Crypto is an attention economy. Therefore, we believe it is not only important to pay attention to fundamentals, but also the trends and narratives which capture attention and consequently value.
This is not an endorsement of any of the listed projects- these are teams and/or products we believe are worth paying attention to in 2024 and will be researching further. Not financial advice, not any official endorsement
“I’m a business man. Not a priest”
Restaking
Following the Shapella upgrade which enabled withdrawals for ETH stakers, we have witnessed the rise of the liquid staking ecosystem, worth $48B today and the largest active sector in crypto today. Liquid staking tokens offer stakers opportunities to earn additional yield on their native assets, e.g. ETH, by minting a derivative asset known as a Liquid Staking Token (LST), which can be deployed across various DeFi applications to earn additional yield.
Restaking is simply the process of staking an asset again after it has already been staked- the idea is to extend Ethereum’s pooled security (staked ETH) as a way to bootstrap security for new networks. It is important to distinguish between native and liquid restaking - native restaking involves staking $ETH and creating an “EigenPod“ which sets a withdrawal credential to an EigenLayer smart contract. This lets the EigenLayer system recognize your restaked amount, and one can then opt into new services written into a service contract. Liquid restaking enables LST holders to “stake their stake” and receive a derivative token to represent their restaking position called an LRT. For a comprehensive overview of the liquid restaking frontier, see Shoal’s research report.
Overall, restaking introduces a new layer of yield for the asset holder, more security for the underlying network in theory, and certainly more risk depending on who you ask. Excitement around this new development is growing as there is currently over $8.9B in deposits in Eigenlayer and over $4.6B in liquid restaking protocols.
There are important risks to consider; many liquid restaking platforms have not enabled withdrawals yet, so exercise caution as you are depositing into a one-way contract at the time. Read the latest Shoal report for a comprehensive overview of the risks of current liquid restaking platforms. Furthermore, it will be important to ensure the restaking strategy marketplace does not converge to create a new layer of centralization risk at the staking operator level.
That said, with a healthy dose of caution, we expect restaking protocols to perform well in 2024.
Eigenlayer - Having pioneered restaking, Eigenlayer is the key layer to enabling restaking strategies. The protocol has already accrued more deposits (TVL) than Uniswap and could easily overthrow Aave and Maker (#3 and #2 respectively) by the end of the year if not within the next few months. There is an airdrop coming, so it will be interesting to see how user retention and outflows normalize following the release of the token. While a decline in TVL and users is expected, the question is to which extent and for how long, as this will provide valuable insight for forming long-term convictions around the potential for Eigenlayer and the restaking ecosystem.
Etherfi - Etherfi enables users to deposit ETH to be natively restaked with Eigenlayer. The protocol has the highest value of deposits among all liquid restaking protocols ($1.1B) and is one of the few restaking protocols to have enabled withdrawals for users. Stakers retain custody of their ETH while delegating stake, and Etherfi mints an NFT for every validator launched through the protocol.
Picasso Network ($PICA) - While restaking is native to Ethereum, it is still a young and untapped sector for which a multi-chain future seems inevitable. As restaking becomes more crowded on Ethereum, teams will explore other ecosystems and blockchains to tap into. This is already underway on Solana, which has a $1.9B liquid staking market today ripe for growth. Picasso is a new DeFi interoperability layer from the Composable Finance team that is native to the Polkadot and Kusama network, supporting communication across multiple ecosystems via the Composable IBC module. The Solana <> IBC connection is the first AVS in the Picasso restaking layer, enabling users to stake SOL or any supported Solana LST. This unlocks a new sector of cross-chain applications and use cases between Solana and IBC-enabled chains, as other ecosystems will be able to take advantage of Solana’s speed, low fees, and growing user base and liquidity.
Solana 2.0
Slowly and then all at once following the FTX collapse, Solana went parabolic across all metrics in Q4 2023 around the time of the JTO airdrop and annual Breakpoint conference. We believe this is only the start. With more excitement around upcoming airdrops spurring ecosystem activity, critical infrastructure and network developments on the horizon, and continued recognition across mainstream media picking up, Solana is well-poised to do be a strong performer in the coming year and beyond. The long standing thesis is simple and contingent on Moore’s Law, as well as the notion that user-facing performance specs, like high throughput and low costs, have set up Solana to be the consumer-chain of the future.
Solana recently faced a temporary network outage (2/6) after having perfect uptime for over a year. The root cause was identified to be a bug that was already fixed in testnet but still needed to be implemented on mainnet-beta. Though it is evident that outages inflict damage on Solana’s public perception, the fact is that network ultimately managed to go back up within an hour and will only become more resilient in these situations moving forward, especially with the rise of validator client diversity in the ecosystem.
Jupiter Exchange ($JUP) (see our thesis)
Firedancer - A high performance validator client from Jump Crypto, which is expected to bring significant improvements in performance and throughput, and more importantly strengthens Solana’s validator client diversity. Read this introduction from Helius for a comprehensive introduction.
Kamino Finance - Simply put, Kamino aims to be the liquidity powerhouse for Solana DeFi. Users can supply/borrow with leverage, earn as an LP with automated CLMM vaults, and even long/short tokens and trade with leverage. A one-stop shop similar to Jupiter which could evolve into a competitive relationship over time as well. Furthermore, Points are live, with an airdrop expected in Q2.
DePIN
Computing power is a resource constantly growing in demand in today’s day and age, as the world becomes further digitized and the sheer amount of data produced continues to grow exponentially, only further accelerated with the rise of LLMs and consumer/business-centric AI.
As compute becomes an increasingly scarce resource, it becomes that much more important to optimize its distribution and availability. Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) unlock more efficient compute markets through disintermediation of distribution and value accrual. DePIN provides a tangible and exciting use case for crypto; one that sees crypto and blockchain technology as critical components of a greater whole rather than a novel stand-alone tech with new tacky buzzwords.
While the scope of growth for DePIN goes far beyond 2024, the sector has particularly surged in popularity in recent times. It’s important to distinguish between hype and fundamentals, but it is exciting to have a combination of the two.
Render ($RNDR) - An OG GPU marketplace since 2017, connecting 3D artists to the resources they need to graphically render virtual scenes for games or movies. The platform recently migrated to Solana to join a number of leading DePIN platforms like Helium and Hivemapper.
Akash ($AKASH) - The GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS?) is projected to reach over $25B by 2030, implying an inevitable strain on supply and distribution methods. Akash is a decentralized, peer-to-peer marketplace for renting GPUs that launched as a Cosmos chain in September 2020 - think of Akash as the airbnb for GPU compute. Akash employs a hybrid architecture which handles coordination and settlement onchain, and execution off-chain. A more critical value proposition - Akash offers highly competitive rates on Nvidia A100 compared to leading providers like AWS, Azure, and more.
Helium ($HNT) - Helium is a decentralized network servicing long-range, low-power communication for IoT devices like sensors, trackers, etc. Helium enables individuals to host Hotspots (mini-towers which to amplify broadband for the network) in exchange for earning rewards in Helium tokens (HNT) for their services.
Hivemapper ($HONEY) Decentralized Google Maps - users purchase a webcam which they then use to drive and record their surroundings, earning $HONEY tokens for contributing to building Hivemapper’s decentralized mapping system.
Teleport - TLDR; Teleport is a new decentralized ride sharing protocol. You remember the outsized returns Uber delivered its early investors. Now get this - Uber, on the blockchain.
Crypto x AI
Artificial intelligence has recently experienced its pop-culture moment with the rise of consumer-centric AGI applications like ChatGPT, which have already found their ways into many facets of people’s everyday lives, besides the fact that they are predicted to ultimately change the dynamics of the world for better or worse. OpenAI just launched Sora, a new text > video AI model, further reminding everyone about the many capabilities of this new tech that we have yet to see.
As Lucas Tcheyan of Galaxy Research frames it - “Innovation in the two industries is unlocking new use cases that could accelerate adoption of both in the coming years.” Blockchains introduce breakthroughs in settlement, data storage, and system design (back-end) , while artificial intelligence is a revolution in computation, analysis, and content delivery (front-end). VanEck AI estimates the Crypto x AI sector could generate up to $10.2B in revenue by 2030. However, it is worth noting directly integrating AI models on blockchains is not very practical, given the limited computational capacity today. It’s entirely possible 10 years from now this may look different, but this is placing a big bet on the scalability of blockchains.
How Crypto benefits AI:
Crypto provides AI with a permissionless, trustless, and composable settlement layer.
Use cases include decentralized compute markets (which are already live), building AI agents programmed to execute various complex financial strategies, and developing identity and privacy solutions to combat negative externalities of AI like sybil attacks.
How AI benefits crypto:
Enhanced user experience (UX) for both users and developers thanks to large-language models (i.e., specially trained versions of ChatGPT and Copilot)
Potential to significantly improve smart contract functionality and automation.
Accelxr of 1kx wrote a fantastic report about the different emergent areas of Crypto x AI, including creative development, anti-sybil mechanisms, infrastructure development, augmented governance, agent economies, and more. The point is, there’s a lot of potential to tap into here - but as anyone familiar with the history of the dot com bubble would say - be cautious about the trends and consequent reversals surrounding new and innovative tech that is still unproven.
Projects on our watchlist
Bittensor ($TAO) : An open-source, decentralized blockchain network facilitating a peer-to-peer marketplace for machine intelligence. In short, Bittensor enables participants to submit AI models that can then be purchased by those who need it, e.g. app-developers and other researchers. As participants contribute their AI models and training to the Bittensor network, they are compensated in TAO tokens - given the cost inefficiencies of machine learning R&D today, one could imagine Google or IBM tapping into Bittensor’s network in the future.
Bittensor has 95K accounts, facilitated 292K transfers, and produced 2.3M blocks.
$TAO has a market cap of roughly $4B with 89% of supply staked, and has a 21m max supply similar to Bitcoin.
Data from TAO explorer
Get Grass - Get Grass is a protocol which aims to democratize the availability of training data for AI models, to build “the data layer for AI”. To get started, users can simply download their chrome extension to start earning points - the idea is to compensate everyday internet users for the data that is collected and sold on behalf of their digital footprint. The team has put together a data repository curated for training LLMs - something which typically comes at high costs for developers today - with the vision of empowering even everyday people to develop new applications with AI models one day, not just shady corporate overlords. Additionally, the idea of compensating people for their online data feels inevitable, and is a use case that crypto can serve perfectly as true digital-native currency.
Statistics are not currently available but are expected to come soon.
Nosana ($NOS) - Nosana is building a decentralized GPU marketplace for AI applications, connecting a network of user-sourced GPUs to AI developers, similar to Bittensor. Anyone with an idle consumer GPU can become a node on the Nosana network, and anyone can access Nosana’s in-house AI model for different needs.
Since November 2022, Nosana has completed 180K inferences on its network, which refer to completed tasks that have been submitted to the network queue.
$NOS is used for staking collateral for nodes and a medium of exchange on the Nosana network, and currently has a $370M FDV.
Intents
Intents have become a buzzword in crypto, and some have questioned using the term “intent” itself, but the idea is quite simple - intents are signed transactions which outsource the trade’s execution route on a user’s behalf, for the purpose of better price settlement. Whether you wish to call this mechanism an intent is up to you, but in the context of our attention economy, we believe “intents” sell.
A key feature of intent-based trading protocols is outsourcing trade execution to a subset of competing searchers (these vary by name, eg. ‘solvers’, ‘fillers’ etc) which compete in an auction to find the optimal price route for users’ trades. In addition to a variety of onchain liquidity sources (liquidity pools on DEXs), these searchers are often able to tap into offchain inventory like CEX liquidity to front capital for the user’s trade. The benefits of using off-chain liquidity includes cost savings on gas fees, and deeper liquidity. That said, a shift towards becoming increasingly dependent on off-chain components has alarming implications on a greater scale.
Private mempools, which offer users a “fast-pass” connection directly to the block builder, are becoming more widely adopted by both users and applications integrating various MEV-protection services such as MEV-Blocker, which now has over 600K unique users.
Infrastructure - A number of teams are working on core infrastructure for building intents-based applications. The most important developments we believe to be:
SUAVE - Flashbots building a side chain which will serve as a developer toolbox for building auction-based models with intents.
Anoma - The Anoma team is building out an entire network for enabling intent-based applications with privacy and security in mind.
Essential - Building various models and standards for intents applications, including a DSL for intents, intent-centric account abstraction, and a modular intent layer.
Applications
CoWSwap ($COW): Not all intents-based protocols are equal: Flashbots research on Ethereum’s order flow markets revealed that CoWSwap solvers were the only competitive model in practice. Comparatively, 1inch Fusion’s resolver market and UniswapX’s filler market is significantly centralized. The Cow DAO recently voted to turn on the fee switch for CoWSwap creating an organic revenue stream for the protocol moving forward. There are plenty of other innovative features - TWAP orders, programmable orders - which can be used to help prevent people from getting liquidated on loans , “CoW Hook” transactions - which allow users to combine multiple transactions into a single one , and most recently, the CoW AMM - an LVR-capturing AMM built with LPs in mind.
Across ($ACX): Across implements an intent-based execution model for Eth L1 <> L2 , L2 <> Eth L1, L2 <> bridging, in which solvers front liquidity to fulfill user trades and are reimbursed afterwards. With over $5B in total volume, 357k users, and $101m in TVL , Across is one of the most successful organic 3rd party bridges in DeFi today. It inherits the security properties of the UMA optimistic oracle, which enables solvers to take on the inherent risk when fronting capital to users knowing they will be reimbursed, and in turn provide faster bridging execution for users.
IntentX: Unlike most other intent-based protocols which are swap aggregators, IntentX introduces perpetuals trading to the intents landscape. Having just launched in Q4 ‘23 , IntentX has already received $2.5M in deposits, facilitated $707m in volume, and generated $630k in revenue(!) on Base. As the intent-centric landscape continues to evolve, we’re keeping an eye on IntentX and its novel intent mechanism for perps trading.
DeSoc
As Chris Dixon highlights in his new book “Read,Write,Own” :
“Search and social ranking algorithms can change lives, make or break businesses, and even influence elections, yet the code that powers them is controlled by unaccountable corporate management teams largely hidden from public scrutiny”
Social networks are the essence of human connection and coordination, yet the overwhelming majority of revenue generated from content created on these networks funnels back to the platforms and not the users, entrepreneurs, and content creators themselves. The creator economy is in need of an overhaul, and decentralized social media (DeSoc) can help.
DeSoc and crypto-native social networks offers new opportunities for monetizing creator <> fan relationships - once again a new unlock arises from disintermediation of rent-seeking middlemen. The idea is a good one - but the execution has not been there yet. Lens has continued to show some promise but hasn’t quite had a breakthrough moment yet. Friendtech died as quickly as it rose to fame. And, well, R.I.P. Stars Arena.
Friendtech demonstrated that a PVP-style social application with financial incentives is not a sustainable growth model, nor will it capture a significant audience outside of crypto natives.
Onboarding remains a critical hurdle - not only is it challenging/near impossible to switch to a new social network due to moving your followers/audience, imagine having to set up a self-custody wallet for the first time in your life as well.
To quote Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Facebook PM:
“Web3 needs to enable cool functionality not previously possible in Web2, and make the user largely unaware they are on the blockchain.”
This is why Farcaster is exciting. Although it broke new ATHs in users and activity recently, Farcaster is not just the latest hype train. Led by Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, the ex-Coinbase team has been working on their craft for some time now. Farcaster is not one particular app - rather it is the platform, the decentralized architecture which enables new applications to be built on top of it. Farcaster uses a hybrid back-end architecture, in which everything crypto/blockchain is abstracted away off-chain, while identity management is stored in smart contracts onchain.
Warpcast, a client built by the core Farcaster team, offers a slick web2 social experience. Warpcast has a feed similar to that of Twitter’s, as well as specific channels which are similar to subreddits, allowing users to join communities and curate the content they wish to see. Sign up and follow Shoal on Warpcast today - tag us and we’ll follow back!
Frames, which warrant an entire article of its own, offers new opportunities for developers to build embedded experiences directly into one shared interface. In other words, do more cool things without leaving the application you’re using. To honor internet culture, one of the core engineers put Doom in a frame. That said, there are many other exciting possibilities - imagine reading an article about the newest AI token, and being able to purchase the token without leaving the article (folks, a reminder to always do your due diligence). Or getting all the latest news and updates from your favorite research telegram in one interface. Betting on a sports game directly from a live stream in your feed.
The connectivity of experiences will in turn grow the quality of the experiences and consequently their value. This is what Facebook tried to do but ultimately failed with the Open Graph protocol, largely due to technical and multi-party coordination problems that blockchains stand to solve.
The coolest thing about Farcaster is that these are only two clients - anyone can spin up clients custom-built for a user or enterprise’s needs. A16z has a repo with a bunch of clients available for anyone to get started building on today. We look forward to more innovation in this sector and are eager to work with teams building in the DeSOC space - reach out to Shoal!
Telegram Bots
Telegram bots are another exciting and unique way to interact with crypto. They are a premier example of a headless marketplace - where global demand and users meet local distribution venues (i.e. wherever a user’s wallet already is).
Telegram bots abstract away many of the onboarding hurdles with crypto today - wallets are created on users’ behalf, and funds can can deposited to/withdrawn from an associated CEX address (i.e. Coinbase). Considering Telegram has 800M monthly active users today, this seems like a lucrative user base to tap into.
The rapid growth and adoption of telegram bots supports this notion - though it is important to pick out a select few quality picks among the 100s of bots launching nowadays.
Banana Gun bot ($BANANA) - Supports Ethereum and Solana. In its lifetime, Banana Gun has done $1.4B in total volume and facilitated over 3B trades across 87K traders. Get up to speed with Shoal’s report on Banana Gun.
BonkBot (TBD): Bonkbot was launched by a separate team from the BONK token. It the most performant TG bot on Solana, and has facilitated more trading volume than any other bot with $1.8B in trading volume across 24M trades and 158K traders. Bonkbot’s trades are automatically routed through Jupiter, creating a synergistic relationship with one of the top projects on Solana.
Unibot ($UNIBOT) - Supports trading on Ethereum and Solana. Kicked off the TG bot mania in 2023. In its lifetime, Unibot has facilitated 731K trades with $479M in total volume and $4.7M in total fees. Get up to speed with Shoal’s Unibot report.
For someone who wants to get exposure to trading assets only available onchain but doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of creating a new wallet and navigating across 100s of trading venues (with the implied smart contract risk), telegram bots make perfect sense. After all, If you only want to trade memecoins, why would you care much for the intricacies of self custody? This can likely be applied to various other use cases beyond trading, i.e. borrow/lend on Aave through a telegram bot, mint NFTs, make payments, etc.
Parallel-Execution L1s
The rapid growth of the Solana ecosystem in H2 2023, continuing upwards in Q1 2024, has brought more recognition to the benefits of parallel-execution in transaction processing on blockchains. Though there will always be inherent value in the security of Ethereum, which processes transactions sequentially, the fact is that demand for low-latency and high throughput infrastructure will naturally outpace it as more users come to crypto and/or more enterprises seek to implement blockchain technology to solve real-world business tasks.
The key idea behind parallel execution is to allow non-conflicting transactions simultaneously, unlocking faster execution speeds and higher overall throughput. On Solana, accounts are required to declare which particular network state they need to access in each transaction, which is what allows for concurrent execution. Bob swapping 100 USDC > SOL on Jupiter does not conflict with Alice borrowing 1000 JUP on Kamino.
There is an emerging trend of “Alt-Parallel L1s” , which are relatively young networks (<= 1year) that process transactions in parallel, similar to Solana.
A key distinction to make in parallel processing is deterministic vs optimistic processing. Deterministic processing, as seen on Solana, all nodes execute an agreed-upon set of transactions simultaneously in lock-step. Optimistic processing, for instance Sei’s design, processes transactions concurrently across multiple nodes, later verifying that the submitted transactions are valid. Therefore, it is possible for optimistic parallel-processing chains like Sei to have faster execution speeds than Solana, but this comes at the cost of potential rollbacks later on in the case of fraudulent activity.
Sei ($Sei) - Sei is an L1 built on the Cosmos SDK specialized for trading and financial services. V2, which is set to launch in H1 2024, introduces upgrades to several key features including smart contracts, parallel processing, and state storage. Sei currently has $23M in TVL, and $Sei is trading near a $2B market cap.
Sui ($Sui) - Sui is an L1 from Mysten Labs built on the MoveVM, which uses a parallel processing model for transactions to offer, you guessed it, high TPS and low fees. Sui currently has $649M in TVL, 10th most among all chains. Interestingly, $Sui is trading near a $2B market cap similar to Sei, despite having over 20x the TVL.
Monad (TBD) - Monad is an EVM L1 which aims to deliver 10K+ TPS through optimistic parallel execution and “superscalar pipelining”. Monad is built by former Jump Trading employees with lots of experience in HFT, and has a very strong community (Gmonad). Monad is also going to use its own database MonadDB for data storage, eliminating a scaling constraint for previous EVM blockchains.
Data sourced from DeFi Llama
Modular Money
Modular blockchains are specialized chains built to serve a particular purpose while seamlessly connecting with other specialized chains. Blockchains perform 4 critical functions - Consensus, Execution, Settlement, and Data Availability. While monolithic, or “integrated”, blockchains run all 4 functions on the base layer, modular blockchains adopt a “plug and play” approach where networks can opt to use specialized infrastructure to perform their critical functions.
For a simple analogy, consider putting together an outfit - you can get dressed head-to-toe in clothes all from one brand (monolithic), or you can wear a shirt from Hanes, jeans from Levi’s, and a jacket from Carharrt (modular).
Celestia ($TIA) - Celestia co-founder Mustafa Al-Bassam wrote the Lazy Ledger research paper back in 2019 , which laid out the fundamental concept of a specialized system that helps other networks scale - what we call a modular blockchain today. Celestia functions as a specialized DA layer, offering a low-cost alternative for L2s to post their data.
Eclipse: New L2 which uses SVM for execution, Celestia for DA, Ethereum for settlement, and RISC ZERO for zk fraud proofs - doesn’t get more modular than that! We are excited to see new use-cases for the SVM especially with the rise of modular blockchains. There is some uncertainty around how Eclipse will actually perform given it resembles a bit of a Frankenstein-like experiment, but the team is strong and expectations are high for the novel L2.
Rollups-as-a-Service
Developers building dApps have several options for deployment, including existing blockchains, Layer 2 solutions (L2), custom appchains, and rollups. Rollups can offer a sweet spot between customization, performance, and development effort, particularly with the simplified setup offered by Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) providers. These providers offer tools and services, ranging from rollup management to no-code deployment, enabling easy creation and maintenance of custom rollups.
Imagine running a busy restaurant (traditional blockchain): you handle everything from cooking to deliveries. RaaS is like hiring a delivery service (RaaS provider): they manage deliveries, freeing you to focus on cooking (development) and providing a smooth experience for customers (users).
Conduit: This platform empowers anyone to launch their own rollup quickly and easily, without needing to write any code. The self-serve platform takes care of everything, from infrastructure to security, so you can focus on what matters - building the product. Leading companies like Zora and Gitcoin trust Conduit to handle the technical complexities
Dymension ($DYM): Dymension leverages a modular blockchain architecture. Users interact with RollApps (front-end), while Dymension (back-end) coordinates the ecosystem and facilitates communication. Data Availability Networks (decentralized databases) provide temporary data storage.
Cartesi: Cartesi provides a dedicated CPU and rollup for your dApp, preserving decentralization, security, and censorship resistance while enhancing computational scalability. It utilizes the Cartesi Virtual Machine, allowing you to use familiar libraries, languages, and tooling, moving beyond the EVM.
Gaming
Crypto participants have long awaited "the" AAA Web3 game. In the last crypto cycle, Axie Infinity, Sandbox, Decentraland, and Enjin were among the core talking points as new gaming companies realized Web3 could be a new place to test out concepts. In the last cycle, we found many games that resembled "DeFi with lore," which were focused more on interactions of farming/yield generation strategies instead of the actual games.
For many of these games, much of the feedback revolved around the actual fun of the games being the core gaming applications. Although these games performed well in the bull market, the sentiment wore off due to unstable tokenomics or their incentive mechanisms breaking despite substantial price increases.
Ronin ($RON) - Ronin, developed by Sky Mavis, is an EVM-compatible blockchain tailored for gaming, most notably hosting the successful Web3 game Axie Infinity. Ronin focuses on near-instant transactions and minimal fees, while also enabling stands out for enabling vast numbers of in-game transactions.
Beam ($BEAM) - Beam network is a gaming-centric ecosystem incubated by the Merit Circle DAO. It offers the Beam SDK to developers, allowing for the integration of blockchain elements into games. As the network's gas token, $BEAM is essential for transaction payments and smart contract interactions within the Beam ecosystem.
Echelon Prime ($PRIME) - Echelon Prime is a gaming platform, focusing on development and distribution of tools designed to foster new gaming models and economic systems. Its token, $PRIME, has been notably integrated into Parallel, a sci-fi trading card game, marking its first application. Through $PRIME, Echelon Prime aims to facilitate and promote the expansion of cutting-edge gaming experiences and economies including AI and AR gaming.
Closing Note
We are eager to engage with teams and founders pushing the boundaries of innovation in blockchain infrastructure and the on-chain economy. The digital asset landscape is filled with opportunities, as well as noise, and sifting through the haystack to find gem-like needles requires continuous research and refinement of our thesis. Shoal Research is dedicated to uncovering value within the DeFi and infrastructure ecosystem, as well as tracking trending narratives that intersect with our interests.
Sources
Data used in this report was mostly taken from DeFi Llama, Dune Analytics, and mentioned protocol docs.