DeFi summer 2.0? 'Gen 2' tokens on a tear amid wider market slump

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Decentralized finance 'Gen2' tokens sprint forward as the broader DeFi market gasps for air

DeFi summer 2.0? 'Gen 2' tokens on a tear amid wider market slumpNEWS
As some brand-name decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens sputter, a crop of new projects have emerged that are catching strong bids on the back of aggressive yield farming programs, generous airdrops, and significant technical advances.

It’s a set of outlier projects pushing forward on both price and fundamentals that has led one crypto analyst, eGirl Capital’s mewny, to brand them as DeFi’s “Gen 2.”


Mewny, who in an interview with Cointelegraph pitched eGirl Capital as “an org that takes itself as a very serious joke,” says that Gen 2 tokens have garnered attention due to their well-cultivated communities and clever token distribution models — both of which lead to a “recursive” price-and-sentiment loop.

“I think in terms of market interest it’s more about seeking novelty and narrative at this stage in the cycle. Fundamental analysis will be more important when the market cools off and utility is the only backstop to valuations. Hot narratives tend to trend around grassroots projects that have carved out a category for themselves in the market,” they said.

While investors might be eager to ape into these fast-rising new tokens, it’s worth asking what the projects are doing, whether they’re sustainable, and if not how much farther they have to run.

Pumpamentals or fundamentals?
The Gen 2 phenomena echoes the “DeFi summer” of last year, filled with “DeFi stimulus check” airdrops, fat farming APYs, and soaring token prices — as well as a harrowing spate of hacks, heists, and rugpulls.

However, mewny says that there’s a population of investors that emerged from that period continuously looking for technical progress as opposed to shooting stars.

“There are less quick “me too” projects in defi. An investor may think that those projects never attracted much liquidity in the first place but they overestimate the wisdom of the market if that’s the case. They did and do pull liquidity, especially from participants who felt priced out or late to the first movers.This has given the floor to legitimate projects that have not stopped building despite the market’s shift in focus. ”
One such Gen 2 riser pulling liquidity is Inverse Finance. After the launch of a yield farming program for a forthcoming synthetic stablecoin protocol, the Inverse Finance DAO narrowly voted to make the INV governance token tradable. As a result, the formerly valueless token airdrop of 80 INV is now priced at over $100,000, likely the most lucrative airdrop in Defi history.

Another Gen 2 star is Alchemix — one of eGirl Capital’s first announced investments. Alchemix’s protocol also centers on a synthetic stablecoin, alUSD, but issues the stablecoin from collateral deposited into Yearn.Finance’s yield-bearing vaults. The result is a token loan that pays for itself — a new model that eGirl thinks could become a standard.

“eGirl thinks trading yield-bearing interest will be an important primitive in DeFi. Quantifying and valuing future yield unlocks a lot of usable value that can be reinvested in the market,” they said.

The wider markets appears to agree with eGirl’s thesis, as Alchemix recently announced that the protocol has eclipsed half a billion in total value locked:


Staying power?
By contrast, governance tokens for many of the top names in DeFi, such as Aave and Yearn.Finance, are in the red on a 30-day basis. But even with flagship names stalling out, DeFi’s closely-watched aggregate TVL figure is up on the month, rising over $8.4 billion to $56.8 billion per DeFi Llama — progress carried in part on the back of Gen 2 projects.

The comparatively wrinkled, desiccated dinosaurs of DeFi may have some signs of life left in them, however. Multiple major projects have significant updates in the works, including Uniswap’s version 3, Sushiswap’s Bentobox lending platform, a liquidity mining proposal working through Aave’s governance process, and Balancer’s version 2.

These developments could mean that DeFi’s “Gen 2” phenomena is simply a temporary, intra-sector rotation, and that the “majors'' are soon to roar back. It would be a predictable move in mewny’s view, who says “every defi protocol needs at least 1 bear market to prove technical soundness.”

What’s more, according to mewny some of the signs of market irrationality around both Gen 2 tokens as well as the wider DeFi space — such as triple and even quadruple-digit farming yields — may be gone sooner rather than later.

“I don’t think it’s sustainable for any project in regular market conditions. We are not in regular conditions at the moment. Speculators have propped up potentially unsustainable DeFi protocols for a while now.”
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Andrew Thurman
ANDREW THURMAN
11 HOURS AGO
Basketball billionaires form NBA blockchain use case committee
Mark Cuban and Vivek Ranadive headline the list of owners exploring blockchain use cases for the NBA

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Basketball billionaires form NBA blockchain use case committeeNEWS
Blockchain tech may soon become an integral part of the world’s largest basketball league.

According to a report from Sportico yesterday, a group of some of the wealthiest and most powerful National Basketball Association team owners are forming a committee to investigate blockchain use cases for the NBA.

Called the Blockchain Advisory Subcommittee, members include Mark Cuban, Joe Tsai, Ted Leonsis, Steve Pagliuca, Vivek Ranadive and Ryan Sweeney. According to Sportico, the goal of the subcommittee is to “explore ways to integrate blockchain across the league’s business.”

Two obvious possible use cases include ticketing and collectibles. Blockchain-based ticketing has made significant strides and now has an active userbase, and Mark cuban in particular has been vocal about his support for using blockchain to enable his team to reap profits from secondhand sales and scalping.

Likewise, blockchain-based collectibles have found an unusually snug product-market fit with the NBA’s highlights and stat-obsessed fans. Flow blockchain’s NBA Topshot tradable highlight project has raked in over a quarter billion in sales. Additionally, the company counts multiple NBA players as investors.

However, Cuban said in a statement to Sportico that the committee was not founded as a response to the exploding popularity of NBA Topshot, and is instead focused on broader applications of blockchain technology.

Cuban is by now a familiar name to members of the crypto community. Despite a past history of disparaging digital currencies, he’s now embraced them — especially Ethereum-native protocols and tools like NFTs. After a halfhearted NFT release, on-chain sleuths found his address and discovered the billionaire owns a number of DeFi protocol tokens.

Additionally, according to a recent Tweet his decision to accept Dogecoin for Mavericks tickets and merch appears to have been a success:

The @dallasmavs have done more than 20,000 in transactions, making us the LARGEST MERCHANT IN THE WORLD ! We thank all of you and can only say that if we sell another 6,556,000,000 worth of Mavs merch, will DEFINITELY HIT $1 !!!

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) March 6, 2021
Fans might also recognize Vivek Ranadive, the owner of the Sacramento Kings. After buying the team in 2013, he advanced a number of tech-centric and radical ideas, including playing 4-on-5 defense and setting up an app to let fans vote on the next play. When it comes to blockchain, he was also one of the first to accept crypto for tickets, and set up a mining facility in a Kings arena.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-summer-2-0-gen-2-tokens-on-a-tear-amid-wider-market-slump