Author: Donovan Choy, Blockworks; Compiled by: Bai Shui, Jinse Finance

Pendle

Pendle exists because cryptocurrency wants to speculate.

In Pendle's brief history, the team has consistently reiterated its yield trading products, using stablecoins and the notorious 'DeFi 2.0' narrative from the 2021 bull market (Olympus DAO), leading to liquid-staked tokens, real-world assets on Arbitrum, and liquidity re-staking during 2021.

Until early 2024, Pendle's token explosion achieved remarkable milestones, with its TVL soaring from millions of dollars to billions. Pendle's Principle Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT) yield mechanisms remain indispensable tools for anyone looking to execute any form of leveraged points or fixed income.

Fluid

Fluid is a perfect example of innovation. Fluid draws on many successful primitives from DeFi, such as concentrated liquidity from Uniswap v3 and utilization curves from Aave, and then redesigns traditional AMM liquidity provisioning from the ground up.

With its 'smart debt' and 'smart collateral' mechanisms, Fluid has achieved millions of dollars in DEX deep liquidity pools, technically having a TVL of $0. This capital efficiency is a clever combination of user debt from lending protocols and AMM liquidity pools.

Ethena

Stablecoins are one of the hardest areas to compete in. This has enabled USDe to reach a market cap of $6 billion in just one year, which is impressive.

Previous stablecoins were built along the spectrum of centralization (USDT) and scalability (DAI). In contrast, Ethena has reached a series of impressive business development agreements with CEX and designed USDe, a scalable stablecoin that leverages CEX-DEX financing rate arbitrage and provides users with yields.

GEODNET

To enable GPS technology to achieve centimeter-level accuracy, traditional companies have deployed thousands of real-time kinematic (RTK) networks globally, such as base stations and mobile stations.

GEODNET utilizes crypto token incentives to expand the deployment of the RTK network. According to data from November, GEODNET has deployed at least 10,000 sites in 140 countries, surpassing the combined total of 5,000 sites from traditional providers Trimble and Hexagon.

Notably, GEODNET has significant cost advantages. Deploying base stations using GEODNET costs about $700, which is 97% cheaper than the traditional cost of $25,000. If this isn't innovation, I don't know what is.

Virtuals

Virtuals is the leading 'pick and shovel' game in the recent AI agent craze.

This is an AI agent platform where anyone can generate tokenized AI agents. Similar to Pump.fun, once the $420,000 market cap standard is met, the native tokens of the agents will be bound to the DEX liquidity pool (Uniswap v2).

Virtuals is built on Base and has spawned at least 12,000 individual AI agents since its inception, including the popular anime ship Luna, which operates 24/7 and can receive tips in their respective tokens.

The innovation of Virtual comes from the combination of many different parts, including LLM models, crypto wallets, innovative value-added token economics, NFTs, and IPFS for data storage.