⚡SocialFi Shines Amidst Crypto Bear Market
Plus NEAR Protocol activity 10Xs, friend.tech usage soars, and more
The Dynamo DeFi newsletter covers the most interesting stats, trends, and tools in crypto each week.
🔢On-Chain Metrics
On-Chain At a Glance
Total TVL (including liquid staking) stayed flat at $57-58B this week. Despite bursts of on-chain excitement amidst a crypto winter, the same liquidity seems to be circulating, with little change in either direction this year.
This week, there were modest outflows of BTC from exchanges. According to IntoTheBlock, there was a net 7-day change of -1.09K BTC across exchanges.
ETH continued to shift into the hands of long-term holders this week. So far, over the course of this month, the percent of ETH that has stayed in the same hands for over a year is up 1.56%.
NEAR Activity 10Xs
Activity on NEAR Protocol skyrocketed from around 50K active addresses per day to over 600K active addresses. This appears to be related to the launch of a retail discovery app called Cosmose AI.
Seeing new startups choose crypto as a payment rail is a promising sign of adoption.
Friend.tech Activity and TVL Take Off
After a few weeks of a lull, interest in friend.tech, the SocialFi platform, received another surge in attention. Transactions hit their second highest point ever on September 10th.
Money deposited in friend.tech rocketed up 4X this week as people realized that it is functionally a yield farm.
What do I mean by that?
The app has a tab called “Airdrop” and you earn points in the airdrop tab every week based on your activity and the value of keys you are holding. Assuming those points become a token that can be sold eventually, all keys bought before then are effectively pre-farming that token.
Liquidity Flows to Polygon, Ethereum, and Gnosis
This week, bridge flows saw funds move to Polygon, Ethereum, and Gnosis, while Arbitrum and Optimism saw outflows.
📈Trends and Narratives
Friend.tech as SocialFi Primitive
Renewed interest in friend.tech has sparked renewed hope that it could be a 0 to 1 moment that sparks a new vertical within crypto, like DeFi or NFTs. Could FT keys be a primitive that a host of other applications are built upon?
Mind you, this app is still only a month old; however, it’s already sparked an ecosystem built on top of it, captured enormous mindshare, and attracted non crypto native users.
This thread from redphone captures the sentiment well:
Story Protocol Leverages Blockchain to Build IP Infrastructure
In a world where AI allows anyone to leverage creative assets, blockchain allows creators to track and receive value from their assets. Story Protocol is building infrastructure to store IP on-chain. One of the most interesting applications of crypto I’ve seen recently and fits with a thesis I’ve been developing that content creators will be one of the first verticals to fully embrace crypto solutions.
🛠️Tool Spotlight
Enhance Your On-Chain Analysis with ScopeScan’s Address Clustering Tool
If you’re tracking wallets on-chain, Spopescan’s “Address Clustering” tool is useful for finding other wallets which may belong to the same person. Enter an address, ENS, or Address Tag to see all connections.
Note that many of these will be exchanges or business interactions, so you will need to dive deeper.
Prepare for the Next Bull Market with Double Your DeFi This Fall
My friend The DeFi Edge and I are teaching another cohort of our Double Your DeFi course this November. To recap, this is an intensive course to improve your DeFi skills in 5 weeks.
I secured a $300 discount for the first 5 people that sign up from my email list.
Use the coupon code: DynamoDeFi
📅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