On-chain trading activity has continued to decline, with the 7-day rolling volumes for DEXes on both Ethereum and Solana reaching levels last seen in February.

🥲

Since Ethereum's transition to PoS after The Merge, its price has lagged 44% behind Bitcoin.

Following the Dencun upgrade, the situation has worsened.
The ETH/BTC price has dropped to 0.0425, its lowest since April 2021.

Key reasons in my new thread.

The Bitcoin Sharpe ratio (short-term) is now in the green zone, suggesting limited short-term downtrend potential.

Well, at least some good news here.

You love my weekly research compilation, right?
Here’s more from this week.

General
➖ Binance: Monthly Market Insights - September 2024
➖ ConsenSys: 86% of Web3 Professionals Are Confident about The Future of Web3
➖ Glassnode: A Network Overview
➖ Galaxy: Ethereum All Core Developers Consensus Call #141 Writeup
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 9/6

Market
➖ Crypto.com: Asset Allocation With Crypto
➖ Coinbase: Weekly: Much Ado About Nothing

DeFi
➖ Cryptorank: Future of Prediction Markets After Elections
➖ Crypto.com: Decentralised Perpetuals Market

Blockchains & networks
➖ 4pillars: Taiko - The True Ethereum L2

Tokens & currencies
➖ 4pillars: Bonk: Beyond Meme, Into Culture
➖ CoinGecko: State of Stablecoins: 2024

GameFi & NFTs
➖ CoinGecko: Magic Eden Marks 6th Month as Top Marketplace With 37% Share

If I were to rank L2s by conviction, the list would be:

1 Arbitrum: Controls 40% of L2 TVL, has many active users, nearly the same number of MAUs as Ethereum, and features strong DeFi.

2 Mantle: Possesses Web3’s second-largest treasury, boasts good user retention, has the highest percentage of tokens in circulation across L2s, with the upcoming COOK spin-off and native DeFi products like mETH gaining traction.

3 Optimism: Features the OP Superchain thesis but has decreased user activity compared to Arbitrum, despite a comparable FDV.

4 Base: Exhibits high transaction activity, mostly associated with memecoins, which tend to have a very short life cycle.

5 Linea: Shows average metrics with ongoing airdrop activity. Although the initial excitement has waned, Consensys might deliver something noteworthy.

6 ZKSync & Scroll: ZKSync has good tech and developer activity, though a poorly executed airdrop led to decreased user activity. Scroll has seen a good influx of users farming the airdrop, but its long-term sustainability is doubtful.

7 Blast & Starknet: No comment necessary; the data speaks for itself.

The red market is the ultimate stress test for protocols, exposing where the real users are.

Here's my big research on the state of Ethereum L2s, packed with visuals and on-chain data insights ↓

Link to my Substack article

Delphi Digital has reviewed their 2023 predictions regarding the L2 wars. You can read about how the situation and expert opinions have evolved in their latest thread.

This complements my recent research on Ethereum L2 solutions.

Sorting Pumpdotfun terminal by market cap reveals that only 92 meme coins have a capitalization exceeding $1 million, out of over 2 million coins launched on the platform.

That's just 0.0046%.

Artemis, in collaboration with Visa and Castle Island Ventures, has released research on the emerging stablecoin market.

The report explores the growing demand for stablecoins, new all-time highs, and their relationship with the US dollar.

There’s an important shift happening now raising the $WBTC FUD and paving the way for higher adoption of alternative bitcoin-pegged assets.

Here’s my full timeline for Sky (ex Maker) offboarding WBTC and what has led to this outcome.

Aptos recently reported a surge in on-chain activity, with record numbers in transactions and active wallets.

This increase includes a substantial volume of low-value transactions, raising speculation that bots might be driving much of this growth.

The challenge now is to distinguish legitimate growth from bot-driven activity, a common concern in blockchain ecosystems.

Here's the list of 10 largest upcoming unlocks by the largest % impact on circulating supply, according to data from Messari.

Numbers for $ONDO are frightening (=ಠ _ ಠ=)

Interestingly, $FDUSD is now the third most popular asset on Ethereum by 24h trading volumes.

I love pushing some entartaining content during weekends.

Here’s my new thread taking you back to September 2023 and showcasing the changes in market cap, TVL dominance, L2 landscape, and more – over the course of just one year.

Enjoy the journey!

A few surprising protocols on TokenTerminal's MAU leaderboard:

• Chingari: SocialFi
• Pixels: GameFi
• Mento: Stablecoins
• Runiverse: GameFi
• CARV: Infrastructure, AI + gaming

We're seeing many new names and a shift in user interest.

The Aave v3.2 proposal introduces "Liquid eModes," enabling assets to qualify for multiple efficiency modes (eModes).

This enhancement boosts borrowing flexibility and capital efficiency. It also removes outdated stable rate logic, streamlining the codebase and reducing gas costs.

Web3 performance by categories, for protocols in the $100M – $1B market cap range ↓

24h 7d 30d
DeFi -3.07% -0.01% +0.68%
Chains -3.63% +2.22% +1.51%
Exchanges -2.45% +2.91% +8.89%
Gaming -4.62% -0.12% +0.29%
Scaling -4.42% -3.83% -6.09%
Interop -3.89% -1.14% +1.59%
Lending -3.09% +3.04% +6.45%
DePIN -4.24% +0.4% -1.06%
Memes +17.6% +25.5% +13.3%
AI -4.30% +4.77% +0.15%

Average -2.03% +1.95% +1.59%

Data source: Messari, for 279 protocols within selected market cap range