What do we know about Polkadot?
It’s something very controversial, for sure.

Here’s my overview of Polkadot’s latest performance (it’s not as bad as it might seem).

Bridges continue to maintain parity.

According to Artemis, none of the bridges account for more than 20% of the volume during regular weeks, except for Circle's CCTP. This week, Arbitrum also stood out.

You asked, I found ^^

Here’s a very good post from Ignas outlining the upcoming TGE of $EIGEN, expected for September 30th.

If you have some $EIGEN you want to sell on TGE, make sure to unstake them now as it takes 7 days.

Personal thoughts: I think the sell volume on day one will be quite heavy. EigenLayer was one of the most farmed airdrops in history, and many KOLs received extra $EIGEN allocations. They will likely sell. I plan to sell 70% of my allocation and buy back later.

EigenLayer has a first-mover advantage, but new projects like Karak and Symbiotic are entering the race. I believe it will remain the dominant LRT, similar to Lido’s position in the LST field, but weak hands need to be wiped out.

So, my plan is to buy at a lower price than TGE and then stake, ideally.

PS: These are just my thoughts, not a plan to follow. Always do your independent research.

Top countries by Bitcoin holdings according to Arkham:

1. United States – $12.16B
2. United Kingdom – $3.67B
3. Bhutan – $782.46M
4. El Salvador – $351.75M

Germany could have made the list, but its holdings dropped from $3.56B to $435 this year ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Comparing the performance of $BTC and $ETH against the largest TradFi assets, $BTC lags behind only $NVIDIA, while $ETH is the underdog.

This explains the poor inflows into ETH ETFs compared to BTC ETFs.

Franklin Templeton's global institution's Treasury product, previously available only on Polygon and Stellar, launched on Arbitrum on August 8.

Since then, it has quickly grown to $17.6 million, far surpassing its $2.1 million market cap on Polygon.

The stablecoin supply has risen by over 25% this year and continues to grow rapidly, nearing its all-time high of $188 billion.

This is a significant metric, indicating the amount of capital ready to be invested in crypto assets at any moment.

On September 19th, BananaGun experienced a series of unauthorized transfers, after which the bot was switched off for investigation.

On Friday, the bot was back online with a 6-hour transfer delay.

Today, I received this message on Telegram.
Stay safe.

GameFi has long been a strong bet for driving adoption.
However, over time, the bottlenecks have become more apparent.

What's the current state of Web3 gaming?
And what are the games to watch?

Check out my summary of Delphil's "Mid Year Gaming Review" study ↓

USDT’s market capitalization has peaked in market value, approaching the $120 billion mark. This figure has grown by just over 24% since the beginning of the year.

Unsurprisingly, Tether continues to maintain its lead in the stablecoin market.

Restaking is not just EigenLayer, Karak, and Symbiotic.

There’s also Picasso and Solayer.

More to come?

Some insights on the current state of Ethereum:

– The 7-day average transaction fee has surged by 314% compared to early September.
– Daily ETH burning increased by 1600% during this period.
– The number of active addresses on Ethereum dropped to a yearly low of 385K.

Investors have shifted from Bitcoin to gold.

Gold prices are reaching record highs, while Bitcoin prices are relatively flat. This negative correlation may be due to investors currently opting for less volatile traditional assets.

The number of stablecoin projects with 10M+ circulating supply hit a record in Q3 2024.

And there is still Q4 ahead and the launch of coins from Revolut and BitGo.

Ethereum remains the leader in the high end NFT market.

15 of the 16 top sales are accounted for by this network. The exception was the BOOGLE on Solana, which sold for $130,000.

Entertainment companies are exploring Web3, but its primary focus remains gaming.

In the video streaming sector, only a few dApps, like Theta, are leveraging the Web3 economy to boost next-generation, real-world applications.

Here’s my overview of their closest competitor, Script Network, launching on mainnet soon.

The number of addresses and transactions on TON DEXs is rapidly growing.

The leading exchange in this ecosystem remains STON.fi, while DeDust and Megaton Finance are currently losing influence.

This is the first time in my 8-year Web3 journey that I feel like we’re lacking a clear direction or thesis.

In the past, we always had dominant narratives to rally around, with a few trends catching up in the background. Now, attention feels completely scattered.

I notice this uncertainty when reading reports from leading Web3 research firms: scattered topics, if/when-based conclusions, fewer deep dives, and more reports focusing on the state of specific sectors.

Nothing groundbreaking.

You might argue: “We’re building the infrastructure for the next generation of consumer, AI, social, and gaming apps. This stage is necessary, and it’s fine.”

That’s true—to an extent.

Look at gaming chains. The competition is fierce, but we have a limited number of promising games emerging. Many teams are betting on high-load applications, but this won’t pay off for most, even if/when gaming becomes the next big thing.

Chain abstraction? Another service-focused development meant to lower barriers for the next wave of apps—but no one really knows what those apps will be.

All these efforts are exciting, but they’re based on assumptions, not facts.

Back in the day, Axie brought tons of users to Web3 without needing complex infrastructure. The same goes for Stepn or even SteemIt (anyone still remember that first popular social platform from 2016?).

So here’s my controversial take: we’re building infrastructure not because it’s urgently needed, but because we don’t know what else to build.

I agree if you disagree.