Anecdotally speaking, back in 2021, Charm Finance seemed to have the most momentum out of the otherwise underwhelming Uniswap v3 active management sector.
Charm featured an ambitious portfolio of products that were always filled to their deposit caps. Charm featured cube tokens (similar to power perpetuals) and an options AMM, which were sunset in order to focus on the v3 active management product, Alpha Vaults.
The liquidity management sector, which includes projects like Gamma, Arrakis and xToken, was characterized by widespread doubts over their effectiveness and a lack of transparency into performance.
Charm’s momentum died off and the community dissipated. In the meantime, Arrakis has steadily improved and asserted itself as the runaway leader in active liquidity management for the time being. It currently houses over $200M in TVL and offers unique ways of incentivization with protocol-owned liquidity through its PALM product.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Charm v2 has been announced and will launch on mainnet July 10. V2 promises fully on-chain, low cost strategies with completely transparent and comprehensive performance analytics. Charm Finance has teased a token for years, and is known for conservative deposit caps and prudent rollouts. It could be worthwhile to monitor the situation closely.
