Recent Research

📊 Check the Chain – Expanding DeFi on Solana – 6/23

• In this episode of Check the Chain, Ceteris and Medio dive into Solana’s emerging DeFi projects, focusing on the new perp exchange Cypher. They explore the competitive landscape, liquidity challenges, technological advantages, and the growth potential of Solana’s DeFi ecosystem. Tune in for valuable insights into the new DeFi projects on Solana.

📊 Market Note: The Surprising Interplay of AI & Cryptocurrencies – 6/22

• Even in a market with rising BTC dominance, AI-related tokens have outperformed the benchmark YTD (albeit to varying degrees).
• During such manic trends, the 24H volume on these assets tends to rival or even surpass that of BTC and ETH. However, that is yet to happen, suggesting that the AI trend may have more left in the tank.
• We broke down the price action and market dynamics of RNDR, AGIX, and FET.
• So far, it seems like RNDR stands to benefit the most, as it draws its bid from the GPU scaling hype, its association with Apple, and Nvidia’s raging success.

📊 NFT Debrief – June 2023 – 6/20

• Blend captured 93% of the NFT borrow volume market share in May, facilitating over 45.4k loans totaling $650M in volume.
• Nike Virtual Studios announced a collaboration with EA Sports Games to launch immersive experiences via .SWOOSH NFTs.
• We highlighted Spice Finance’s new innovations to lower the entry barriers to NFT lending.
• Instead of conducting multiple transactions to manage NFT lending strategies, which incur significant gas costs for individual lenders, Spice Vaults minimize gas costs for all lenders via socialization with all other vault depositors.

📊 Maverick Takes Aim at the DEX Landscape – 6/15

• Maverick offers directional liquidity provision, extreme capital efficiency, little to no slippage trades, and several QOL improvements for LPs.
• Maverick differs from most other AMMs with its use of liquidity bins. Liquidity bins are discrete price ranges similar to Uniswap v3’s ticks.
• The standardized nature of bins compared to ticks carries the benefit of fungible LP positions. This allows Maverick to support a liquidity mining apparatus where projects can permissionlessly incentivize liquidity via “boosted pools.”
• Maverick’s natural synergies with LST-fi and the growth of activity on zkSync could unlock its potential for sustained growth and broader adoption.

Relevant Reminder

📌 Battle for Supremacy: Blur vs. OpenSea Pro – 6/14

• OpenSea aims to cater to a broad user base, while Blur strategically targeted professional whale traders as the key to challenging OpenSea’s dominance.
• OpenSea responded to Blur’s incursion by launching OpenSea Pro, a marketplace and aggregator that caters specifically to professional traders.
• Blur’s bid pool order book has significantly enhanced the efficiency of the NFT market by narrowing bid-ask spreads, thus enabling smoother trading across collections.
• Blend achieved a remarkable feat by capturing 77% of the total NFT borrowing volume market share and facilitating over 32k loans totaling $466M in volume within 3 weeks.
• It is crucial to acknowledge that Blur’s metrics, particularly trading volume, might be inflated due to ongoing BLUR incentives.