GM Digest #61

Gm with Valuable Alphas / Insights — Make Sure to DYOR. All of This is Not Financial Advice. Ape at Your Own Peril

Jones BuyBack Program

• @JonesDAO_io have announced that they will be having a buyback of $JONES tokens using all performance and withdrawal incentives gathered YTD from the jGLP, jUSDC and jAURA strategies

• Over the last year Jones has accumulated 255 ETH and 15000 $AURA tokens. All of the ETH and $AURA tokens will be used to buyback $JONES tokens

• The buybacks will begin in Q4 this year and will continue throughout of Q1 2024. Additionally, the Jones team hinted that there will be a revamp of the $JONES tokenomics

Thoughts: This buyback program will introduce around $429k worth of buying pressure for the $JONES token which is bullish for price action overall. $JONES tokenomics have been lackluster so far with no proper value-accrual mechanism / flywheel to support the token. Tokenomics overhaul utilizing veTokenomics would drastically change the attractiveness of $JONES — The protocol itself has maintained great TVL and has proven its PMF with all of its strategies

Metis Rewards on Aave

• @MetisDAO have kickstarted their incentives program and is starting by allocating $METIS tokens to incentivise @AaveAave. 100000 $METIS tokens have been allocated to Aave to increase liquidity in Aave pools

• The current incentivised pools are $METIS and ETH for the lending pools, and $METIS, ETH, m.USDC, m.USDT and m.DAI for borrowing

• Current APYs are 11-20% for lending and 27-43% for borrowing

Thoughts: The rewards are quite attractive currently but unfortunately, the deposits are already capped at the moment. Nevertheless, I believe that this program will be successful in attracting liquidity to the Metis ecosystem for the short term and it will be up to the Metis team to make those liquidity stick

Vesta Finance Vote

• There is currently a proposal deciding the future of Vesta Finance. There are currently 4 proposals for the Vesta team and they will be outlined below:

⇢ VSP-5: A token redemption where $VSTA is redeemed for a pro-rata share of the treasury (minus $1.5m) which adds up to $0.439 per token. The $1.5m will be used for the Vesta Team’s runway. There will also be no future equity or token for $VSTA holders

⇢ VSP-6: To unwind the project and $VSTA is redeemed for the full portion of the treasury which would be roughly $0.507 per token

⇢ To come up with another plan

⇢ To do nothing

• Currently the majority seems to be leaning towards VSP-6 with 86% Voting To Unwind and 14% Voting To Do Nothing. The end date for voting is Sep 22

• Quick Recap: Due to cultural misalignment, lack of shipping, and lack of coherence, in the week of September, Atum and Midnight, the two other co-founders beside Mikey, asked to get bought out by the Vesta treasury for $0.4 per token. Each holds 2.1m tokens, so the deal meant using the treasury to pay them $840k per person

• Full details on what happened can be found in GM Digest #51:

https://twitter.com/Defi0xJeff/status/1700735845798740388

Thoughts: Based on the current votes, it appears that the community no longer sees the future of the protocol (despite all the exciting roadmap) and wants them to unwind completely with a split of the full treasury amount. Vesta would be a good reminder to founders to always be shipping and improving their products whenever possible and that community is always a strong factor contributing to a project’s success

Gauro & Mellivora Rugged

• $GAURO the ponzi shitcoins with a lot of fluffy lingo that aims to generate 0.6% interest every hour & $MLVR ponzi utilizing ETH to Buyback & Burn

• Both protocols are from the save dev(s) and are both rugged. These coins have been trending for the past 2-3 days from the way their ponziomics are structured

Thoughts: In my opinion, better for you to avoid daily shitcoining and just focus on high-conviction picks. If the project is not gonna outperform ETH over the long term then there’s no point right? (Learned this mindset from a great founder)

Ledgity Multi-Airdrop

• @LedgityYield announced Multi-Airdrop to reward its earliest community members. Up to 16% of 1yr $LDY supply will be airdropped

• The reason why it’s called “Multi” is because in addition to $LDY, it will distribute tokens from 10+ of our Linea & Arbitrum partners (Partners tokens will be revealed all along the airdrop farming phase)

• You can still complete tasks & quests to be eligible for $LDY Airdrop. Check out the Multi-Airdrop interface complete tasks to obtain “airdrop entries 🎫”. At least 20,000 airdrop entries are required to be eligible to the airdrop

• Ledgity offers stablecoins holders with a real, stable and high-efficiency yield backed by Real World Assets (RWA). Besides airdrop campaign there’s a pre-mining campaign where you lock your USDC and farm for $LDY

Thoughts: Free money for those hunting for airdrop / for those who are bored

Vaultka Launch Plan

• @Vaultkaofficial will launch their $VKA in 4 Rounds

⇢ Sip-to-Earn Airdrop: Sep 19 - Oct 31, earns points and climbs the leaderboard. The higher you are, the more $esVKA you’ll earn

⇢ $VKA TGE: Oct 16 - Oct 19, Traditional Launch with Hard Cap of 500 E for 8% Supply. Market Cap will be around ~$800k / all liquid $VKA without lockups

⇢ Power-up Drinks: Oct 20 - Oct 23, All lending vaults deposit will earn $esVKA on top

⇢ Last Call Cheers: Oct 24, Everything goes live — Liquidity bootstrapping rewards, leverage up to 10x, protocol fees allocate to $esVKA

• Vaultka is a leverage farming protocol that focuses only on Perp DEXes. The highest-demand product on Vaultka right now is leverage on VLP (Vela Exchange)

Thoughts: One of my most anticipated Leverage Yield Farming Protocol on Arbitrum. I’ve been advising them for about 3 months now. They have a lot of interesting products coming pretty soon in the next few weeks before TGE. Products that are gonna create even more hype & more return than the VLP Leverage Strat.

GRO DAO Unwinds

• @gro_dao Vote 37 “Gro Protocol and Gro DAO to unwind” has just passed with 70.95% in favor of Option 1 to Unwind

• The difficult market, underperformance of the Gro protocol, and key departures in the Groda Pod have put Gro DAO at a critical juncture

• The flagship risk & yield tranching have been underperforming for an extended period, Key contributor departures and failed deliverables have created a leadership void

• Immediate unwinding of both Gro protocol and Gro DAO will kickstart → Extend Groda for 3 months (Oct 3rd - Jan 3rd) to focus on unwinding the protocol and the DAO, with a budget of 180,000 USDC. Treasury will be distributed to all who deposit their GRO into a redemption contract, within a 4-week time frame

• Gro is DeFi yield aggregator that makes it easy to earn stablecoin yields with tranching & automation.

Thoughts: Not close with the GRO DAO or have not known the community before today at all so can’t comment here. But sad to see another DAO winding down because of the market

BasoX v2

• @Baso_Finance announced its v2 enhancements “BasoX” introducing Concentrated Liquidity (CL) and $BASOX token

• Holders of veBaso and xBaso, as well as Baso LPs, will receive an airdrop of BasoX. The snapshot has not yet been taken

• Baso v2 will launch on Base testnet this week. User can get $BASOX WL via (i) participating in testnets (ii) Zealy quests (iii) WLs from partner KOLs and DAOS (iv) Baso WL will get BasoX WL

Thoughts: The move to branch out Concentrated Liquidity & Create $BASOX token as the main beneficiary of CL is similar to BaseSwap & BaseSwapX. This moves is good to attract more hype & speculation from the community for the new token but it dwindles the value that can be accrued to the original token. Personally not my cup of tea, the move basically plunges the value of $BASO further and bring the value & hype to $BASOX (new shiny thing)

Convex x f(x) Protocol

• @ConvexFinance welcome @protocol_fx to the Convex family. Once f(x) launches $FXN, Convex will introduce cvxFXN and the corresponding @curvefi pool

• As with every other Convex derivative, FXN will be locked in perpetuity & voting rights will be managed by $vlCVX holders

• Users can stake cvxFXN on Convex Finance to earn a share of fees obtained by staking their veFXN tokens

• f(x) Protocol creates a new class of decentralized low vol asset paired with a new leveraged long ETH perpetual token (similar to Mori Finance)

Thoughts: Convex, the original governance aggregator of Curve has f(x) protocol into its governance ecosystem. This move brings more hype & value to f(x) protocol, signaling trust from Convex, and adding an additional layer for users to earn more rewards by staking the token in Convex

Mori Finance TGE

• @Mori_Finance $MORI TGE is launching this Thursday Sep 21

• Mori was able to raise 2 rounds of public sale with 3% Supply sold quickly (within seconds) in each round

• Implied Starting MCap will be around ~$800k with $10m FDV

• My Thread on Mori:

https://twitter.com/Defi0xJeff/status/1683515153378320384

Thoughts: Not sure how this is gonna go, market remains dry. Don’t think there’ll be a lot of buy pressure to support the initial market cap

Aptos x Coinbase

• @Aptos_Network teams up with @coinbase to onboard billions of users to Web3. Petra, wallet from Aptos Labs now features Coinbase Pay

• With the Petra Wallet x Coinbase Pay integration, users have another seamless way to get APT and join the Aptos ecosystem through easy Fiat Onramps

• Aptos’ TVL has been stagnant since its inception, TVL currently stands at $44m.

Thoughts: Coinbase is currently second to Binance in terms of volume. This integration is definitely good for Aptos as it allows users to move into the Aptos ecosystem more seamlessly. Personally have not seen something exciting on MOVE Language Eco (Aptos & Sui) beyond the initial hype & speculation when they first launched. Gonna keep my eyes open though

ReYIELD Univ3 Automation

• @REYIELDLabs simplifies Uniswap v3 CL operations with simple UI/UX and automated rebalancing on out-of-position LPs

• Reyield boasts an automated parameter adjustments, enabling automatic compounding with 28-Day back-test data

Introducing Predictoor

• @oceanprotocol’s Predictoor is a dapp and a stack for prediction feeds. It has accountability for accuracy, via staking. It’s globally distributed and censorship-resistant, by being on-chain. The team expects its accuracy to improve over time, due to its incentive structure

• The first use case is DeFi token prediction because users can close the data value-creation loop quickly to make tangible $

• Predictoor agents source prediction feeds, submits individual prediction and stake on them → Trader agents buy aggregate predictions (then use the predictions to buy or sell). Accurate predictions will yield both Predictoor and Trader $$$

• Roadmap: Team anticipates adding more Crypto Feeds, CEX & DEX, more tokens, more timescales, predictions beyond token prices. Future predictions in other verticals like real estate, weather, climate, transportation, and agriculture.

• Ocean Protocol was founded to level the playing field for AI and data. Ocean tools enable people to privately & securely publish, exchange, and consume data. Ocean Protocol core team builds the Ocean Predictoor product

• Note: There will be 37,000 OCEAN weekly rewards to incentivize predictoors

Garlam Email got Hacked

• Oppa @GarlamWON gw@momentum6 Email got hacked and is sending weird emails to others

• Somebody also impersonated @KyleSamani, sending out Google Docs from what appears to be his non-Multicoin email address

• Somebody is targeting Crypto VCs for scams. Watch out guys!

Thoughts: Always be careful in the Web3 space and it doesn’t hurt to be skeptical. Garlam also made a thread on how to protect yourself from these spoofs- https://x.com/garlamwon/status/1704213399259992559?s=46&t=uFhFxWu2a5HxIKlrqf2s0A

Eclipse Mainnet

• @EclipseFND introduces its general-purpose Ethereum L2 powered by the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM)

• The Eclipse L2 utilizes various pieces of the modular stack namely:

→ Ethereum as the settlement layer

→ The SVM as its execution environment

→ Celestia as its data availability layer

→ RISC Zero for ZK proofs of fraud

• What is novel here is that Eclipse will be using SVM for its execution environment to have parallel execution, localized fee market where a spike in gas fees due to one protocol won’t result in an increase of fees for the rest of the chain, better state management so that validators don’t have to worry about constantly upgrading their storage disks, EVM compatibility, higher throughput, resilience, and efficiency

Thoughts: An interesting L2 that seems to be getting the best of all worlds- Solana’s execution environment for fast and efficient transactions, the security of Ethereum and Celestia’s DA. Based on the modular stack, it seems like Eclipse is set to be a powerful L2.

Camelot v3 Defi Edge vs Gamma

• @CamelotDEX Automated CL Vaults on ETH-USDC & ARB-USDC from @DefiEdge (ALO) vs @GammaStrategies (Narrow). Which one fares better in term of Return against HODL (%)

⇢ ETH-USDC: Defi Edge 6.58% vs Gamma -4.81%

⇢ ARB-USDC: Defi Edge 0.48% vs Gamma -44.65%

• This simulation is done on the period of 14/08/23 to 10/09/23. Suggests checking out Defi Edge latest Medium article if you’re curious on how they did this

Thoughts: Even Liquidity Managers generate negative return against HODL (%). If you’re thinking of LPing in Univ3, be really careful as the IL can be exacerbated. Suggests only LP for stable & LST pairs when you’re starting out.

Narrative Section — L2 Rollup Bull Run Q4 Starting with Arbitrum

• L2 Bull Run is going to start in Q4 with EIP-4844 Upgrade. Fees on L2 will be ~95% cheaper and more users will flock into L2s with the best infrastructure, ecosystem, community, and narrative

• Arbitrum will be the first & best beneficiary of EIP-4844 due to its positioning as the Defi Hub. Arbitrum recently passed its 50m ARB incentives proposal (budget) for protocols along with the Request for Comment (RFC) made by Plutus for $ARB staking incentives. A few Arb coins started to rally already — $TND 90%+, $LODE 46%, $GRAIL 15%, $MOD 15%, $ZYB 23%, GMD 23%

• Camelot will obviously be one of the major native protocol to benefit from this → when activity picks up → more volume → more fees → more revenue for xGRAIL → GRAIL pumps

• Other L2s like Base (New Growing Defi Hub), zkSync (zk L3 & First zk-Rollup), Optimism (L2 OP Stack), Mantle (New Defi Hub) will benefit from EIP-4844 also but for now. I’ll focus on Arbitrum due to my familiarity and due to the level of catalysts (that’s better) than other L2s

More Arbitrum Picks and other L2s Defi Conviction Picks Coming Soon…….

*Reminder to Size Your Entry for Degen Plays and Take Your Principal Out (Take Profits) Whenever You Hit Your Target*