Today, we continue to analyze the 35 projects that Grayscale is about to add to its holdings. As mentioned before, Grayscale invests, even in small projects, it can amount to tens of millions of USD. A single investment of tens of millions of USD could be a massive pump, and other ETFs may also enter these projects, so it’s necessary to prepare in advance and understand the fundamentals of these projects clearly. Among the 35 projects, I have categorized 13 of them under layer1: Aptos (APT), Celestia (TIA), Core (CORE), Cosmos (ATOM), Toncoin (TON), TRON (TRX), Internet Computer (ICP), Kaspa (KAS), VeChain (VET), Mantra (OM), Celo (CELO), Sei (SEI).
Today, we continue to analyze VET and OM.
9. Vechain (Ranked in the top 30 by market cap, is it the pride of domestic public chains?)
Seeing that Grayscale would actually choose this project, I am also very perplexed. We discussed this project last year, summarizing that its fundamentals are very poor, modified from Ethereum, currently has no ecosystem or applications, and is also a domestic public chain.
Currently, the official website has also been revamped. Previously introduced were domestic SAAS platform projects, such as food safety traceability SAAS platforms, product sustainability traceability platforms SAAS, multi-industry supply chain traceability platforms SAAS, low-code application building platforms, rapid on-chain platforms BAAS, IoT chip anti-counterfeiting traceability platforms, etc.
Regarding this company, Shanghai VeChain Information Technology Co., Ltd. should have been deregistered, so it’s highly likely that it has shifted overseas. Moreover, this year it updated its official website, which is entirely in English. Previously, the domestic project pages have all disappeared. It is striving to transform into an overseas web3 project and has also updated its white paper.
Let's analyze its fundamentals in detail:
1. Token Data
Currently priced at 0.023, similar to the bear market of 2018-19, and also similar to the bear market of 2022. It can be said that since its inception, except for a tenfold increase during the bull market of 2021, there has been almost no change afterward. By March 2024, it may only reach 0.04, doubling. Therefore, this performance is very poor. The total token supply is 85 billion, with 80 billion in circulation. The current market cap is 1.8 billion USD, and thankfully this project appeared early; otherwise, it would have likely collapsed long ago.
2. Ecosystem
The most important aspect of a public chain is its ecosystem. This project should have the lowest TVL among public chains with a market cap of 1.8 billion, bar none. Currently, it is less than 500,000 USD. The previously mentioned public chain projects also started very low, for example, ICP was also in the hundreds of thousands of USD initially, but now it has tens of millions of TVL. Even for a project like ICP, which is criticized, this VET seems to have not improved but rather worsened.
3. Technical Aspects
The consensus protocol is POA, proof of authority, currently controlled by 101 supernodes, all of which are rigorously KYC-verified. It is actually similar to Tron, controlled by itself, making it very centralized.
I really don't understand why Grayscale would choose him in the end, because if it's an Eastern concept, they would also choose CFX, not this one. Everyone can share their opinions.
10. Mantra (OM) (RWA Compliant Public Chain - Mantra's 40x Surge Potential Analysis)
We discussed this project back in April this year, when it surged by 100 times. The price mentioned then was 0.8, and currently, it's 1.4, which is an increase of nearly 60%. Currently, the project has unlocked 850 million out of a total of 880 million. Back in April, the unlocked amount was 790 million; in about six months, it has unlocked 60 million, suggesting that it should fully unlock in about three months.
However, currently, the project's mainnet and applications have not been launched, so the project might still have a strong backing. The important milestone for the project is the timing of the mainnet launch, which would be a significant positive development.
Introduction
MANTRA is a community-managed DeFi platform focused on staking, lending, and cross-chain DeFi products. MANTRA has built a suite of DeFi products, including a multi-asset staking platform, a money market lending protocol, a gaming lottery pool, and a stablecoin minting protocol. This suite is currently built on Ethereum but will also develop cross-chain products for Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Polkadot in the future.
MANTRA Chain is built on the Cosmos SDK, and it is also working to construct a protocol layer that supports various regulated activities. This includes on-chain identity verification, authorized access to products, and connections with fiat currency/banking through entry/exit points. MANTRA Chain was developed specifically for this purpose: to allow the building of Web3 applications on a high-performance, scalable blockchain architecture without permission, while also providing a toolkit for building regulated, compliant, and permissioned applications.
The project's biggest feature:
MANTRA obtained its first financial license in the UAE, enabling it to operate at the forefront of the rapidly developing RWA industry in the Middle East and Asia, where blockchain regulation is still quite strict. MANTRA's goal for 2024 is to tokenize a variety of asset classes, including real estate, private market funds, private equity, art, and government bonds.
In terms of technical compliance, MANTRA's on-chain decentralized identity (DID) system will provide a secure, efficient, and reusable means to verify personal identities to meet regulatory KYC/AML requirements. Once a user's identity is verified, MANTRA compliance will issue a Soulbound NFT / ID.
The second technical feature, MANTRA Token Service (MTS), is a powerful and flexible SDK (using Golang + NodeJS) that enables Web3 enterprises to create, issue, distribute, and manage their own digital assets on the MANTRA network.
One of the key features of MTS is that it allows businesses to create digital assets compliant with various regulatory frameworks, such as those for fiat currency, securities, commodities, or other financial instruments. This can make it easier for businesses to create and trade assets that are regulated in different jurisdictions.
Finally, it should be noted that the project has been in development for about 20 months, and the mainnet is still not online as of 2024. After four years, it has not gone live yet. You should know that it is not a completely new blockchain but built on Cosmos. We have seen many chains built on Cosmos that should be very quick, and there is a major question: in the absence of any progress, this project has been experiencing a frenzied and irrational pump, which must be suspicious. Moreover, we are not aware of this so-called first financial license from the UAE, so caution is still advised. Currently, I will re-rank the previous projects.
KAS≈Tron≈APT>Ton>atom>core≈ICP>TIA>OM>vehain.
