1/ Solana's DEX volumes are at all-time highs. What's shaping this dynamic market?

- Memecoins capture around 60% of the action.
- Raydium dominates overall market share.
- Lifinity emerges as a frontrunner in the SOL-USD pair.

Here are the key insights 👇 2/ What are users trading onchain? In the past 90 days:

- 60% of volumes have come from memecoins.
- 25% from the SOL-USD pair.
- Project tokens, AI tokens, LST swaps, and stable-to-stable swaps make up the other 15%.

1/ Solana experienced a noticeable 'Trump Bump' in trading activity after the President launched his own memecoin.

However, in the past two weeks, activity has quickly slowed down to pre-launch levels.

Let's take a closer look🧵 2/ The Trump token initially launched via Meteora and drove a massive spike in Meteora volume dominance on Solana.

The majority of this move only lasted the first weekend however, and since then, Meteora DEX volume share has returned to slightly elevated levels.

1/ The AI narrative has quickly swept across the space and AI-related tokens have experienced strong DEX volume growth.

Agent tokens on Base have seen upwards of $300m in daily volume following 2 months of rapid growth.

Let's dig in🧵 2/ On Base, much of the AI agent trading activity stems from @virtuals_io, a tokenized agent creation platform

Virtuals captures 1% of trading volume for agent tokens traded on its platform as swap fees which drive most of its revenues

1/ Solana just wrapped up its best year yet, and 2025 is set to be just as explosive:

- Firedancer is on the horizon
- Block size will increase (IBRL)
- Top ecosystem for new developers

Let's dive into the data 👇 2/ In December 2024, Solana recorded $348 million in net inflows from other ecosystems.

This amount was exceeded only by Base and Hyperliquid, which saw $1 billion and $711 million in net inflows, respectively.

1/ @Base has emerged as a dominant L2, suggesting that Coinbase's distribution advantage is translating into sustainable ecosystem growth.

In just a year and a half since launch, a thriving ecosystem of applications is beginning to emerge...🧵 2/ Base pulled in more inflows than Solana over the last 90 days.

It's flipped Arbitrum in TVL, leads L2s in daily transactions, and matches both in stablecoin market cap.

The growth curve is getting steeper.

1/ With elevated funding rates and demand for leverage, @Ethena_labs' sUSDe has been paying out returns in excess of 27% APY.

Given this attractive return, the circulating supply of sUSDe has grown over 100% since October.

Where is all this sUSDe being utilized? 🧵 2/ @pendle_fi is perhaps the largest beneficiary of the growth in sUSDe supply, holding over 1.8B in sUSDe, or 48% of the circulating supply.

750M of this sUSDe is held in the December 25th, 2024 market, set to mature in 2 weeks.

1/ Privacy isn't just a feature in crypto.

It's the key to unlocking trillions of dollars in institutional capital, AI advancement, and ultimately mass adoption.

In a report sponsored by @nillionnetwork, we explain why privacy is crypto's sleeping giant...🧵 2/ The Crypto Privacy Stack has 3 layers:

1⃣ Applications
2⃣ Infrastructure
3⃣ Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)

Each layer builds on the next to enable private, secure computation and storage.

1/ Over the last month, onchain stablecoin supply has increased by approximately $20B.

This increase has happened almost exclusively on Ethereum. 2/ These flows are coming from centralized exchanges.

Over the past month Ethereum has seen consistent inflows, some days topping $1B.

Making the Avalanche C-Chain Cheap Again.

With stark competition for users and apps amongst L1s and L2s, the Avalanche community is proposing a significant reduction in the base fee.

This 96% fee cut could lead to a 39% - 80% increase in daily transactions.

What is ACP-125? 🧵 @avax 1/ ACP-125 aims to reduce base transaction fees from 25 nAVAX to 1 nAVAX on the C-Chain—a 96% reduction.

The significance of this proposal is that over 80% of transactions cluster at the base fee level implying an overproduction of blocks at a price not matched by wallet demand.

We just made our @Solana dashboard available to everyone 🔥

Let this be your one-stop shop for all things Solana data. Track TEV stats, validator and staker cash flow, transaction activity/segmentation, and more!

Let's take a look at the highlights 👇 This dashboard was made available in collaboration with the @SolanaFndn. You can check it out using the link below!

solana.blockworksresearch.com

1/ @chainlink is positioning itself to be the dominant infrastructure platform for Real World Assets (RWAs). Surpassing $3B in value excluding stablecoins, the space has seen significant growth in 2024 and is estimated to be as large as $16T by 2030. 2/ Tokenized assets will benefit from increased liquidity, programmability, real-time settlement, and composability. For these gains to be realized, RWAs need a universal interoperability standard, as well as access to external data, IoT devices, and enterprise systems.

1/ Starting in November 2023, @arbitrum's Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP) distributed around 71M ARB to boost usage and generated 6149.3 ETH in return.

In this analysis, we aimed to assess the STIP’s overall effect on the network by examining its impact on sequencer revenue. 2/ The goal of the STIP was to attract users and grow activity to the recipient protocols and the broader ecosystem. An increase in sequencer revenue would indicate a successful program, where the costs of ARB incentives are at least partially offset by sequencer revenue in ETH.

.@paradigm has developed a new node client called Reth that offers both a performance boost for the EVM and a base to develop AVS's for restaking protocols.

Reth stands to be a catalyst for @base, @Optimism and @symbioticfi. But how does it accelerate the growth for the trio? 🧵 1/ Initially, blockchains were a simple network of nodes running software to process, validate, and store transactions. Now, there are modifications of nodes that run a variety of functions, such as for L1s, L2s, MEV, Provers, Eigen AVSs and more.

1/

@AerodromeFi is a "MetaDEX" that combines elements of various DEX primitives such as Uniswap V2 and V3, Curve, Convex, and Votium. Since its launch on Base, it has become the largest protocol by TVL with more than $495B in value locked, doubling Uniswap's Base deployment. 2/

Aerodrome's success can be attributed to its unique architecture which aligns incentives between each category of protocol participant, including traders, LPs, and protocols looking to seed liquidity for their token. It does so through its vote-lock governance model.

1/ ArbitrumDAO governance has reached a critical juncture with three new proposals that could significantly shape the DAO's future:
- ARB staking
- New transaction ordering policy
- Increasing the base gas fee
What is Blockworks' research perspective on these proposals? A 🧵 2/ It's important to understand the gravity of these proposals. Staking would allocate 50% of surplus sequencer fees to ARB stakers. In the post, it is assumed that with 12,000 ETH accrued annually, and ARB at $1, the reward rate for staking would be around 7%.

1/ In just 3 months, USDe has skyrocketed to a $3.5B TVL, making it the fourth largest "stablecoin", trailing only USDT, USDC, and DAI.

Coined "The Internet Bond", @ethena_labs aims to create a synthetic dollar with yield derived solely from crypto-native sources. 2/ Stablecoins have long proven their product-market fit by effectively enabling DeFi as a financial system. However, 90% of the stablecoin supply is dependent on traditional banking.

Ethena is highly relevant today as it strives to create a crypto-native store of value.

The TON & Telegram narrative is hot & many are betting TON is the next SOL or ETH.

Unfortunately, the market is overestimating Tg's distribution, TON's programming language and Tg's end markets present meaningful challenges, & TON's FDV leaves little margin for safety.

🧵 First, the bull case - Telegram has global reach and significant MAUs to funnel to TON. Telegram is one of the most used apps globally by this measure.

Reinventing @AVAX Subnets.

With the competition of dedicated blockchain solutions heating up, the Avalanche community is proposing a structural change in how Subnets launch.

Potentially making them as cost-effective as operating a Celestia-based rollup.

What is ACP-77? 🧵 ACP-77 introduces a new type of validator, “Subnet Validators."

No longer would a prospective Subnet validator be required to stake at least 2,000 AVAX (~$70k today) to become a P-Chain validator.

1/

Crypto gaming projects and funds raised nearly $1 billion in November 2021

Yet 30 months later we have only a handful of games that have attracted real users apart from mercenary capital and sustained activity for longer than just a few months. 2/

Most of the games that have "launched" over the past two years can be categorized into three segments:
- Games that never launch
- Games that launch and never have success
- Games that launch, have early success but fail later due to a change in market dynamics

DePIN is ripe to disrupt a range of traditional infrastructure networks.

Let's unpack how investors can best gain long-term exposure to the sector and where the opportunity lies in our latest report, free to read thanks to @POKTnetwork and @AIOZNetwork.

app.blockworksresearch.com/unlocked/decen…
1/ Successfully growing the supply side through granular token emissions is crucial to kickstarting the DePIN flywheel.

With this, network effects can be established, with the flywheel being maintained by the demand side.

Have you ever wondered how workflows for processing transactions differ across L1 nodes and a shared decentralized sequencer?

@0x___Brick gives an overview of @EspressoSys' answer to the question👇🏼 1/ L1 Nodes

A set of L1 nodes has to agree on a sequence of transactions, subsequently executing the sequence.

This system has to function even if a subset of the L1 nodes are Byzantine faulty.