Trending narrative this week includes:
- Memecoins (ETH)
- Layer 2 (ETH)
- Raises that caught my eye this week includes:
- Tako Protocol - A Social Layer protocol
- DeForm - A Defi Marketing protocol
- FirstMate - A NFT Storefront builder for creators
6. TLDR:
- The gains resulting from the favorable ruling for Grayscale in their battle against the SEC were swiftly reversed this week, following the SEC's announcement of a delay in processing six spot Bitcoin ETF applications until mid-October.
- Friend.tech is gradually losing its market share to alternatives due to the slow development pace and a lack of sticky user engagement beyond mere financial speculation. However, SocialFi remains a nascent industry and only time will tell how user activity will evolve with this new platform.
- Bot-meta is still dominant in the crypto space and identifying dApps with the potential to substantially enhance the quality of on-chain experiences will reap significant benefits for early participants/ investors. I am personally focused on Bots that open new trading markets and provide comprehensive analytics on new token launches.
P.s. I may have positions in the projects discussed in this article. Please note that this article is not intended as financial advice, and I encourage readers to conduct their own due diligence and ape responsibly.
Conclusion
That’s it Anon, hope you enjoyed the 🐰hole this week.