how to DD a marketplace protocol in 60 seconds:

0. what is the protocol's service? "asset exchange"
1. who is the demand-side customer? "trader"
2. who is the supply-side contributor? "LP"
3. what does the supply-side contribute? "capital"
4. what fee does the demand-side pay? "trading fee"
5. what is the protocol's take rate? "0-100%, e.g. 10%"

🤖 Basic listing
✅ gas used
✅ transactions
✅ active addresses

🏦 Standardized listing (e.g. @OpenChat)
✅ net deposits, active loans, trading volume, etc.
✅ fees, revenue, token incentives, earnings, etc.
✅ daily, weekly, monthly active users
✅ community analyst coverage

ICYMI: The fully diluted market cap of @reflexerfinance (FLX) is up ~4x in the past month.

Number of VC-backed DeFi builders who are not trying to build a monopoly: 0

there are many pros with the "uniswap for lending" model that @MorphoLabs has opted for

the tradeoff (assuming similar interest & take rates + current vault curator performance fees):

with a similar active loan book, morpho will generate ~50% less revenue than @aave, since it needs to share revenue with vault curators like @gauntlet_xyz

🚨 ICYMI: Onchain leverage via lending protocols is at all-time highs. Prior all-time high was in Dec '21.

Top chains in the Polkadot ecosystem, ranked by monthly transaction count:

🥇 @NeuroWebAI
🥈 @one_frequency
🥉 @Polkadot
4⃣ @MoonbeamNetwork
5⃣ @EnterTheMythos
6⃣ @hyperbridge
7⃣ @hydration_net
8⃣ @AcalaNetwork
9⃣ @InterlayHQ
🔟 @PolimecProtocol
11. @polkadex
12. @Unique_NFTchain
13. @centrifuge
14. @NodleNetwork

Fastest growing lending protocols, based on 7d growth (%) in active loans:

ICYMI: In December, Bitcoin miners earned $26m from transaction fees and $788m from newly issued BTC.

Bitcoin's security budget = miner revenue = transaction fees + newly issued BTC.

💡📊 HAVING A CHAIN ECOSYSTEM DASHBOARD ON TOKEN TERMINAL = UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

Why?

The chain gets 24/7/365 data-driven:

🔹 stakeholder reporting (accountability)
🔹 app ecosystem visibility (growth marketing)
🔹 progress monitoring (product analytics)

Case example: @base 🔵

ICYMI: A daily active user on @OpenChat spends approximately 10 minutes per day on the app.

Key takeaways:

🔸Daily active users (DAUs) are trending up. The DAUs on OpenChat have increased by ~7x since Feb '24, from 2k to 15k.

🔸User time spent on the app is trending up. Total time spent on the app each day has grown from 300 to 2300 hours since Feb '24. This means that an individual user spends on average ~10 minutes on OpenChat each day.

🔸Incentives drive usage. The uptick in DAUs in June '24 was partly a result of the CHAT rewards program. These incentives have converted many occasional users into daily users.

Top 15 projects with the biggest 7d uptick in the # of tokenholders.

Top 5:
1. @MorphoLabs
2. @Aleph__Zero
3. @FenixFinance
4. @shufflecom
5. @ZircuitL2

ICYMI: Natively minted USDT supply on Aptos is up from $130m to $340m during Dec '24.

Which @Aptos apps will these stables flow to? ✍️

ICYMI: ~25k users on @OpenChat have submitted a proof of unique personhood via @DecideAI_.

This means that ~10% of OpenChat's users have been confirmed to be unique human users.

even protocols with "immutable code" are **dynamic businesses**

if you extrapolated UNI's future revenue potential as fees * 10-25% take rate

you would have missed out on UNI's new value capture mechanism on the Unichain

OWNERSHIP & CONTROL OVER FEE STREAMS DOES ACTUALLY MATTER

one example

afaik, paradigm has invested in both COIN and OP

✅ if Ethereum scales mostly via Base (COIN) & The Superchain (OP), it’s all good

BUT

❌ if Ethereum scales mostly via Arbitrum (ARB), it’s not great

nor does it comfort paradigm's LPs that Arbitrum (ARB) is “extremely Ethereum-aligned & part of Ethereum”

paradigm’s investments cannot capture revenue (and thereby upside) from fees paid in the Arbitrum (ARB) ecosystem

ICYMI: There's $135 billion worth of ETH staked across 1.1m validators.

Over $6 billion has been bridged from Ethereum L1 to Base L2.

Some see a nice trendline, others see billions of idle assets that should be put to more productive use.