In A New Framework For Understanding Moats in Crypto Markets, I established a simple heuristic for assessing the defensibility of a crypto application:

If I fork this app, with $50M in token subsidies, can I steal and maintain market share?

If the answer is yes, it is likely a matter of time before an emerging fork or undifferentiated competitor erodes that applications market share. Conversely, if the answer is no, the app by default possesses what I believe is downstream of every defensible crypto app — “un-forkable” and “un-subsidizable” properties.

While naturally this framework weeds out most applications, one of the few verticals that possess strong “un-forkable” and “un-subsidizable” properties is LSTs. Their defensibility is ultimately rooted in self-reinforcing two-sided network effects.

On the