Thread by @BillyBobBaghold

Billy’s 2022 Predictions/Themes/Narratives, Volume 3

Here’s my third and last 2022 predictions/narratives/trends post. Several trends look to already be starting (for example $CRV-esque/ve season, $FTM challenging $SOL, #L22002 (namely $METIS).

To be fair some of these were starting to germinate as I wrote the first two volumes, but several have truly flourished since.

My first two posts setting out these predictions are at the end of this thread.

Since market narratives move so quickly these days, I may ultimately post more predictions for Q2 or the second half of the year, to the extent I see new narratives forming.

But for the time being, I hope you find these last few useful, which are:

- Privacy
- The battle for dev talent
- Cross chain infrastructure
- Upcoming launches I’m looking forward to

1. Privacy

The privacy narrative will eventually build steam - privacy cycles occur periodically and they’re nothing new. I have no idea what the catalyst will be, but I’m confident it will happen at some point.

One catalyst may be the ZK narrative and projects that use ZKs for privacy (like $DUSK) sparking a wider privacy sector run.

I am not allocating huge amounts of capital to privacy coins yet since there are better opportunities elsewhere (see my earlier predictions at the bottom of this thread for examples), but I will be ready when the rotation starts to happen.

Those that I have allocated to I'm happy to hold hold long term given the strength of their fundamentals. For example I have held and farmed $SCRT @scrt_foundation for almost a year, such is my confidence in their execution and tech, and I’ve held $XHV for years.

@scrt_foundation

$SCRT has a considerable number of catalysts coming in 2022. I am particularly excited for the launch of the defi hub @Shade_Protocol including the algo stable $SILK and $SHD.

In addition, More people will realise the numerous benefits and use cases of SCRT NFTs and the @StashhApp market place. Want to flex an NFT but don’t want to dox your address? $SCRT fixes this.

@oasisprotocol

$ROSE is my second privacy investment. Oasis aims to power the next gen of Web 3 with privacy, speed, scalability, & the lowest fees in DeFi through private smart contracts and the ability to tokenize data.

I have done well playing with its AMMs @yuzu and @dune and I look forward to seeing its defi ecosystem develop.

I’m always interested to hear about other projects in the $SCRT and $ROSE ecos, particularly $ROSE as that was an earlier entry and I’m less familiar with its eco. Feel free to let me know of new projects, publicly or privately.

$DUSK and $XHV are my other two privacy bags.

@DuskRegDefi

$DUSK has seen a very nice run up based on the ZK narrative and its great tech. It’s a still to be launched L1 that is focussing on securities transfer, privacy and regulatory compliance by utilising ZKs. dusk.network.

@HavenXHV

$XHV is one of my longest ever holds since it’s one of the most ambitious projects in crypto.

$XHV launched the world's only private algorithmic stablecoin $xUSD last year and it will eventually roll out its tech to other synthetic assets (such as xBTC).

It suffered from an exploit in June last year and arbitrageurs have also taken advantage of differences between $xUSD conversion and redeeming prices, so price has certainly suffered - see the great video from @ctolarsen explaining it below.

So $XHV has been through several difficulties (in 2020 and previously). But difficulties are common when conducting the cutting edge experiments that $XHV is.

If $XHV can execute, its TAM is the entire stablecoin supply, plus also the markets of other assets that will be added to $XHV’s private synthetic asset systems. It’s too big brained to explain here, but suffice to say if the team can execute, $XHV will go down in history.

2. Battle for dev talent

Currently there are far too many protocols and chains and not enough devs. Several of these chains are incentivising devs to build on them - for example $FTM has a dev incentive fund now worth more than $1b.

Such incentives are in addition to the million dollar salaries they earn from the protocols they develop. As @blknoiz06 pointed out, an increasing amount of web2 devs are moving to web3 - no other sector offers the rewards that crypto can.

However it will take several months and more likely years for web2 devs to get fully up to speed with blockchains and tokenomics, let alone potentially new programming languages like solidity.

Due to the lack of devs, it will be harder for projects to execute on their roadmaps. Conversely if you find a project that is constantly shipping, they’re one to pay attention to.

In terms of shipping, I have been incredibly impressed with the @MetisDAO rollout.

The team constantly hit deadlines and is a well run org, from their partnerships and marketing teams, devs constantly shipping, all the way to their superior Optimistic Rollup architecture. That’s part of the reason why $METIS is my largest bag

https://twitter.com/BillyBobBaghold/status/1459791867084787712

The battle for dev talent is also part of the reason why I am so bullish on $FTM. The @FantomFDN has a dev incentive fund of over 1b. Unlike other incentive plans, this one goes directly to devs, for them to choose what to do with.

I assume several will share it with users, but I care less about that. Instead I care about the best devs moving to $FTM to ultimately develop the best dapps of any alt L1 and take market share from competing alt L1s.

These dapps will then bring long term users as opposed to purely mercenary farmers looking to farm and dump the latest token incentives.

Even though incentive grants haven’t been handed out yet, devs seem to like the idea - as can be seen from @electric capitals latest dev report, $FTM saw the high percentage growth of active devs of any L1. medium.com/electric-capit…

When evaluating a new L1, it's useful to bear in my who and why anyone would build on it.

3. Cross Chain Infrastructure

This will increasingly become more important as alt L1s grow their ecosystems (somewhat down to dev incentives described above) and L2 ecosystems get built out and suck in TVL.

We’ve already seen small pumps in the cross chain space from $ROUTE and $ANY early this year, but they are relatively compared to a $RUNE-like run.

I had been looking for exposure to the sector for some time, but didn’t see any good entries until a couple of days ago. @1EpikTeTuS noted to me that @varenfinance $VRN had partnered with @renprotocol to develop their cross chain infrastructure.

medium.com/renproject/var…

The extract below from the Medium article shows the $VRN and $REN relationship is much deeper than a typical partnership. This is bullish for both protocols, but particularly for VRN being a newish project and outside the top 1000 earlier this week.

Now they have deepened their partnership with $REN - one of the most respected teams in crypto who was doing defi before there was even a word for it. Incidentally, REN has always been a favourite of mine - I had plans to set up a Darknode back in the day.

$REN is not the only big hitter interested in $VRN - check out their recent Twitter spaces, which also included @0x_b1 and @BlockTower



You try out $VRN’s crosschain DEX here: varenx.com/swap.

With Ren’s help, it could become the dominant crosschain DEX out there and go on a $RUNE like run - see below for how early it is

https://twitter.com/yiikoma/status/1483578113376370688

In terms of infrastructure, I also like movr.network - they’re effectively a bridge aggregator. Still in beta, but their UX is great and who knows, maybe there’ll be an airdrop to users…

4. Upcoming Launches

People often ask me what upcoming token launches I’m looking forward to. So here’s a list of those I’m currently paying attention to.

1. @ConcaveFi
The Concave community sets it apart. What started as a simple Discord server soon grew to something I have never seen before. The now 30k + strong community is built on cooperation and collaboration and has self organised to achieve a lot already.

Two examples, separate from all of the Concave documentation they have created, are worth highlighting:

- The community crashed the $CNV discord server (despite sufficient boosts) during a community event because so many attended and took part.

- Twitter suspended @ConcaveFi's twitter account early on, only to reinstate it in record time due to a flood of complaints to Twitter from the $CNV community.

What $CNV is building is also impressive, but the community truly sets it apart.

I assume many projects will try to fork Concave, but as they say, you can’t fork a community.

Disclaimer: I am helping out the Concave team in an advisory capacity.

2. @LemmaFinance

Lemma is a basis trading protocol on @arbitrum. It’s in closed Beta at the moment, but it’s an interesting yield generating protocol - I hope to deposit some $ETH into it when they take in the next tranche of capital.

3. @ironbank

IB will distribute its $veIB tokens to $CREAM stakers that stake by 27 Jan. I’ve already tweeted a lot about it - so here’s my first tweet on it:

https://twitter.com/BillyBobBaghold/status/1481848007197097984

At this point I’m not staking, and may well sell all my $CREAM before the airdrop.

4. Mystery $METIS stablecoin: @metisdao has teased that a new native stablecoin project will launch on its L2 soon. Details are sparse, but I’ll be watching carefully…

5. @vestafinance is a lending protocol launching on @arbitrum soon backed by @Tetranode. Enough said.

6. @darkfi is an anonymous DeFi network that utilises ZKs. Its testnet is live, but no word on its release. I learnt from a recent @epicentre podcast that dark.fi has big plans.

So there you have it, my third and final volume of my predictions/trends/narratives for 2022. I hope you found these tweet threads useful. The other two can be found below:

Thread 1:

https://twitter.com/BillyBobBaghold/status/1478841688944640001

Thread 2:

https://twitter.com/BillyBobBaghold/status/1479747031010742273