The Delphi Year In Review: 2021 Highlights, Staff Picks, & Hits

Editor’s Note

What are Delphi analysts reading over the holidays? In truth, more Delphi research. Below, you’ll find the best Delphi research pieces of 2021, handpicked by the analysts who wrote them. Our research team identified their favorite briefs from this year, listed below in no particular order.

Note: We’ve removed the paywall on all linked briefs in the spirit of giving. So please, send these on to friends and family you’re trying to cryptopill. (If you ask us, print-outs could make an excellent stocking stuffer). Happy Holidays!

With love,

The Delphi Research Team

1. Axie Fundamentals That Can’t Be Overlooked

Full post: Axie Fundamentals That Can’t Be Overlooked
Authors: Yan Liberman, CFA, CAIA, Joo Kian, and Jayden Andrew
TLDR: Ronin has made breeding more accessible to many users due to negligible gas fees compared to Ethereum, resulting in the growth of Axie counts, breeding fees, and marketplace volume.

2. L1 vs L2: Entering The Endgame

Full post: L1 vs L2: Entering The Endgame
Author: Can Gurel
TLDR: The newest form of modular chains, known as specialized data availability (DA) layers, is designed to act solely as a shared security layer for rollups. Given their scalability advantages, DA chains may become the end game of blockchain scaling. Celestia is the pioneering project on this front.

3. Ranking NFT Platforms: A Guide For Brands

Full post: Ranking NFT Platforms: A Guide For Brands
Authors: Piers Kicks, Medio Demarco, and Alex Gedevani
TLDR: While the trade-off between security and scalability holds true for each of the platforms shown, the magnitude of the trade-off can vary materially between them, based on the specific implementation.

4. Convex Continues Compounding CRV

Full post: Convex Continues Compounding CRV
Authors: Duncan Reucassel, and Jeremy Ong
TLDR: Convex has been able to capture meaningful value thus far from Curve, generating cumulative protocol revenue of over $11.3m in only 3 months. 5% of all yield earned is paid to CVX stakers which, when current figures are annualized, is roughly $18.4m a year. This equates to a fully diluted P/E of 38.5.

5. The Dawn of Decentralized Derivatives

Full post: The Dawn of Decentralized Derivatives
Author: Ashwath Balakrishnan
TLDR: The hunt for scalability continues across multiple different venues. Synthetix on Optimism, AlphaX & MCDEX on BSC, Vega & Injective on native app-chains, Serum on Solana, etc. In many cases, the derivatives exchange and scaling solution are being developed in tandem with one another. The race is on to deliver and gain market share.

6. Lido Dominates Liquid Staking

Full post: Lido Dominates Liquid Staking
Authors: Paul Burlage, and Duncan Reucassel
TLDR: Lido dominates the staking derivatives sector, with an 81% market share on Ethereum that continues to move higher.

7. Uniswap v3 Charms The Market

Full post: Uniswap v3 Charms The Market
Author: Ashwath Balakrishnan
TLDR: Uniswap V3 implements “concentrated liquidity”, compressing the XYK price curve into a range that the LP chooses. It also replaces the static 0.30% trading fee that V2 has with three fee tiers instead: 0.05%, 0.30% and 1.00%. UniV3 brings with it greater flexibility but also greater complexity.

8. The Cosmos Ecosystem Has Arrived

Full post: The Cosmos Ecosystem Has Arrived
Authors: Alex Gedevani and Medio Demarco
TLDR: The Cosmos ecosystem is comprised of several Application-Specific Blockchains (“App-Chains”), which are all optimized for their given use case. In the past, these App-Chains were siloed and unable to communicate with one another. Now, with IBC seeing increased adoption, that is starting to change.

9. Art Blocks & The Hunt For A Metaverse Picasso

Full post: Art Blocks & The Hunt For A Metaverse Picasso
Author: Jayden Andrew
TLDR: Art Blocks sales have gone from virtually nil at the start of the summer to regularly clearing days with 10,000 ETH of volume in the final weeks of August. Art Blocks collections fit into 3 categories – Curated, Playground and Factory. Curated collections have consistently accounted for the majority of total sales volume and their pieces have set record high prices. Fidenza, Chromie Squiggle, and Ringers are the top curated collections by volume.

10. Flashing A Light On The Dark Forest

Full post: Flashing A Light On The Dark Forest
Authors: Joo Kian, Genevieve Yeoh, Paul Burlage, and Medio Demarco
TLDR: Flashbots is a tool for both the efficient extraction of MEV and the minimization of its negative externalities. It brings together the various miners and bot operators, giving them a more formal way to cooperate and share in the MEV upside together. Bidding on MEV opportunities is done via a private channel, which reduces the negative externalities tied to gas bidding wars and failed transaction reverts.

11. Out From Chaos Comes THORSynths

Full post: Out From Chaos Comes THORSynths
Authors: Can Gurel, and Yan Liberman, CFA, CAIA
TLDR: THORChain’s future is THORSynths; synthetic representations of non-Rune Assets pooled. The primary purpose of Synths is to be used for fast & cheap transactions significantly driving up Volume on the network. Furthermore, even though Synths contribute to pools (minted by depositing Rune to pool) they are designed to protect full-price exposure to underlying asset.

12. Appraising Digital Real Estate: The World of Lunacia

Full post: Appraising Digital Real Estate: The World of Lunacia
Authors: Medio Demarco, Jeremy Parris, Joo Kian, and Aaron D.
TLDR: Land activity and speculation have steadily been on the rise since May, benefiting from the recent virality and overall growth of the @Axieinfinity ecosystem. Floor prices have risen by 230% to 313% over that time depending on Land type.