Source: Adam Cochran Twitter
Compiled by: Katie Gu
The annual Crypto "sweep" list is here again. If you don't have time to research individual assets every time the market drops sharply, you may miss a great buying opportunity. As a long-term investor, I expect there may be a sharp drop, causing me to hold on. I expect some assets to go to zero, so I will adjust the purchase list in time according to the change of situation.
Each Crypto shopping list starts with establishing a theme and a buying plan. The theme is the catalyst that will drive the market over the next 3-5 years, and the buying plan is the size of each asset to buy and under what conditions. Every year I share my shopping list and discuss the catalysts that I believe can drive growth for the assets on the list. This buying list is based on personal circumstances, risk tolerance, and time planning.
Note: Shopping lists are for reference only. You should not over-focus on a few assets or buy all of them at once. Your shopping list should be assets you believe in. Shopping lists are not set in stone. Re-evaluate them monthly and put your buying list in the context of global macro, changing industry events, and new developments. In the investment world, staying the same is tantamount to self-destruction, DYOR.
Let me show you a table first to give you a sense of how miserable Crypto will be in 2022:
Notice:
1. I own most of these assets and if I didn’t have enough confidence in them it wouldn’t be on my list.
2. If people follow suit directly, I will definitely rebalance some positions, but I consider these to be "long term winners".
Summarize:
1. Actual external income remains the most important factor.
2. However, the asset is so sluggish that some “growth” style tokens are facing difficulties.
3. Focus on real revenue “catalysts”, novel infrastructure and user experience.
Actual revenue refers to projects that are used and generate revenue by users outside the project, especially when there is no support for continuous emission incentives, which will eventually lead to user costs. Another important highlight is user experience.
Not just design, but any tools that make the process of using blockchain technology easy for users. Just like web browsers or search engines make the internet easy to use, we need tools that make crypto easy to use. These can be cross-chain bridges, multi-chain applications, automation tools, smart wallets, etc. Anything that makes the complex system of decentralized liquidity easier to use or build.
1. Ethereum
Ethereum doesn't need any reason to be at the top of the list. It has the most users, is deflationary when used, and has a dozen upcoming scaling solutions. I think investing in ETH in the long term is like buying into the internet infrastructure after the dot-com bubble burst. Everything in the industry is in pain and may be overhyped in the long term, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its uses. I personally believe that one day the Ethereum blockchain will become a ubiquitous data layer, and being bullish on Ethereum will be a rare opportunity for participants to achieve wealth freedom.
2.Radiant Capital（RDNT）
Radiant Capital is one of the new projects I’m most excited about this cycle. It takes the existing money market model and builds it natively across chains, making it completely community-run. Radiant Capital is launching first on Arbitrum, which is built on LayerZero, which will allow it to have native cross-chain markets. Users will be able to deposit collateral on one network and seamlessly borrow and lend on another. Stake your native tokens on Arbitrum and borrow on Polygon to get to your next farm. Use your OP tokens as collateral to borrow USDC for mainnet farming. Users will be able to borrow, settle, and pay fees across markets. The team is completely bootstrapped, with no VC funding or seed rounds, and unlike Aave or Compound, which charge developers fees, Radiant’s protocol rewards all fees to stakers. This means stakers get a nice average annual yield (currently 39.75%), but it’s not all from diluted tokens, it’s from real use cases and paid in actual valuable assets, most of which are paid in the form of USDC. In terms of valuation, RDNT is currently valued at just $2 million with a FDV (fully diluted valuation) of $70 million, but the dilution is not actually equivalent over time as most of the FDV is paid out to stakers. Considering Compound has a market cap of $365 million ($529 million FDV) and Aave is $1.2 billion ($1.3 billion FDV), there is a lot of room for growth here. But more importantly, even though Aave and Compound are multi-chain, their liquidity is "split". While Aave hopes to launch a cross-chain feature called Portal in its V3, it is not yet live and will be limited by the Aave structure. Radiant, however, has been considering cross-chain design from the beginning. I think whichever team can gain a strong market share in the cross-chain lending space will easily have a $5 billion+ opportunity, and Radiant is off to a good start. This market has been difficult to enter, and if they can succeed, the rewards will be great.
3.YearnFinance（YFI）
Yearn is the undisputed leader in the yield automation and vault space, and more importantly, has undergone a major transformation in its competitive offerings. Yearn recently completely restructured their product, including a new website: Supporting New Chains - Lowering Fees - Reintegrating CRV - Rebranding the YFI Token. Yearn holds a lot of CRV, in fact, with 44 million locked CRV, making it one of the largest Curve holders in the ecosystem. Having a say in voting will help them get higher returns on strategic vaults. Under the previous model, the way CRV locks were earned and rewarded was inefficient, so they switched the old growth model to the new model of yCRV, which currently pays up to 45% annual returns when staked. But, what’s more interesting is that locked veYFI will be able to vote to decide which vaults get the voting rights assigned to them, and which vaults get YFI rewards directly. You can think of it as Convex’s Votium protocol, but directly integrated into the system, it gets yield from three places, not just one:
1. Yearn Fund
2.YFI emission from Yearn repurchase
3.CRV Rewards
The “bribe” has only just begun, and people seem completely unaware of it because participation has been so low, meaning that only a few votes are needed to generate a new bribe.
Yearn has also begun creating automated tools that allow any project to deploy an automated yield pool for its pool and bribe that pool. As the number of templates increases, Yearn will be able to automate a large number of pools for any project. Yearn pools have always been a key component of DeFi infrastructure, but now they will be scalable, bribeable, and profitable for projects to integrate. Just like CurveWar in the last cycle, deploying YearnGauge and acquiring YFI will become standard practice.
4.Synthetix（SNX）
Synthetix is a DeFiOG, Synthetix allows the creation of synthetic liquidity backed by asset debt. Synthetix started out as a simple borrowing protocol that allowed staking SNX and borrowing sUSD. This has now evolved to include Atomic Swaps, a perpetual contract engine, and soon there will be a permissionless market for building such protocols to unlock your treasury rewards. With integrations with Curve, 1inch, and other major players, Synthetix V2 Atomic Swaps have generated huge volumes, and you can see how their V2 adjustments have caused volumes to soar even in a bear market. In the last bull market, V1 of Atomic Swaps had over $100 million in volume per day. Currently Synthetix holds this record every month in the bear market, but only between Atomic Swaps and Perpetual Contracts, which still means Synthetix stakers will achieve an APY of over 70% in current market conditions. The current version of Synthetix is also only on mainnet and Optimism, but V3 is targeted to launch sometime in late Q1/early Q2, and it will support multi-chain, allowing partners like 1inch to use it immediately on any chain to provide trading liquidity. Currently, all markets come from a single collateral and a single source, but V3's new model will allow anyone to build their own protocol on top of Synthetix. They will decide the collateral, assets, model, and returns. They can choose to issue Synthetix's own sUSD and use the treasury managed by Synthetix, or they can build their own system against Synthetix's debt pool and decide which collateral to accept. Users can then decide which pool to stake, allowing any protocol to build a debt-backed system. Money markets like Aave, perpetual contracts like Kwenta or GMX, AMMs like Uniswap, Synthetix will provide liquidity services. Synthetix aims to abstract the complexity of these deployments so that it can have templated versions that make launching your own DeFi protocol as easy as running a WordPress site or deploying a Shopify store. SNX aims to be the liquidity layer that underpins all of DeFi. It will be limited to technical users at first, but I have high hopes for what this community can accomplish by becoming one of the first Dapp-to-Dapp protocols.
5.ConicFinance（CNC）
Conic may end up being one of the most important ecosystem projects you’ve never heard of. Conic is a key part of the Curve ecosystem, bringing omnipool to a balance. Conic creates “omnipools” that allow users to deposit assets into Curve and spread them across different pools to optimize APY per dollar. In order for Curve to launch its crvUSD and take on multiple collaterals, its pools need to be able to easily absorb liquidations. You can’t do that if one pool has low liquidity, which creates a huge risk of manipulation. And that’s where Conic comes in. By creating a liquidity fund that moves from one pool to another in search of the highest yield. This means that if a certain collateral of crvUSD is liquidated, omnipool can redirect to that pool to absorb the rewards. This will make Conic a layer that optimizes rewards and brings assets into the crvUSD system as collateral. Unlike its competitors in CurveWar, Conic is also the only responsive system that dynamically adjusts its focus to drive fees. More importantly, Conic's website is designed like a Mac UI desktop, and knowing the complex infrastructure they are building, and their in-depth understanding of why crvUSD needs omnipools, I think Conic's team must have the participation of Curve team members. Currently Conic is preparing for the launch, so the risk is high. Considering that Convex currently has about $3.8 billion in TVL, it can bring in $9.7 million in revenue per month even in this depressed market. The valuation of $370 million is about 3 times its annual revenue. If Conic can capture TVL, there is a 10x growth opportunity even in a bear market, and the value of CRV has not increased. However, Conic can steal market share from any project that has a large reserve of CRV or involves voting bribes for Curve or automatic fee balancing. Currently, even in a bear market, the Votium protocol has about $1 million in vote bribes per week, and this alone could lead to Conic's valuation reaching $156 million immediately. The risk is high, but the opportunities are also many, which helps to strengthen the potential of crvUSD.
6.ConvexFinance（CVX）
Convex is the dominant player in the pool. As you can see from my opinion of Conic, I think Curve is one of the most important protocols in the space and its value will only continue to grow. That means Convex will be on the same side with it. While I think Yearn and Conic will continue to threaten Convex's dominance, there is one thing that cannot be ignored. Convex has 288.5 million locked CRV, which no one can shake. Even if Convex stops issuing new rewards, or loses market share to new entrants, this voting power will never be taken away and will continue to be rewarded. cvxCRV is also currently trading at a discount of more than 20% to CRV. As crvUSD develops, people want to cash out their locked cvxCRV to CRV, which creates this gap. My personal prediction is that the CVX team will push their crvUSD rewards to cvxUSD to help close this gap. This means that at the current price, you will get more than 20% of the rewards by buying cvxCRV (rather than CRV). Now, buying CVX and locking vlCVX gets more votes per dollar than the original CRV and earns 24% APY from bribes.
7.FraxFinance（FXS）
Frax is the king of retail sniping. It is becoming increasingly difficult to put Frax into any one category, and it is becoming a DeFi monster that attempts to attack all verticals. Frax started out as an algorithmic stablecoin, one of the only coins that can survive multiple ups and downs. Being a battle-tested algorithmic stablecoin is impressive in itself, but Frax did not stop there. Instead, Frax decided to actively try all new areas. From its trading AMM, to the lending market, Frax slowly expanded its territory to other DeFi markets.
Most projects that have tried this approach, like Sushiswap, have ended up fragmenting themselves too much, but Frax has done a great job of tying everything back to the core marketplace.
Frax is also a majority holder of Curve voting power, which you’ll notice is a trend this year. They intend to use that Curve voting power to increase the APY yield on their liquidity staking ETH product, frxETH. Like competing with cbETH and stETH, they can only offer base ETH yield minus fees. By redirecting their rewards (even short-term rewards) to frxETH, Frax should be able to capture a large portion of the market share in liquidity staking over time. Unlike some of the other projects featured here, Frax’s valuation was already quite high, and has risen significantly in the past few weeks due to the narrative surrounding liquidity staking protocols. I bought into the last dip and may wait for a “cooling off period” to occur before continuing to buy, but I think there is still a huge potential market for Frax to provide a best-in-class product by creating an interconnected protocol.
8.CurveFinance（CRV）
The ebb and flow of DeFi is driven by Curve. CRV voting can change the trend of any project in a single instance, breathing life into a project or completely defeating it. Curve may have started out as the most efficient trading protocol for its kind of trading pairs, but it quickly grew into an industry giant, providing incentivized liquidity to young projects that were just starting out. This model created the "Curve War", where other protocols competed to collect as much CRV as possible to incentivize their own pools. Curve then launched V2 pools to trade regular trading pairs with AMMs like Uniswap. Although V2 pools have grown a lot, my hunch is that these pools can still be expanded further to provide higher liquidity. However, I think the current catalyst for Curve is twofold. First, Curve and 1 inch have partnered to integrate Synthetix's atomic swap protocol, allowing them to create synthetic assets and swap them in and out of Curve pools for better virtual liquidity that currently does not exist. This provides an opportunity for a "new market" route that regular AMMs cannot compete. As Synthetix scales assets in this product, Curve V2 pools will benefit, allowing users to trade large amounts of liquidity across complex routes. Secondly, Curve is finally on track to release their long-awaited stablecoin, “crvUSD”, sometime this month. Rather than being a regular liquidation-based protocol, the system uses an automated liquidation method called LLAMA. This self-liquidating AMM runs through Curve’s pool, meaning that liquidation fees will automatically accrue to individual LPs on Curve, while borrowing fees will flow to veCRV holders (which in turn also benefits Convex, Conic, Yearn, and Frax). So why is the Curve stablecoin more interesting than other stablecoins? Part of the reason is that Curve is driving the most demand for stablecoins in the space. Every stablecoin pair on Curve is paired with Curve’s 3Pool. Even in a down market, 3Pool has driven nearly $600 million in stablecoin demand. However, there is no reason why 3Pool must have these assets, or that the base trading pairs must be current 3Pool. Curve DAO voters could vote to switch 3Pool from holding DAI to holding crvUSD, or better yet, they could vote that the base trading pair for measuring eligible stablecoins is crvUSD, not 3Pool, which would immediately create $600 million in crvUSD demand.While it looks like Curve will only take ETH as collateral at first, the LLAMA system is a way to ensure diverse collateral. As long as Curve has a V2 pool of assets backed by Conicomnipool, they can safely liquidate most assets. More importantly, the value here is reflective - as demand for crvUSD increases, more rewards flow to veCRV holders, which makes CRV more valuable, which means more projects want to control CRV votes, which increases demand for crvUSD, and the cycle continues.
9.Balancer（BAL）
Balancer has been a leader in novel mechanisms and it has two key features that I think will grow in value. Balancer is often overlooked. Balancer’s unique model makes it fundamental to DeFi, and I think the development we’re seeing is that the 80/20pool will become the core value that underpins the next wave of DeFi. A lot of teams are realizing that their locked token models (like xSushi or veCRV) are problematic. Because while locked tokens create scarcity and upward liquidity, they also create illiquidity issues for new large buyers, and weak bottoms in bear markets. At the same time, you can’t ask users to stake regular AMM trading pairs because impermanent loss will destroy returns, or positions will become so concentrated that your asset will never really go up or down and become a useless asset. So what to do? This requires balancing the 80/20pool, and this is what Balancer uses. By having users hold their own tokens and 20% of ETH, they ensure strong liquidity, but with lower impermanent loss for users. Of the teams I’ve spoken to recently, about a dozen are redesigning token economics, and 8 of them are talking about using 80/20pool - something that only Balancer really offers at the moment. I mentioned in last year’s 2022 Wealth Code article that I see Balancer as a B2B protocol that can provide unique liquidity products to other partners, and they are indeed better at it.
Balancer has had nearly 20 new partners and is growing its market share. This is the first time they are close to the top 10 in DeFi by TVL. Even during the crash, they have controlled their TVL better than most projects because Balancer has added new partners, not just new users.
But as I said last year, I think Balancer is a project that brings you unexpected wealth when you use it without knowing it because it is a core infrastructure. Balancer is a long-term play, it will either become a core pillar of DeFi or fail. But now, they are doing a good job of slowly weeding out new partners and unique integrations, so I am still a buyer of Balancer this year.
10.Cosmos（ATOM）
Cosmos is a network of interconnected blockchains that can easily design custom interoperability. When it comes to other L1s, I am skeptical. It takes a high standard of innovation and unique products to get past me. Cosmos achieves this through a simple modular SDK that allows anyone to build small custom blockchains using interconnected standards around communication and tooling. This means you can create a niche blockchain that is designed to be a dedicated AMM like Osmosis, or a cross-chain bridge like Gravity Well, or custody like Akash, and all of these blockchains have standard ways to communicate and interact natively. I personally think that the race for a monolithic blockchain as a core settlement layer is over. Ethereum won that race.
The next matches are:
1) Who wins at L2?
2) Who wins in the niche application chain.
Many competitors in the application chain space (such as Avax, Polygon, and BSC) are building application chains in a standard way. In fact, they are more appropriately called "microchains" rather than application chains. Polkadot's Parachains encountered major challenges in the early days, which hurt them. On the other hand, Cosmos focuses on building simple tools and standard ways to connect, but beyond that, it tries to keep components modular and not restrict the creativity of builders. We don't see a lot of innovation outside of the Ethereum ecosystem. We often only see incremental improvements. But Cosmos is one of the few projects where we can see exciting experiments and innovative implementations. So I think there is a good chance that Cosmos will be one of the non-Ethereum winners that will eventually stand out, and it is also an ecosystem full of opportunities.
11.Keep3r（KP3R）
Keep3r, with the halo of the AC project, is an important automation tool that supports most of DeFi. KP3R has had a difficult year. This is part of the reason why it ranks a little lower on my list this year, but I still believe that it is in the hands of talented builders and will continue to be a core infrastructure for DAOs. The main reason is still that they are the only protocol running in large-scale automated protocols. My prediction is that in this cycle, we will see a lot of old DeFi teams disappear and their applications will stagnate because no one runs regular functions anymore. Keep3r will play a key role as we continue to build more advanced cross-chain products and improve decentralization. Others like Chainlink and OZ Defender have their own automation tools. But so far, no tool has adopted and has a wide range of decentralized participants like the Keeper network, so I still think Keep3r will be a long-term winner.
12.Agoric（BLD）
Agoric is a Cosmos-based chain that implements a unique security and accessibility design pattern. Unlike most protocols in the space, which rely on smart contracts to custody your assets, Agoric was built from the ground up to let users interact with DeFi while keeping their assets in their own wallets. Agoric currently has a market cap of $125M ($476M FDV). Agoric has a lot of room to run and could be a unique, competitive L1 product.
13.ZCash（ZEC）
ZCash has received a lot of criticism in the past due to people confusing transparent addresses with shielded addresses, arguing that they are optional privacy. ZCash has also received flak because:
A) Acquired by Digital Currency Group;
B) There are high continuous mining rewards;
C) is a standalone coin, not a platform. And, everything is about to change.
ZCash is moving to PoS, just like Ethereum, and while the timeline is still changing, my guess is that it will happen sometime late this year/early next year and dramatically change the supply and demand of ZCash. The ZCash community is also deeply exploring the possibility of other tokens being issued on ZCash and using ZEC as gas. Once users are able to migrate their tokens to Zcash, new DeFi opportunities will be unlocked rapidly. While the Ethereum community is racing to perfect zero-knowledge proofs for L2, this is something the Zcash community has been working on since day one. Their current transaction speeds can run on a mobile phone in seconds. In contrast, something like Polygon’s zkEVM currently requires a prover with 1TB of RAM and 128 CPU cores. It’s a completely different ball game. It’s estimated that by 2025, the number of mobile devices (phones, iPads, smartwatches, etc.) will exceed 2.5:1. Someone is going to be the winner in mobile crypto. I think there’s an opportunity for ZEC’s fast payments to be done offline with proofs and support for DeFi. Imagine being able to transfer and trade money in seconds on a simple, low-end device, even with limited connectivity, no matter where you are in the world, and it’s all done privately. This is the dream that many cryptocurrencies have been pursuing, and ZCash is on the path to achieving this dream. The market cap is only $586 million (FDV is $935 million). Compared to the largest privacy coin, Monero, which has a market cap of $3.1 billion and has a potential for 6 times the market share even if the market does not rise. Monero is also not a platform. Therefore, considering the L1 value, ZCash has a higher potential.
14.AlchemixFinance（ALCX）
Alchemix broke the mold by designing the first self-repaying loan. But then the market crashed, yields plummeted, loans would never be repaid, and they started to struggle. But Alchemix did a great job redesigning V2 and gained decent traction even in a bear market. Their V2 now allows self-repaying, non-liquidating loans with up to 50% collateral. That is, if I have $100,000 in ETH, I can borrow $50,000 in ETH without worrying about liquidation. In a large market environment, your entire position could easily be liquidated. But on Alchemix, if the market falls, you won't be liquidated, it just takes longer to get your principal back. This means Alchemix allows me to take up to 50% of the loan value with minimal risk. And, as the collateral value rises, the annualized return of the treasury strategy rises again, and my loan is repaid faster. With a market cap of only $30 million ($40 million FDV), Alchemix has a TVL of over 3x its market cap even in a bear market. My hunch is that while regular users use self-repaying loans in a bull market, smart buyers will use it to buy discounted assets in a bear market. I think as APY pool rates continue to recover, Alchemix expands to other chains, and integrates new strategies on an ongoing basis, this team has strong long-term potential. Especially if they expand the number of assets they cover.
I predict that in the future they will deploy on every chain, providing an easy way to leverage loans with the native assets on that chain as collateral. If they can do that, I can see the potential for 20x+ in the long term.
It is undeniable that Alchemix is uniquely positioned to offer a new value proposition and rapidly scale to access capital locked across multiple chains.
15.Corner（Corner）
Canto is an EVM chain built on Cosmos. Canto aims to replace fee-charging infrastructure with designs that help reward decentralized public goods. Like having its own built-in native lending protocol and AMM. These built-in systems charge no fees other than the base incentives for LPs. It also has its own native stablecoin (NOTE) built into the lending market and managed through interest rate controls. But the truly unique design principle that I think has made Canto successful is its model around fee rewards. In future versions, when you deploy a smart contract, that contract will have a unique NFT attached to it. That NFT will earn a portion of all CANTOs associated with your contract for gas rewards. This means that protocols will make money based on how much they are used rather than a fixed fee model. This encourages developers to design protocols and systems that benefit the public good, not just those that can extract the most fees. CANTO has more TVL than many other larger chains, well ahead of Near, Cardano, Gnosis, and Aptos, all of which have multi-billion dollar market caps. Canto has a market cap of $47 million ($118 million FDV). Building a new L1 is hard. It’s hard to keep users interested in various new protocols (especially when those protocols compete with free built-in ones) and Canto will need to rely heavily on its gas reward program to keep the momentum going. If Canto can carve out some novel use cases that are hard to monetize elsewhere, this could be a real win. Think royalty-free NFT projects, or royalty-free AMMs. My prediction is that we’ll see some innovative experiments on Canto in the coming months, and if they can start to capture some markets, there will be a lot of growth potential. On top of that, the current ROI on staking is 21%, which is a big buffer against downside volatility. And lending on stablecoin pairs of NOTE/USDT or NOTE/USDC is 11%-12% APY on stablecoins. This is one of the best stablecoin yields I’ve found at scale on a reliable network.
16.API3DAO（API3）
There are several core problems with Oracle in encryption:
1) Free feeds are standard, but they can’t last forever;
2) Feed payment is unstable.
3) Cannot easily use multiple API sources.
API3 aims to solve these challenges in a novel way, and its "Airnode" design allows you to connect any API to Web3 in a trustless way, allowing you to run it in a cost-free third-party way. I would like to see API3 built in a more open way. This does not mean that I think API3 will become the default oracle provider for all DeFi. But in terms of risk vs reward, they have a clear growth opportunity.
17.AngleProtocol（ANGLE）
Cryptocurrency has been US-centric so far, and the stability of the US dollar is very important. As global economic uncertainty begins to fade and we see emerging markets begin to become viable investments again, there will be more interest in holding and trading other currencies. The currency FX market is actually the largest market in the world, with trillions of dollars of capital traded every day, and so far, none of it is on-chain because there are no viable non-USD stablecoins. Angle hopes to change this with their agEUR, which acts as a MakerDAO for the Euro, allowing you to open a vault on a variety of collateral at low interest rates. Currently, users can borrow agEUR at a fixed rate of 0.5%, collateralized by wstETH, wETH, wBTC, and other stablecoins. Given the low interest rate, this is the lowest cost stable ETH borrowing in existence, even if you immediately convert agEUR to USDC. To borrow DAI on MakerDAO, you either pay a whopping 3% APR or get a much lower loan-to-value ratio. But if you borrow in Euros, you can still earn rich returns through its incentive pool, which covers multiple chains and pays 4%-25% fees on stablecoin EUR/EUR trading pairs. This means that unless you think the USD/EUR exchange rate will fall another 25%+ this year, you might choose to invest in EUR pairs over USD pairs on popular farms like ConvexFinance or VelodromeFinance. Meanwhile, ANGLE has a market cap of just $5 million and a FDV of $25 million, which has a lot of potential upside considering the EUR is the second most traded currency in the world by volume. One of the ironies of crypto is that it is difficult to make a stablecoin alone because a lot of the liquidity in stablecoins comes from stablecoin pairs on Curve. On-chain EUR liquidity is slowly growing with the launch of Circle’s EUROC and Synthetix’s sEUR. My prediction is that it will take ANGLE a few years to gain a foothold, and as liquidity grows, they will need some large OTC desks to help them settle actual EUR. But as the Eurozone recovers, many Europeans will want to hold EUR on-chain, and as on-chain transactions become faster and cheaper, more and more FX trading will move on-chain, and EUR will be a large part of it.If Angle wants to succeed, they need to maintain a diverse but secure collateral, actively seek out incentive partners, and start using agEUR as collateral on other platforms. But given the outstanding global demand for the Euro, and the lower market cap, the risk reward is still a good opportunity for me.
18.Aura Finance（AURA）
Aura is to Balance what Convex is to Curve. It’s a locked liquidity staking market that helps boost rewards on the Balancer pool. If you believe in the Balancer thesis, then Aura is easy to get into. I love these lock-up token games because they really reward people who can patiently buy in and hold for 3-5 years. Markets are all about moving money from the impatient to the patient. Aura does this while letting you earn 50% APY on your staked tokens, and if Balancer does grow in sustained demand, there could eventually be a bribery protocol for Balancer votes (similar to the Votium protocol). Plus, it’s a great farming opportunity to get higher rewards in the pool even if you don’t have a large staked BAL position yourself. Aura has a market cap of $40M ($202M FDV), which is a very attractive ratio considering they hold $27M of BAL locked up in perpetuity and only release Aura when they earn new BAL. As we’ve seen with Convex, they could expand to other chains, or even use other products like Convex with Frax, thus expanding the scope of applications. There are potential catalysts in the current market scenario. But I think these tokens are more likely to go down than up, but if they go up, the rewards are huge.
19.GearboxProtocol（GEAR）
Gearbox is one of the most interesting new use cases in DeFi, creating a leveraged lending money market for DeFi applications, ultimately allowing users to participate in on-chain leveraged farming. This is a powerful mechanism that has generated some pretty strong returns for those who provide the assets. Earning 5%+ stablecoins in a one-sided non-impermanent loss pool on mainnet is now basically gone, except for Gear. Their pre-built strategies allow you to enter simple one-click farming positions and earn more APY. However, it is currently limited to a group of whitelisted users as it scales. Gearbox is moving slowly but with quality. If the team and community want to scale, they need to continue to leverage new assets and new strategies. But overall, the opportunity to be the only real source of leverage without overcollateralization is huge. This is a market worth tens of billions if you can seize the opportunity and cash out safely.
20.CapDotFinance
Cap is a community built, owned, and operated DEX that allows perpetual futures and margin trading. Their V3.1 was a big hit on Arbitrum, and their V4 promises to add hundreds of new assets to their perpetual product engine. Rewards are given to users who pool their assets to provide liquidity to the exchange, and then the remainder is used to buy back CAP tokens. This makes the project a pretty sizable gain for small retail investors. CapDotFinance still has a long way to go, but it is a vibrant young project that continues to deliver at an incredible pace and is on its way to becoming a giant like DyDdoxx.
21.LooksRare（LOOKS）
I think the NFT market will continue to expand. And I don't think OpenSea can take over, Blur will be overpriced and more focused on professional traders, and I like rewards. Of the existing attractive NFT markets, LooksRare is the only one that has rewards, is not overpriced, and doesn't look like OpenSea. 22% APY paid in LOOKS and wETH, and the commission is pretty stable. LooksRare will have to fight back against Blur to regain market share, but I think they can do it by focusing on Polygon and L2, and targeting consumers who are scared off by Blur's interface.
22.PickleFinance（PICKLE）
Pickle is kind of like Yearn vaults, but for automatically compounding rewards. It was a big hit when it launched, but died in the previous bear cycle. However, the team is still running, and their V2 supports almost all chains and thousands of farms. Despite this, you can still earn a good APY with Pickle Jars (Vaults), and will stake Pickle, vote on which vault gets rewards, and get a share of the fees, which are currently rewarded at 19% APY, which is quite good for a market cap with low usage. Pickle has a market cap of $643,000 and a FDV of $2.4 million. Smaller market cap. Pickle was on my list to buy last year before they launched V2, and it is still on my list now, but I don't own it because I can't actually buy enough volume to make it worthwhile. I've been waiting for it to develop so that I can buy reasonable quantities. I hope Pickle can solve some of the liquidity challenges, such as incentivizing Pickel/Weth pools like 80/20pool, so that the liquidity on the chain is better, and hope they continue to work hard to create a useful, effective and high-yielding product.
23.Sideshift（XAI）
Sideshift is a no-registration, no-KYC, non-custodial exchange that performs instant delivery cross-chain and cross-asset trades. You don’t need to register or share personal information to trade on multiple chains. Competitors like ChangeNow offer fiat trading, so they require KYC at certain thresholds. Sideshift only uses cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, so it is not considered a money service business for most jurisdictions. Most competitors also don’t allow you to trade with privacy coins, while Sideshift supports both Monero and ZCash, including ZCash shielded addresses. It has a wide range of assets across chains. It supports Ethereum, Optimm, Polygon, Fantom, Tron, Cosmos, Avalanche, and Arbitrrum for EVM chains. As well as Bitcoin, BSC, Cronos, Dash, Dogecoi, Litecoin, Tezos, Ripple, Stellar, Solana, Polkadot, and Kava native chains. Their native token, XAI, like their trading, is available to individuals who are not on US IP addresses. When staking XAI, you can get 50% of Sideshift's daily transaction fees, which is currently 50% APY. Sideshift is valued at $14 million. Before Ethereum's EVM sector was strong, services like Sideshift used to be more popular because they were key to cross-chain transactions. Projects like Shapeshift were once one of the largest and most profitable projects. When EVM dominated and everything moved to ETHDelta and Uniswap, they all suffered heavy policy blows and reduced interest in cross-chain transactions. My prediction is that as the transaction chains become more and more fragmented, there will be more and more such transaction services. After all, they are essentially just bridges, and there are actually more options.
Finally, Clipper, Polymarkets, Llama Airforce, and Polynomial are also on my watch list.
Hopefully, the market will finally turn around this year and we will all go up and not down. While 2022 will be a challenging year for cryptocurrencies, it will also be a very interesting year.
Note: This article is not investment advice, nor is it a prediction of where things are going to go, and it’s certainly not a flash in the pan.