Original author: Yu Zhong Kuang Shui, Crypto KOL
GM, the December outlook is here.
Dino coins are not my area of expertise, and it's difficult to grasp these ancient coins. This outlook mainly aims to discuss some directions I am looking at.
If you find this content useful, feel free to like and share.
1/ AI Agent
After a series of hype around AI Memecoins, AI Agent applications, and infrastructure, it's time to look further ahead.
First, let me share my personal perception:
1. It is unlikely that new pure AI MEME will emerge; only $GOAT and $ACT, which are the two AI Memes that made it to Binance, remain after the sifting (I don't have much thought about $TURBO). However, both $GOAT and $ACT are market-making by Wintermute, and I believe those on board are suffering, like me.
2. Improvement in market aesthetics: AI MEME → AI Agent applications → More sophisticated AI Agent applications & AI Agent infrastructure.
My thoughts on future developments:
1. AI Agents with completely new output forms will be more popular;
For example, the AI Agents currently popular in the market are basically tweet bots, competing more on 'content novelty', like $AIXBT's market analysis. As long as you produce differentiated high-quality output, the market will respond.
Differentiated high-quality output covers two levels,
Firstly, new content forms, where the key is 'traffic', meaning the ability to attract a sufficient audience. Currently, it's text content, and we can see the new AI Agents exploring and trying video content and podcast content (including things like $ZEREBRO and $LUNA releasing music singles, as well as $POD doing podcast-related things);
Secondly, new behavioral models, such as launching an agent that can trade memecoins independently. In the future, we should see more exploration of new behavioral models (this is also why I was optimistic about $FLOWER and $LOLA). If new behavioral models yield good results, the market will respond.
2. The market will increasingly show demand for AI-related infrastructure;
This is easy to understand, so I won't elaborate too much. Building a tall building from the ground up relies on a solid foundation. $VIRTUAL $AI16Z $VVWIFU are representatives of this type of token. Besides these basic issuance facilities, it's also worth paying attention to infrastructures that integrate these facilities, such as Seraph on Virtuals.
3. The trend of the future is 'agents that can operate independently and collaborate with each other';
We can already see such trends, for example, what $UBC is currently doing (Agent to Agent). In the future, AI Agents on Virtuals may also develop in this direction. $LUM is the beginning of this type of conceptual token; it is a cultural meme without practicality (although there are teams starting to do something based on $LUM, I still don't fully grasp their ideas).
P.S. Currently, my $LUM is in a loss state. Mentioning it does not constitute financial advice.
2/ Ethereum
I personally believe Ethereum will experience a wave of major growth (referring to EB exchange rates), just not sure when this major growth will occur. I still hold the same view as in November:
1. The BTC ETF will have a spillover effect;
2. Large institutions like BlackRock are working on RWA on Ethereum, which means the underlying value of Ethereum cannot be ignored;
3. The rise of the Base AI Agent ecosystem;
From the price performance perspective, tokens like $ONDO $LINK $UNI $ENS have started to become strong. This means the market has begun to focus on Ethereum-related Beta targets. This is a bullish signal.
As for the choices in Ethereum Beta, there are only three directions:
1. ETH staking related ($LDO $EIGEN LRT);
2. DeFi & RWA ($AAVE $UNI $COW $MKR $ONDO $LINK);
3. Memes ($MOG $PEPE $SHRUB). I personally prefer DeFi-related ones and indirectly hold $PENDLE and $EIGEN through $PNP and $EGP.
3/ Public chain war
In my previous article on Stacks, I mentioned that the public chain war is about to begin again—in December you can see: 1) Fantom Sonic mainnet is about to launch; 2) Avalanche9000 mainnet will launch on December 16; 3) Aptos data growth + institutional adoption + ETP; 4) Stacks will introduce sBTC after the Satoshi upgrade to gain more adoption, etc.
Most of the surviving old public chains are now trying to take advantage of the good market to make moves. We should see a new round of Layer 1 battles in December and Q1 of next year. Don't forget that this public chain war has a brand new participant: HyperLiquid. From my perspective, the weight of $HYPE is not as heavy as we imagined, and there are relatively few participants/holders from the Chinese community (especially compared to $ACT $PNUT). $HYPE still has upward potential.
The ones mentioned above are all quite good; their common point is 'willing to release expectations to drive prices' (the public chain I like the most is Fantom). I will write another article introducing the updates on Fantom and Avalanche.
Aside from Layer 1, I will pay attention to $METIS and Base among Ethereum Layer 2 chains. You can check out this project on Metis @ScoreMilk, which is the reason I am focusing on Metis.
Lastly, a note about Base; Base has a very unique tone, and when participating, try not to focus on whether the concept is good or not, but rather whether it meets the needs of the Coinbase Cabal. Otherwise, even if the concept is good, it is likely just a fleeting trend.
4/ Chain abstraction
Just a brief mention of chain abstraction.
Chain abstraction/intention abstraction is a concept I am quite optimistic about, as it can lower the entry barrier to blockchain and reduce the complexity on-chain.
In this track, I only look at the product, not the token price—if the product is useful, that's enough; the price fluctuations of the token are actually not that important. Moreover, I believe chain abstraction/intention abstraction still needs time to improve and develop.
Friends who like this track can check out the project @ParticleNtwrk. Particle is a modular & chain abstraction Layer 1 (which I have introduced before), whose core function is to 'provide users with a single address and interaction front-end across chains through a universal account'. You can also take a look at the chain abstraction framework of @NEARProtocol.
5/ What other notable events are there in December?
1. This week, $IO will announce something (remember the AI trio I was optimistic about? $IO $GRASS $TAO);
2. 12.10 $ME TGE (we can see some signs of NFT revival, which I personally feel may be related to Opensea);
3. Coinbase delist $WBTC;
4. The AI infrastructure on Solana is worth paying attention to, $SHDW $SNS
5. $HNT is a project I am very optimistic about; I believe $HNT will perform relatively well in this round (just look at the mobile data, although few people mention it, mobile users have actually maintained a good growth rate).
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