Bullish on Solana and Ethereum ecosystem, bearish on RWA and NFT transactions
Bullish on Solana, Ethereum, AI track, LayerZero, and Cosmos ecosystem. Personally, I believe that the RWA narrative will slow down in 2024, and I am bearish on the development of Base. The market share of GMX-style platforms will be replaced by central limit order books managed by market makers and intent-based DEXs.
Bullish Narrative:
1) Solana has become a winner in the early stages of the bull market. The huge airdrops of Jito and Pyth are just the beginning, followed by Jupiter, Tensor, and Margin.fi;
2) The market has begun to realize the importance of spot ETFs to cryptocurrency capital flows, and it is expected that the same scenario as Bitcoin will be repeated before the approval of the ETH spot ETF in mid-2024;
3) The maturity of the L2 ecosystem;
4) I expect LayerZero to bring a new trend of full-chain tokens. Account abstraction will allow users to hold assets and trade them on their favorite L2 or L1, rather than constantly crossing chains;
5) In 2024, multiple AI projects will enter the top 50 in terms of market value;
6) Despite the confusion in ATOM governance, founder issues, team disagreements, and the lack of real utility of the Cosmos Hub, Tendermint consensus and interoperability are both excellent technologies that may ultimately make for good investments in 2024;
7) Bitcoin block space requirements must increase over time to ensure network security. I am looking at DEX, wallet infrastructure, stablecoins, and lending markets for simple DeFi upside;
8) It is expected that there will be native crypto games that attract native and non-native users;
9) Curve/Frax/Convex ecosystem is booming;
10) Intent-based DEX is a 0 to 1 innovation: Symm_IO has a good start, although the founding team is a member of the dying Fantom ecosystem.
Bearish narrative:
1) The RWA narrative is slowing down: Cryptocurrencies are chasing the same returns that all traditional financial investors are chasing, and I expect demand for this product to wane before it really gains momentum;
2) Bearish on Base: I don’t think it’s difficult for Base to attract users. The difficulty lies in how to attract teams to build an ecosystem on the chain.
3) NFT trading volume will not be as high as during the 2021 frenzy;
4) Small inflows into Bitcoin ETFs before the second half of 2024: I don’t expect significant inflows until the third quarter of next year. I think most retail and high-net-worth investors have already invested through personal accounts or private equity funds;
5) GMX-style platforms will lose market share to central limit order books managed by market makers (e.g. dYdX, Hyperliquid, and Vertex) and intent-based DEXs (e.g. Thena, IntentX, Pear Protocol, Based Markets).
Solana Ecosystem Review: What Are the Layout Opportunities?
Solana ecological projects include DeFi, DePIN and AI.
DeFi field:
1) Orca: The DEX with the smoothest interaction experience in the SOL ecosystem, backed by top capital: Polychain, Coinbase Ventures and Solana Capital;
2) Marinade: A non-custodial liquidity staking agreement on SOL. Staking SOL tokens can earn mSOL in return. mSOL can circulate freely in the SOL ecosystem and can participate in other DeFi applications such as lending, trading, and oracles. It can also be redeemed at any time. The project has no VC and generates cash flow completely spontaneously. Currently, the TVL of the SOL ecosystem ranks first. But the market value is only 78M;
3) Pyth Network: Faster price update frequency, data type diversity, confidence intervals that can protect protocols and users, and cross-chain price feeding. In the future, RWA and cross-chain interoperability will be comparable to LINK.
GameFi Field:
1) Aurory: A JRPG-style game that draws on the origin of the turn-based battle game "Pokemon";
2) Star Atlas: A space-themed massively multiplayer online game (MMO) centered around space exploration, territorial control, and political domination;
3) Kineko: An online gambling company with a gambling license and DeFi integration, offering various card games and sports betting. Owning KNK tokens gives you revenue sharing and governance rights. At the same time, 33.33% of the casino's profits are used to buy back and destroy KNK tokens.
Depin Field:
1) Helium: A pioneer in the DePIN track, its ecological network is the most mature and stronger than other IOT ecosystems. With the support of Helium, its ecological project MOBILE is very popular in North America, with an astonishing increase;
2) Helium Mobile: Helium’s 5G business, dedicated to providing decentralized 5G network infrastructure for mobile networks;
3) Hivemapper: A decentralized map collection application. Contributors can collect data by installing the official dashcam and earn HONEY as a reward.
AI Field:
1) Render Network: Distributed GPU rendering computing network;
2) Synesis One: The world’s first AI crowdsourcing Train2Earn platform, where anyone can train AI and be rewarded for it. The platform creates a level playing field for AI companies around the world through the X2Earn model, regardless of where they are located;
3) Nosana CI: A distributed GPU network protocol that allows anyone to rent computing power, thereby reducing costs; it solves the problem of GPU shortage in the market, making it easier for individuals and businesses to obtain the necessary computing power and get rid of the constraints of high hardware costs.
Finally, there are still many things that are not written down, such as specific opportunities and specific decisions. These things are often not something that can be summarized in one article.
