The market has been relatively calm these days. We continue to look at the new holdings series by Grayscale. Today we will discuss two projects: the cross-chain RUNE and the EVM series NEON, both of which have been covered before.
Cross-chain & EVM includes two currencies, THORChain (RUNE) and Neon (NEON).
27.RUNE (Leading Project in Cross-Chain Swap Field - Thorchain Analysis)
This project was discussed in December 2023, when the price was 6.4, and now it is only 5.2, so it has regressed. The highest increase was about 8 times (from 1.2 to 10 USD), then it retraced to 3.3. Currently, the rebound strength can only be described as average, with a market cap of 1.7 billion USD and an FDV of 2.1 billion USD. It can be considered a leading project in the cross-chain interoperability field, so we will continue to observe if there are changes in its fundamentals.
Introduction
THORChain is a decentralized trading platform that supports cross-chain trading of assets in liquidity pools on Binance Chain, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and AVAX blockchains. Users can stake assets in the liquidity pools to earn trading fees and RUNE token rewards.
THORChain was founded in 2018, and its underlying development language is based on Cosmos's SDK. It uses Cosmos's Tindermint consensus protocol. THORChain is an independent Layer 1 ecosystem, and its multi-chain ecosystem token trading adopts a traditional cross-chain bridge and DEX liquidity pool approach. In summary, THORChain enables cross-chain transactions by deploying its own wallets on different chains (such as Ethereum and BTC) while enhancing liquidity for different tokens through liquidity pools.
Currently, there is not much change in the product. It still supports swap, earn, borrow, and other services. The ecosystem has 73 services, but most are still browsers, wallets, and its own swap services.
The table above shows business data, with a 24H trading volume of 130 million and a TVL of 800 million (but the data on DEFIlama shows 380 million). Recently, both trading volume and TVL have been increasing, but there is still a certain gap compared to the peak in 2022.
Token Data
Currently, the token price is 5.2, and 81% has been unlocked. When discussed in December last year, 70% was unlocked, which means about 12% has been unlocked in a year. This amount is still somewhat large, and future unlocks will likely proceed at a slower pace. Currently, this project can only be described as standard, neither particularly good nor particularly bad. The sector is not a hot one, so the token price performance is still quite poor, but it is an established project that has been running for six years, so it has some accumulated value.
28.NEON (Potential Analysis of EVM-Neon on Solana Chain)
This project was also discussed in December 2023, when the token price was 0.48, and now it is only 0.35, continuing to decline. It peaked at 1.4 in January 2024, so after discussing it, it also doubled, but the subsequent poor performance is mainly due to a large number of unlocks after June 2024, and it is also a VC round, having previously raised 45 million USD.
Introduction
Neon is an EVM-compatible solution on the Solana ecosystem, bringing Ethereum compatibility to the Solana blockchain. Neon EVM provides low-friction solutions that allow dApp developers to effectively use Ethereum tools to scale and access liquidity on Solana. Low GAS fees of 0.006 USD, TPS of 2000+, and block time of 400ms.
2. Advantages of Neon EVM
-Provides lower gas fees and higher transaction throughput
-Supports cross-chain communication:
-Allows Ethereum developers to build on the Solana blockchain
-Neon EVM is a cross-chain solution that allows dApp developers to leverage the advantages of Solana to scale their services, offer new products such as packaged or high-frequency trading, expand user bases, and minimize costs, including gas fees. Neon EVM is fully compatible with Ethereum on Solana.
Operating Principle
The Neon EVM architecture can be summarized into three main components:
EVM itself - it is a complete EVM simulation on the Solana blockchain.
Web3 Proxy - It is a tool that packages Neon transactions into Solana transactions.
EVM Governance - It is a complete governance system for managing Neon EVM resources.
Token Data
Total token supply is 1 billion, circulating supply is 57 million, and circulation rate is 5.7%. The current unlocking situation is 5% per month, unlocking 50% in a year? Such an exaggerated unlocking would nearly ruin the token price, and last time we mentioned its TVL was only 400,000. Currently, it is reported that the TVL is only 1 million, indicating almost no change.
To summarize these two projects, the first RUNE is a cross-chain DeFi platform, which is quite standard and stable. I think it might be better to buy some leading DeFi tokens instead. The second NEON actually has an excellent concept, allowing an EVM project to cross into SOL, making it easy to migrate EVM applications to the SOL chain, which should increase SOL's ecosystem applications. In theory, it should be beneficial, but the massive token price unlocks are likely to be detrimental.
