⚡Crypto Goes Mainstream with friend.tech
Plus ThorChain volume reaches new highs and more
The Dynamo DeFi newsletter covers the most interesting stats, trends, and tools in crypto each week.
🔢On-Chain Metrics
Total Value Locked Tumbles with Price Drop
The dip in the crypto market this week pushed total DeFi TVL (including liquid staking) lower from $63.92B to $58.36B, its lowest point since March.
Every major chain was down, but Optimism, BSC, and Avalanche were down the most.
Despite the market overall being down, there were a few bright spots.
Base TVL hit a new high, reaching rank 12 among all chains.
Only a handful of protocols with over $50M in TVL were up this week, with no clear discernable pattern.
Cross-Chain Flows to Layer 2s Pick Up
Arbitrum and zkSync Era had the highest 7 day net flows this week. Note that DefiLlama doesn’t track bridge flows to Base and those may have been near the top as well.
Top Earning Protocols
The big winner this week in terms of fees was friend.tech and it isn’t close. Their 7th place position understates the significant of a new app reaching the top ten. Moreover, friend.tech’s growth has accelerated over the past few days, pushing it into the 3rd place spot in terms of both fees and revenue over the past 24 hours.
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📈Trends and Narratives
Crypto Goes Mainstream with friend.tech
Last week I covered friend.tech in this newsletter and it’s gained major traction since then. At its core, friend.tech allows you to pay for access to creators. Right now, this takes the form of an AMA-style chatroom, but people are already adding other perks like private webinars and Telegram groups.
Over the past few days, it’s started to go viral outside of Crypto Twitter, attracting everyone from professional athletes to pro gamers:
Volumes have gone crazy with over 1 Million total transactions so far.
I was bullish on friend.tech and the concept of SocialFi last week and my conviction has only hardened over the past week.
The creator economy has turned into a massive business over the past decade, with some influencers like Mr. Beast, turning personal brands into billion dollar businesses.
SocialFi dapps like friend.tech offer a few compelling benefits:
Creators earn a new source of income (5% of transactions on their shares)
Early fans of creators benefit financially—imagine buying one of Mr. Beast’s shares when he first started
Creators are incentivized to add value to early fans and early fans are incentivized to market that creator
If this keeps going viral, over the next few days, I expect more tech influencers, finance influencers, and mainstream celebrities to join. If for nothing else, they’ll hear stories about other influencers joining and earning a few thousand dollars in fees in the first day.
ThorChain’s Time to Shine
ThorChain rollout of several new features have sent their on-chain fundamentals skyrocketing.
A couple weeks ago, ThorChain launched streaming swaps. These break up a trade into infinitesimal pieces, leading to greater capital efficiency and less slippage.
Then, yesterday, they launched lending, allowing you to borrow any asset against BTC or ETH with 0% interest.
Additionally, this week, ThorChain is launching stable savers, offering even more utility.
If you’re trading on-chain, you can now snipe DEX listings, set limit orders, swap MEV free, and more with Unibot. (Affiliate Link)
🛠️Tool Spotlight
Chart and Track friend.tech Shares with Friendmex
With the rise of friend.tech, an arsenal of trading tools have already been built. If you’re looking to trade and track friend.tech shares, FriendMex is the best site that I’ve come across.
📅Key Events This Week
That’s all for this week. For more frequent content, follow me on Twitter and YouTube.
Until next time,
Patrick Scott
Dynamo DeFi
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