A week in Hong Kong comes to wraps, and we have a few top takeaways

1. It was super super super clear. @solana ecosystem and sentiment is still incredibly strong offline, and clearly has the most users who are active and looking to get deeper into the ecosystem as a whole. The ecosystem builders turnout was insane!

2. Have to respect that Solana ecosystem has some very interesting diversity of experience of OG's like @calilyliu still bringing the same energy for now 10+ years in crypto + going strong, and also the place where @tl_solana entered the space at 15 with an exit and now is contributing to @SuperteamUK. The heritage and energy of builders new and old is super clear to see.
Have to give some big list of solana builders that were incredibly helpful this week (and deserve some extra follows for the EVM souls out there who need to learn more about all things Solana)
@Solana_zh @ynonestop @1cryptosheep @JupiterExchange @MeteoraAG
@soon_svm @FrankM1229 @SonicSVM @Chrizhuu @darcyasks @SuperteamSG @tongnk @solayer_labs @fragmetric @sangdotsol @SolZacque @SuperteamMY @ZeusNetworkHQ @JamboTechnology @sns @honeycomb_prtcl @RateX_Dex @AdrasteaFinance and more!

3. Top event turnout of the week for me was Solayer + Sonic's evening, with so many people it overflowed out into the street, talking about all the alpha in the market until past 1AM.
Also excited to see builders across defi, payments, RWA, depin, and more all feel to be "on the rhythm/cadence" of the market and the narratives and bouncing ideas off of each other. 4. @HyperliquidX ecosystem builders also a formidable group of builders + those who have been in the ecosystem for a long time. Have to shoutout @kirbyongeo @NarwhalTan @hypurr_co @0xHyperBeat
@hyperdrivedefi @hyperlendx @0xNessus @ResolvLabs @Iv4n_Ko @FilipeDeFi @HyperdeltaX @tolycrypto @TimeswapLabs @timeswapintern @PythNetwork @P2Pvalidator @s0xn1ck (and more folks, i'm sure I'm missing others that i'll need to add in the comments who are deploying on the testnet soon). Think the name of the game here will be capital efficiency.

The 100+ Megathread tweet on @friendtech
1/n This weekend, I spent 15+ hrs on @friendtech - been so busy at @impossiblefi today, I didn't have time to write this earlier, but there's so many magical things taht excite me, so here goes some late night 4am rambles 15/n This creates a super interesting type of second order effects - content creators need to create good content in order to boost the chance that users and consumers of their content will want to bet on the access value and second order believing that others will want to access

1/n a thread on optimism alpha leak

So you wanted to get some OP @optimismPBC alpha anon?

Time for some dune queries and a bit of a glimpse at how we do research at @impossiblefi 2/n Everyone of course is starting to look at Optimism now that it is sitting at 6B+ FDV.
However, instead of simply chasing the trends of what’s hot, we @impossiblefi wanted to share a glimpse of our research methodology by going a few steps deeper down the rabbithole

Thread #2: Onchain Data
There have been a lot of interesting angles towards onchain data, with big names like @nansen_ai @Covalent_HQ @graphprotocol @DuneAnalytics and more, but I think it's useful to overview the origins of the earliest onchain data from a chronological order: 1/n the first on-chain data platform I'm aware of is actually @santimentfeed, creating lots of social trackers, onchain wallet exploring, and other indicators that were helpful in early research of the space circa 2017

1/n
Today is the start of May, so I'll be challenging myself to share a thread a day this month to increase #education across all web3 fields we're researching at @impossiblefi

Today I'll start with NFTs~

Thesis: I think NFTs have the lowest barrier if entry for new users 2/n
NFT use cases I'd say boil down to 5 major use cases:
1. Art
2. Collectibility/Rarity
3. Verifiability (legit pieces)
4. Easy accessibility/community
5. Luxury/flex
(Maybe will add more later)

1/n with all this chatter w/ @kaiynne & @zhusu the key point is, notice how BTC isn't even in the conversation.

BTC often is called digital gold by being "the first".
ETH is the first for: smart contracts, web3 tech, & community. Gold/oil are legacy assets, tech is what uplifts 2/n Go look at the Forbes list and see how many got there because of tech, and go see how many are there b/c of their families' wealth. It's pretty clear which one within BTC/ETH will enable the next generation of builders

1/n Why I just spent another 6.9ETH to buy #cryptophunk at 3AM despite being the largest holder of Phunks, a thread:

https://twitter.com/PhunkBot/status/1456319562400473091

2/n I posted about phunks just an hour ago after finishing a long day of work at @impossiblefi, finishing up our launch of @Ariadne_finance. The community took me by surprise and retweeted the hell out of my tweet within minutes.

https://twitter.com/calchulus/status/1456305368347275265

1/n a thread on @SushiSwap's new plans for v3 and its implications for the ever-increasing defi competition in the smart contract world of dexes:
The keys for users are the implications for liquidity provision, capital efficiency, and composability 2/n . First off: one-stop shop: integrating the new swap into Bentobox and more, which naturally adds a wrinkle to battle the Aave & Balancer combo of allowing LP assets to also be borrowed out in a lending pool. medium.com/balancer-proto…

Emerging with a theory that Defi is becoming a lot more antifragile than cefi markets:

1. because more LPs in defi are directionally long rather than efficient delta neutral arbers, you have a lot more people who don't "fade" orders.

https://twitter.com/_0x_larry/status/1394184009664585731

2. AMMs are slower to adjust pricing compared to MMs who do this type of adjusting regardless, because dexes like @Uniswap @SushiSwap @PancakeSwap made it so much easier for users to provide liquidity to made this directionality happen

This is a great question, and a pretty good bet. But the difference between cefi and tradfi is still a huge step - cefi is where a lot of people opened their eyes to defi, so it's like the gateway drug into crypto for the masses.

https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1381460792000749578

https://twitter.com/HsakaTrades/status/1381428654115184642

0/n After almost 3 years, it is with great pride, respect, and love to announce that February was my last month @binance. It's been a whirlwind of a ride, so what better way to share the memories, nostalgia, and future alpha I learned all in one tweet thread 1/n I want to thank my @BinanceResearch team for being the best group of friends & researchers I could've ever dreamed of working alongside. To my boss, who found my resume on a recyclebin pile when HR had rejected me b/c i was a fresh grad, and took a bet on me, <3 <3 <3

this is incredibly powerful - it means that if we create a parallel economy in defi, we can do so and power our own spending, in a controlled manner, rather than outrageous borrowing done by sovereign states like the US.

https://twitter.com/thetechn0cratic/status/1371256982112452610

Disclaimer: hold no Alchemix, but @scupytrooples is up to something very interesting and lots of finance folks who understand the time value of money think this is very interesting.

ok time for some thought leaders to stop looking into one front end on a centralised data source trying to read data on a chain that is still struggling to build more infrastructure to read info.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT UNIQUE ADDRESSES != Unique users!

https://twitter.com/CryptoCatVC/status/1368579857714708500

2/n Firstly, you guys in the eth world may know that a certain function on Eth mainnet was proposed to cease to exist in a future hardfork - which would render @1inchExchange's CHI Gas token and other gas tokens useless.

I had several interesting conversations today due to the the tweets, so I thought i'd do a tweet thread summarizing first my background, why this situation matters, and the good things that came out of this, because above all, I seek to learn, not just in crypto, but in the world 1/n I've had some people message me to praise me for speaking up, and some ask me why I was being so loud. I hope that the next bits will share a bit more as to why I think it's important to share, educate, and learn together.

You guys are fucking ignorant if you guys think that posting a smart contract is going to shut down a chain.

1. etherscan/bscscan is a centralised platform - this window into the contract can be censored, just like the USDT, USDC, or other stablecoin code is removed. 2. The amount of xenophobia in this space is absolutely horrid, and you should be fucking ashamed of yourselves for proclaiming an open ecosystem of money and value, yet your actions show you haven't been able to advance past the idea that builders have no language barrier

In case you were wondering why the NYAG's letter is so condemning and the Tether perspective, let me introduce you to a concept called "scarecrow governance" I've forgotten the real term because I was reading white papers in lecture halls with nobel lecturers during my time at uchicago, but the general premise is that governments are also profit-maximising entities, and as such, seek to perform actions with the lowest costs

Here's the one thread you need to read on BSC to actually DYOR and stop listening to all these talking heads on Twitter:

1. last year, Binance launched a PoA-based EVM compatible chain, compatible with common tools like metamask, trustwallet, etc. It works with ur eth address 2. this point of interoperability is important, because a user doesn't need to deal with new wallets or infrastructure to use this chain, whereas past projects like Tron required you to download a new set of tools (TronLink wallet, use tronscan, etc.)

An @EthereumDenver Hackathon Thread:
I’ve finished reading through all the submissions to ETHDenver (forgive me if I missed some across Devfolio, Daostack pages).

Here are some themes I saw:

1. ETH-as-a-swiss-army-knife
2. ETH2.0 Tools
3. Crypto UX
4. Interoperable Gaming

1/n 2/n
The first theme that I saw was all kinds of use cases for Ethereum solving real-world problems.

There were people building everything from DMV solutions to ETH-enabled paywalls. Here are my top "use-case" ETH creations: