Ethereum’s Future, Berachain’s Q5 Launch, and App Revenue | Analyst Round Table

Transcript

I think we'll see quite a few people shift away from God I feel like every cycle we say this but like surely people will now start building apps Today's Show is powered by scale we'll hear more about them later but first let's dive into today's episode hey guys before we get into the episode I want to talk about D digital asset Summit 2025 crypto's Premier institutional conference returning to New York City next month we're expecting this year's Das to be the best yet with speakers spanning across major allocators asset managers financial institutions and of course Crypton native teams these include familiar names like Michael sailor of strategy Kathy Wood of Arc invest and salanas anat yakovenko among a long list of other incredible speakers in addition

to hearing from and networking with prominent individuals from around the industry there will also be several live podcasts for example from our friends at the Thousand X and Lightspeed pods and our very own Ryan cash flows Conor will be speaking alongside Hadley Stern from marinade to discuss the state of the salon validator ecosystem use code 0x10 to get 10% off tickets at the link in the show notes we hope to see you there now let's jump into Today's Show nothing said on zerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions not Financial advice bacho Ryan and our guests May hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed what's up guys

welcome back to another episode of ox research today we finally have our boy bachio back on the round table great to have him back um we're I'm also joined by Darren Mims and Mark Arjun from the research and advisory teams um how are you guys doing Bach how are you doing how's it how's it feel to be back in the uh Round Table seat uh it feels okay um I'm kidding it feels great man it's fantastic to be able to talk to you guys um I haven't done these in a while though so I don't really know how conversations going out I mainly do the interview Style on it's a bit it might be a bit awkward FYI that's all right we can uh pretend it's like a half interview Darren Mark

and and Bach as well I guess I'll throw it to all of you how do we feel about the markets generally right now it's been maybe a rough couple of weeks um just a lot of volatility you know things are I think people are struggling if they're holding a lot of alts right now what do you guys thoughts I'm down tremendously yeah fair I think I think it's like on BTC there's no volatility and it's like very boring between this range of we tag 90k every once in a while but it's mostly like 95 to 106 or not 106 like 102 or something um and it makes people lose their minds bro there's also nothing like I was actually talking to our

producer um today and I was like who the am I going to have on the show as a guest um and the reality is that it's like cuz you want stuff that's relevant but no one's talking about really anything like I can't have on stool president talk about hey man what is jail stol doing um so it's it's like on that side of stuff on the other side like on the research side I feel like it's actually been quite good like we have a lot of new chains launching and whatever you want to say about like how they launch and we can talk about that a bit later I assume it's in your notes but um that's there's stuff over there I just nothing is going up so Twitter is a Cess poool group chats are just like

hating on stuff constantly um I don't know we'll see I think like few more months of Cho and everybody gives up anyway so we'll see yeah it's definitely been a rough few weeks um I mean Bitcoin is muted relative but I mean like just a few weeks before that Solana hit all-time highs president Trump launched a mem coin it felt like a you know new paradigm almost and maybe that was a signal in of itself um lowkey Millennium might have actually just done it all way for everybody but I don't know I'm it it feels choppy I'm trying to embrace the choppy trading instead of the momentum now um we'll see how that goes I think it's not it's it's also pretty

pessimistic unlik the pers exchanges like hyper liquid which normally has the highest funding rates is has negative funding rates for salana which is like two things I'm surprised like one hyper liquid has negative funing rates and two it's Solana as well so it's it's just crazy how quickly sentiment can just flip in this space yeah it definitely seems like the sentiment changes have like accelerated um maybe that's you know maybe you blame Trump maybe you blame milania token what whatever um I think if we look back a year it feels very similar to like the summer of 2024 sentiment um even though you know a lot of things topped like you said in the last few weeks whereas in that case it was you know months of

going sideways to get people to to start thinking about uh you know giving up giving in whatever um those types of Vibes on the timeline so I also think it's been kind of different because we talked about this today as well but like the summer chop was 65 to 50K and you could reasonably say like okay I think there's only like a 3% chance that BTC has stopped um I believe that we're going to go higher but now like we hit 110k Trump launched the meme coin what are the like what would you say are the actual odds that we topped and it's it's not 10% it's not like it's a bit higher than that and there's like this creeping fear into people um I

think like that's why the chop is really really affecting a lot of people is like because you may have held down all of your alts like a lot of people already lost money um 60 70% on some of these like meme coins recent ones as well so I think that's also why people are losing their minds I I think it serves up a good question that I've seen getting a lot of discussion lately as well is like this idea of whether or not Bitcoin might be entering sort of like its own kind of Market regime and you know the rest of alt basically are continuing along with you know periods of high speculation and then and losing that activity I guess maybe maybe relevant or like jumping off of that conversation around like if you the odds around a top maybe the the big question there is like

do you guys believe in that hypothesis that like Bitcoin is on it's like Eclipse some crypto Market cycle narrative and and now kind of has its own kind of Market structure and regime set up just because of how large or the types of players that are involved I'm gonna say one thing we're just having the super cycle conversation again and not in the way that's like oh like Z suu was early but more like every s something happens that we start believing in the super cycle and like it's just that I don't know like obviously there's more chance for it to be actually like a new asset um like for it to be like a very legitimate asset on

the other hand we are literally just having the super cycle conversation that we said we wouldn't have at the end of last cycle during the bear everybody was like I'm never falling for it again bro and then now everybody's falling for it again um on the other hand I do think that there is a chance that we don't get that like what was the draw down last cycle 69k to bottom was 14 or 15 right whatever that is let's say it's 80% I think we probably get like 50 60 Max I don't really see it going 80% again um could be wrong I think even 60% might be too high I mean Super Cycle that really means all the coins right but if it's just

specifically talking about Bitcoin you know we're looking at the last year if you look at previous years just from a volatility perspective right like bitcoin's volatility has has been severely reduced in 2024 and and even 20 even the beginning of 2025 relative to all the other years and we have we have a structural buyer now in the sense of ETFs and specifically Black Rock like it's a structural buyer and then maybe a mini structural buyer from Michael sailor because he just seems to keep doing this every quarter but if if you look at it if you look at how much a flows net flows into the ETFs on a monthly basis it's multiple times more than the Bitcoin that's being

emitted from miners yeah right so it's kind of like taking away that downside volatility in a sense and that mining pressure because back in the day when the M when prices went down miners are forced to sell they're making less profit margins you need to stay afloat you I'd have to take debt Futures both of those things cost extra Capital as well and so now with we with the structural buyer we kind of absorb these flows more naturally in a consistent basis over the long term and it's a little bit better for both the miners and the sell side pressure from that point of view I I don't know if I want to feel into the copium but I don't think that this is bitcoin's top um I think like if you look at internation like surveys 2023 I think it was 8% of

large institutions were saying they were considering um or have already invested in look at in crypto now as of I think it was late December last year it's 133% so yeah 8 to 133% is not that I mean in relative terms that's about 40% jump 40% more of these investors are open to it but it's still a small amount of people who are even considering putting this asset into their portfolios and I think a lot more education needs to happen I think a lot more you know documents need to be signed through CIU Investments and getting this through the credit committees and whatnot so I think it's a longer process but I you know with with these positive regulations going on in the US which tends to be the biggest domino to fall for other countries

around the world in terms of like you know like the financialization or accepting things as a NY class I think like there's some smaller structural Tailwinds behind us so I mean ahead of us so yeah I'm gonna say one thing I don't think we've topped as well I just think it's a higher chance so I don't want anybody to think that I'm like being very very bearish um I have reduced exposure but I don't think like the macro top is in whatever that may be this episode is sponsored by scale scale has differentiated itself from other layer ones by offering users a network of gas-free interoperable evml ones where the user experience comes first explore the gas free ecosystem at scale.

spacecyberpunk b/ resarch this episode is brought to you by Ledger the global leader in digital asset security celebrating 10 years of innovation Ledger Remains the most secure Hardware wallet for your crypto and logins trusted by 7 million users and securing 20% of the world's digital assets follow the link in today's show notes to grab your Ledger now Mark you mentioned the Sailor buys as like a mini structural don't don't those worry you a little bit um he bought he has like 42 bill in exposure he bought 20 bill in Q4 um like he's clearly very aggressively

buying in um he did the same last cycle top and also he's clearly like walking price up so are B are even ETF flows that good I mean we kind of touched up on them but like I don't know I'm just saying like I'm a bit skeptical about this no 50 60% draw down that's it um yeah and what what saor is doing with with this financial games with the leverage and even the new preferred stocks that are coming out I never like when it when you add that kind of risk to buys and you have it on debt and all of this kind of stuff and you're increasing the number of shares not not something that I sit too comfortably

with I mean it's obviously been working especially I think it's more of a marketing Ploy from saor more so than anything else I mean obviously it's he you know if you look at his average cost price it's done well for the for the company from a profit perspective but it's more so from a marketing perspective I mean a trades are a ridiculous premium to nav um but I mean ETF flows are good like January January even though we we felt like this and from the February 3 tarff announcement like January Bitcoin was up 9% you know it's had one of its better januaries historically speaking and ETF flows had their fourth highest month ever um so I'm you know those are you know the ETF flows I'm a little bit more comfortable with and I and I you know historically

speaking the second year of an ETF of a successful ETF outperforms the first year so I'm expecting that this year I think last year was maybe 56 billion I could be getting this number wrong in net inflows this year I'm thinking maybe it's going to be like 60 something not like you know not a double amount more just a creep up of the amount more as more investors get comfortable um but for saor I I hope it works out obviously because that would be some really bad self pressure if something goes wrong I saw that um eth ethereum is copying it there eth strategy now and it's onchain wait that actually got canceled that um they one of them right yeah they um they're doing

reimbursements now for the folks that sent their eth but um yeah ether strategy yeah dude it took them three weeks sorry finish up Mark no I was gonna say I saw one of them got canceled but I think the other one that was I would say no offense to the one that got canceled but the one I would say is a little bit more legitimate that didn't have a launch date yet that one is still on the books for launching I think um I can't remember who put out a post in it but yeah anyway did you guys hear about hyper liquid strategy where the team bids hype with protocol fees and it's 670 mil annualized it's very interesting stuff I recommend everybody checks it out of course box slips hyper liquid into a conversation somehow I have to

man I have 670 million annualized that's a little what you don't like it I mean I was going to ask how how that number came about that's all well I did the math it's based on past month's Buys so we go I guess if we go sideways for six months the past month buys they might Trend down a little bit but um there's probably some other strategies in terms of token B like radium might be another one that people could could take look at as well I think there's there's a lot of tokens um during this kind of Market period that um you know maybe you look away from the fully attention based

things and into the uh things with real revenues with with cash flows we unfortunately we don't have cash flows Conor on to uh espouse his whole thesis there but uh cash flows are meaningful um I I do want to comment just on the ETF stuff though I I think the the really meaningful thing there regardless of whether or not like you know I think the CT sentiment is like Oh Black Rock and institutions are buying your bags what have you um I think that's you know likely not true we have like indications that this is like not quite the case you know obviously you know more regulations than things are needed before the true like actual institutions and and larger clients are are doing that in Mass but

um even if it just unlocked like retirement accounts of retail who were already buying Bitcoin like just with their cash on the side um I mean this just unlocked more liquidity from them that they can put into the asset um and it's been meaningful I mean the net uh I mean Mark you'd probably know the number better to me but the net inflows to ETFs have been what on the magnitude of like 30 billion plus if not more so it's been substantial um yeah obviously and maybe about eth strategy I I guess the hard part the hurdle that you have to climb over is it's maybe a little harder to set up a a financial game strategy like that when the asset price has not trended up or sideways but down um I think it's a little bit more difficult

to get that train rolling eth strategy would have been like great to I guess launch back when like there there was the whole like ultrasound narrative and so much eth was being burned and stuff I could see that doing particularly well then but as of right now uh I have my own skepticisms there how do how do we feel about eth like you know talked about it recently I'm curious like Darren Mark your guys thoughts as maybe some of our re resident eth Bulls like has the optimism come back like are we not to be upon pun about optimism but are we like more excited about eth's future going forward like there's been a lot of like ballic

wartime mode getting back certain people at the EF like a a look at like how they're running things how do we feel now as compared to like a month ago I'm still reserving my judgment personally and i' say this because like we haven't really seen anything come about from like the whole EF like restructuring so far right like there there was supposed to be like a large announcement coming soon um and so I I can't really say like you know if things will change tangibly and the gas limit has been raised by like all the validators but like if you check when that pump the gas movement started it started back March of 2024 and so we've raised the gas like 10

million um or so maybe like uh we've raised raised the gas like very incrementally um after a year and I honestly I in reference to that specifically I think it would be better if they flip the switch on that and and had it like revers like you have to vote for uh like keeping the gas the same instead of um voting for an increase like uh making an opt out in some way that would be cooler and that would be more aggressive on the growth end um in I guess there are certain like developments in the inter in the interoperability space that I'm somewhat bullish on um there seems to be this large push in the uh interoperability

working group that the foundation has to like get interoperability working for l2s um however I'm not sure or well I don't think that this is the core problem that exists today right I think a lot of the problems that they focus on are like kind of Downstream from like the core problem which is like scale the L1 right like we say like hey we want to we need better uh we we need to get rid of the fragmentation in the L2 space right uh but that the reason why that space exists mostly or there's so much like inflow there is because of the L1 right that's just my take for now I

think that's a really good Shout with the the way to set up increasing the gas limit make it upped out out I mean that's like nud Terry 2017 Nobel Prize winner Like Richard tala I like I love I love that idea I need to start to sh that on the timeline some more because because I mean even this was controversial I mean to be fair it's been they've had it for a year to like pump the gas or whatever but it was really honestly I think it was um anony selano I think I pronounced that right um the guy the host of The Daily guay I think he was the one who had a lot of push behind I think he really started to push it like in December or something and I it's since he started to talk about it seriously on his part I think I

saw the numbers go up on on um the gas limit website the same pick that we just showed there so I mean so kudos to him for pushing out but yeah and but I think they're also trying to make it such that the validators don't control this anymore which I don't like I think they want to do it like with soft FOX NOW like change how the gas limit is increased and I really don't like that I like your way your suggested method the best now that you talked about it but then how am I how am I feeling in terms of eth like there's been all of this this talk about let's get let's get piras done faster let's get fusaka done faster let's scale Bobs faster let's scale y One faster right okay and then what's the next upgrade the next upgrade pectra it's got pushed back to Q2 right

it got pushed back to April and like after all of this talk I mean it's it's not official yet I know the devs are going to give the actual um actual date sometime next month after the devet after the dev Nets have had their test with it but you know like for your you think you'd have a little bit more urgency to try and get this this next upgrade done as quickly as possible seeing it was already push back from Q4 last year so I'm not too happy on that front and then also I was very surprised after the Tariff announcement when eth Wick down to like 21 2200 um US dollars I I didn't I didn't see that com in especially like relative to BTC which didn't Wick down that much I maybe like 9% I think bitcoin's draw

down was after that um I don't know if it's because of capitulation or if it's because that e is used a lot in collateral and defi contracts so then when liquidations happened it it um you know it just has that cascading cell pressure effect which is might likely be the case but then I was thinking does that take away then from the e store value um you know like narrative I mean a lot of people like to push that oh look how much eth is used as collateral in these things but then if so much is used and you got a liquidation event like this and it ends up forcing sell pressure how much of a store value is it really because of this I mean it it's not the best onet to one but it is it is a real thing that happens and and now

I'm getting less Credence from that whole it's used in defi as collateral argument now so overall you know I've lost a little bit of of Faith just terms in the time list and use case and the narrative but like Darren was saying I'm still optimistic because I know that there are things working on behind the scenes that they're going to announce and hopefully you know these things take time like ethereum is a relatively large um Foundation let's just call it and um these things take a little bit of time there's a little bit of bureaucracy it's decentralized so um I'm I'm I'll give it a little bit of leeway I will say I I'm actually I want to jump in and ask like to Mark really quickly

here um do you have any like I guess optimism in regards to the whole native rollup thing that the uh Foundation was pushing more recently so native rollups it's probably the best type of rollup for ethereum to have um you know a based native rollup would be best and for the listeners who aren't familiar native rollup is basically a rollup that uses a specific pre-compile that hasn't it's hasn't been created yet but this precompile you can think of it as an evm and an evm uh it's something that lets the evm recognize its own self let's just put it like that such that if an L2 posts a you know a

state transaction a state transition function they can post the the root the post root and then the actual like data availability the actual data that went through it and the ethereum L1 can verify it like trustless assuming that the L2 is fully evm compatible and I say fully I exaggerate on fully because um it needs to be there can be any differences between the up codes between the L2 and the L1 and even though we think of like arbitrum and optimism as fully evm compatible they're mostly evm compatible like some of the upcodes are slightly different maybe like for instance they might

change your burn function because burn function doesn't actually exist in an L2 it's more of an L1 thing and they might change that to something else they might tweak things for performance reasons for security reasons and they'll have these little little differences and it makes them incompatible in their current state to become a native rollup um and you know it really depends on how many of these l2s get behind it but if if they do get behind it and if they do also maybe adopt some kind of Base sequencing because these these types of implementations are network effects the more people the more l2s who who join this the more beneficial becomes to the other l2s and ethereum EOS system as a whole native and based rollups can get you you know composability with the L1

you can tap into the um the L1 liquidity and tvl and you can amortize those costs among users native Native rollups eliminates the need for security councils this would severely reduces the risks of operating an L2 they wouldn't have to manage all of these these multisig which at the end of the day if anything goes wrong they end up devolving to anyway so there are some advantages but I do think there needs to be an incentive alignment maybe you we can you know I I haven't thought too deeply into this but maybe there's a way to change the blob pricing to kind of incentivize those who are becoming um either based or native giving them a either more favorable fees maybe a share in the eth bur like there needs to be

some kind kind of incentive mechanism to get these things I don't think saying composability or increased security is enough of an incentive it needs to be financial and economic I I agree with your take there 100% Mark um I think we've seen for a long time that just like trying to be aligned for the sake of being aligned is like not enough um and we're seeing you know the community is giving some backlash to like the base team for basically going out and just trying to like making the best product with what's available to them um I think like none of their choice are very surprising given who they are and like what they're trying to build and and the fact that they're you know essentially owned by coinbase today um so that's not surprising I guess like my question

would be for I like your point about maybe there need to be some like direct economic incentives to get people to build um chains like that do you see like what does the sentiment feel like around the community today do we see them going in that direction or do we see this like this is kind of the constant of like well if you're Eed you'll just do it like do we see people making a change towards a direction like that or do you not see that happening I mean from my point of view I don't really see that happening or like I I don't see I guess directly what Mark's saying in that like we offer special benefits to rollups in some sort of way I've seen more discussion lately

about about like levying attacks to rollups um instead and I'm not how that would actually look in the long run on um and there's been some discussion about changing like the like EIP 1559 or whatever as well uh and like changing how the base fee works there uh for rollups so I mean there's some work being done but I'm I'm not going to say that I'm like caught up to speed there why do we call it a tax it's not a tax you're just is it you're asking them to pay a fee no it's the same model that op ISM has where Bas has to pay them a fee it's I I mean I couldn't I couldn't

tell you I'm just U I'm just like repeating what I've like seen that's are you talking for the native rollups um I'm talking about like the like General like the rups we have today not like uh not the native rups something like you know like optimism Etc so like introducing some kind of Revenue share agreement like the optimism super chain does to today yeah and you know I've seen like uh like balic in his one of his most recent posts on scaling the l1s and the l2s talks about there needing to be a social agreement or some of some sort to like uh get like I guess value back to ethereum the asset but I kind of don't

see that as like or I don't like the the phrasing there of like a social agreement it doesn't really seem like it would hold long term it doesn't I don't know there there's something uh off there who called it attacks I just want to understand this because this fits into this idea I have that like etherian people really want to lar as Central Bankers all the time so they like name stuff funky stuff like taxes was it a e guy or was I think it was someone from like uh the rollup podcast or actually no wait it might have been no I think it was someone from the rup podcast let me check really quick all right then I apologize CU they might

see this you're a cool guy whoever said it I like you don't bul us we can cut that out if you don't want the hate no we can keep it I don't really care I'm sure it'll be fine what's next Danny more e talk well I actually wanted to ask Mark something Mark when you say that they need to have not different op codes does that mean that Bas for example couldn't become one if it wanted to because it's clearly done some stuff differently like does it mean that every single native rollup will have to be whatever 12 to 15 TPS low gas um kind of a like a a L2 or no uh no it doesn't mean that luckily um

because you can use your own you can still have a single sequencer centralized sequencer and you can prob the gas that way or you can use pre pre- confirmations is what I mean to say cuz um yeah you can still have have you can still pump the gas get your gig gas per second but it I mean base would I think base would still need to change I think all of the evm compa um compatible l2s will need to change some of their upcodes because there's probably like five to seven different ones that they've modified separately and individually and that's why they've you know they had a call a couple of weeks ago to try and get everybody aligned on this on this new native rollup um to see if people would commit and again this is more social signaling than actually Financial incentives but I guess this is

what they're doing for now maybe to try and be credibly neutral maybe because right now it's a competitive market and you know if you start to charge too much as ethereum you might just lose your market share to Celestia so it's you're still kind of in a rough spot from ethereum from on that sense um I think the ideal solution would be let the ethereum foundation create a native rooll up themselves it's literally just the evm they get ethereum will keep you can burn all of the fees the same eth right it's it's just a secure make it a base native why don't they just do that and it it's it gives it gives a flaw for other l2s to copy it it's because it's evm it's not like any

kind of research needs to go into it and they're already doing the research for Native I think I think that one is a harder cell because it might seem like they're rugging the other l2s with this but but what does it matter why if you're going to be credibly neutral and you care about ethereum and decentralization why why does that matter at Le at least have a flaw for what some of the other L2 should be or set the example or just get another Revenue Source I I don't however whichever these narratives works for you to spin it to the community just adopt it and just do it just please make it real native embedded enshrined whatever word you want to use as Central Bankers to call it just use that word call it that and chill it and make it please I never see that happening

because I don't think that like it took them God knows how many years to implement to use defi strategies as they like to call it we're implementing defi strategies on a I don't see them ever launching a thing um I do I I think um I I agree with Bach I I can't see this like happening really but the closest like way this could happen is like uh lanaa if you know that rollup it's built by uh the consensus folk they have like a plan to launch as not as a native rollup but as a base rollup um that's they've added that to their road map and it seems like they've made some traction so uh maybe that could blow up in the

future who knows um uh they should just do the revenue share model I think that's the thing that makes the most sense don't call it made such like a disgusted face at yeah said it might blow up okay that's fair no I I agree with Bach here I I think there's a lot of actions that could be taken and like I don't know it it really just feels like the eth community finds a way to just sit around and do none of them all at the same time like just continuously but they could really they could choose any of these like ideas that have come out right like convince all of them to become based or native rollups or like do the rev share model what have you or like make your own inin L2 and like

instead we'll sit around and do like social signaling and get none of it done which is unfortunate they have been getting dunked on way too much on Twitter lately though and I see a Vibe shift like I think it's too much you can't be on vitalic like that like it's it's kind of like kicking a baby you know you don't do that to vitalic and so it's like I do see there being a Vibe shift you know when you're like there's a sentiment bottom I mean we've been trying to call it for two years I guess but like I feel like this has to be it um like Camino's dunking on Stan on Twitter um I don't know so you're telling me I should buy eth do not buy eth man I don't know the sentiment and the price I

don't know about that one but I do agree with you that like I mean it feels like at the very least there more and more like EF and vitalic and other people have they've been getting forced basically by just the the backlash like the outrage from the community around like you guys are doing not like picking pick an action basically and we're we're like starting to see that so I mean I guess if they can really like take charge and and run with something I mean that would be great to see I feel like we were getting that right with you know Petra and other INF fusaka upgrades and like you know really scaling either the base chain or scaling blob gas um but we'll see if that maybe leads to other things it sounds like you guys are kind of you know on the fence in terms of

whether we'll see like significant upticks into you know scaling things are like picking a particular direction here is what I'm getting hey everyone we'd like to give a special shout out to the sponsors of today's episode scale scale is built different unlike other layer ones scale is offering users a network of gas-free interoperable evml ones where user experience comes first scale operates like the AWS infrastructure model where developers pay for space in the network in skl tokens to validators essentially scale has chain fees and not gas fees this allows for free transactions on scale and has saved 46 million users over 9 billion in gas fees explore the gasf free ecosystem at scale. Spacey and follow their Journey on x at scale Network visit the scale

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we can stop the eth TI raade and jump over to another new launch that has also everything's kind of been getting on in this market State outside of Bitcoin really um but bar chain also recently launched their token dropped um the holders of of longtime bar ated nfts finally made their money um Bach has written some some words about be chain I'd love to get his thoughts um on this one in particular the biggest thing that we've seen just from the community is like price is down and therefore it's bad um I'm curious like from your perspective Bach like what's the what should we be excited about or is there are there things to be excited about for

barah which should we be looking at if if if anyone is looking into this ecosystem it does feel like in these times of sentiment it's like the time to get on chain look for you know new apps new games to play and and maybe like farm for some for some aird drops for the future um rather than you know sit in the cess pool and and just on stuff you kind of set me up for a bullish take but I don't really have a very good I don't know what the um no I will say a few things so I think a um they have a lot of apps that are supposed to launch on the Chain um I think bar is the first chain that we've seen that has gone that and Danny I think you're very familiar with this because you wrote that monad piece it's like um chains

have realized now that Tech differences are not enough and that they need to onboard as many apps as possible um and I think bar chain is the first to come out but one of the um and one of the large iterations of this where they're like they've onboarded a lot of protocols to launch on the Chain um they've done some incubation programs um and bar chain itself also has some native apps that are enshrined so they have a uh they have baras swap it's called now used to be backs and then they have a few other Primitives um so on that end there is stuff to do on the chain it's not like you're bridging over to like a deserted blockchain there's stuff to do on the other hand on the

other hand um I wrote in the now it it's going to sound a bit like hindsight bias now because I wrote the report a while ago and then the be be price is down now but um I will say that bar chain raised quite a bit of money um and also they locked away boyco deposits pre- deposits it's like 3.12 bill when it closed so that's free bill in capital in Boo that is interested in be chain and be chain onchain activ buying the token or buying other ecosystem tokens and then they also

raised a lot of money like I said and on top of that you got like two to three million dollars for holding a bear that smoking weed um so you know what I mean like who's the marginal buyer was my question on the report and this was specifically I think like a launch thing I think eventually people will step in I I don't think it's like I I don't want to give anything because I think they got kind of unlucky because they launched at a bad time in the market but on the other hand like who's the marginal buyer has been very very important and I think it's going to be very important going forward with a lot of l1s because like bar chain didn't even do anything necessarily wrong they launched at a relatively low valuation I

would say um given that they raised quite a bit of money they could have launched a lot higher um I just think they raised too much money and locked up a lot of deposits so there was really no one coming in to buy and on top of that gave a bunch of people lot of money for holding nfds um I think it was kind of expected to sell off um in positive stuff lots of apps on the Chain not a lot of them have launched yet um I think you should give it a few months realistically to start farming I do like infrared that's like my big one I think it plays quite well into the proof of liquidity Dynamics it's basically like liquid wrapped Barra and liquid WRA bgt um I don't want to waste time on this part explaining proof of

liquidity but basically like I like to think of it as convex to curve it's like INF fored to um be chain and I think it works quite well that's the one that I've like been looking into um I haven't started farming bar chain for what it's worth I am supposed to get my air drop today for yapping about them on Twitter I hope this spot doesn't go out no it's not out today so I'll be fine um yeah if you have any specific questions I'd much rather answer those I realize I've never actually done a report on a pod before Darren Mark if you guys have questions I guess the I agree with a lot of the points that you said I think it's unfortunate that they're the first of like this maybe

three-chain cohort that's like very focused around community and having apps day one and yet they at the same time don't have that many apps day one I guess is the biggest concern there and a lot of the like you mentioned a lot of liquidity from the boy Co vaults that maybe could have been actively on the chain is locked up um I guess it's just a different Dynamic right like we've seen you know the souls the hyper liquids it's all around like you know trade trade a bunch of tokens like lots of velocity lots of trading activity and this is very much like eth defi summer like get your money in a vault and let it sit there and earn liquidity rewards so this I wrote about in the report as well they're playing last cycle games

this cycle like we've very clearly been as and as mentioned it's like um trading highpe speed um volumes and apps make money on fees on those um so I I was a bit shock I wasn't shocked because I knew that they were going to launch this so I was like I was just I guess I like was just thinking it doesn't make a lot of sense like we I thought we kind of got over that that um like whole tvl Obsession era um to add to that I I want to clarify one thing because some idiots going to come and say oh actually it's not blocked the boycot deposits will bridge over to Bar chain main net but the markets are still locked from 30 to 90

days so it doesn't matter if it's on bechain Main net it's just locked on bechain Main net um 3.1 build is a lot of money though um showing that people are clearly interested I wonder how many of it are existing VCS who are looking to farm the farm more also they didn't really do themselves any favors like investors can stake to earn rewards and I know it's like the base fee like 1.6% or something but still like we just had the whole the thing is they just like ignoring the mechanics proof of liquidity can be cool whatever it's novel that's what people like to say

when they don't think something's like actually very good it's novel um you know lots of apps are supposed to launch on the chain and I genuinely think that it will I don't know how much quality there will be but there are a lot of apps launching on the Chain um first of all why haven't they launched it's been two and a half years it's a evm chain okay um more so the point is what was I going with this what was the last thing I said before all this it was the very good point as well was it something about people don't know how proof of liquidity works but they say it's novel dude I completely why they wait two years to launch lots of apps but they're not there yet I think they're going to launch I think the apps are coming I don't know you said a lot of I

think I think Bach is bearish it was bvl not being locked 30 to 90 days oh I forgot it I don't know I would just like be kind of careful oh the 1.6% to stakers um we just had this whole thing with Celestia not just we had it like whatever eight months ago nine months ago like there's very clearly anti VC sentiment in the markets and the worst thing is with anti- VC sentiments is that people hate it when they're like oh VCS are dumping on me like that's like people's biggest fear for some like and then you give them this like opportunity to say this while the Market's in a downturn um you don't

clarify it anywhere and it's like I don't know they just they kind of like kind of let it happen to themselves you know it's wet and then there's reports that the team are selling their Air Drive s it's just a mess dude like I I hope they can figure it out um but we'll need to see I would give it like a few months minimum until the boyot deposits are out or at least the first FR of like the 30-day ones as well as like until a few apps are live um and in the meantime infrared is the only cool one that I've realized that I've looked into that I was like yeah this probably will work very well um apart from that nothing really was like wow this is

fantastic but I didn't like uh I wasn't maybe you've given this view elsewhere but I kind of wanted to ask like you you mentioned like three other uh or three chains launching recently right I'm curious like how do you think how do you feel about like the abstract launch relative to this because these were both positioned as like more I guess like day one having like an ecosystem like type of chance dud I also I'm being very unfair to the bear chain guys it is very hard like launching is objective like launching a chain is objectively difficult and then like coordinating that launch with 60

protocols for them to launch is difficult um I don't know I think like with any chain like no matter how many protocols you on board like you on board to be day one Partners I think this will happen with monad and mega as well by the way um and like I like all four of these projects I think are like interesting I just think it's like you're not riant on your own timeline you're reliant on other people's timelines as well like I'm not just working on my own chain I'm also helping 50 60 other teams trying to get on my chain day one um inevitably things will go wrong I don't think there's much you can do about that with regard to abstract I

think it was okay like it just died out very quickly it's very difficult the Market's not do giving anybody a lot of like second chances as well I I just did some counting and ver chain is the 43rd most valuable L1 right now it is $150 Million worth less than Onyx coin but it's $50 million above ecash so I'm surprised at how I don't want to say low but I'm surprised at how low the valuation is relative to some things that I've maybe never used in my life after years of um years of let's just call it hypee behind it I will say one thing I think it's I don't want to

give this is not Financial advice I do think it's like oversold heavily um I don't think it should be valued that low I don't know how high it should be valued but like what is it I think it's like 500 mil MC Market Cap 2.5 2.6 Bill FTV or something I think that's too low um realistically and I'm also going to like say one more thing I think I came off a lot more bearish on this pod that I actually am for Bara I just think like the report that I wrote was during a bearish time um so like I was focusing on some of the down turns but I do think that proof of

liquidity is relatively interesting and I'll see like I think a lot of apps could launch there and if we will have some like defi season um with like farming and stuff no matter how like unlikely you might think that is it could happen um I do think that barane will get quite a lot of attention yeah we I mean we do have other chains coming as well and we'll see like I think the timing is certainly going to matter around the sentiment right like if let's say if maned had launched two weeks ago I'm sure people would probably be equally disappointed that the market is down and their new token is down um nothing is really safe in this environment

um I don't know I'm curious your guys thoughts there like we talked quite a bit about Bara we've got other chains coming up I mean there's also story just announced like their IP token there's tentative rumors about onad doing their test net in February potentially maybe I'll comment on that I want your guys thoughts is I hate this like ongoing meme of like yeah we're launching in Q5 yeah we're doing the we're doing the test net on February 30th these these jokes around like maybe it'll come maybe it'll happen maybe it won't um yeah stupid why the do they it's like launch the chain I'm a prospective consumer I want to potentially use your chain oh it's in Q5 good one bud now you

you're talking about it so it's it's obviously doing something yeah true I do agree with you if monad had launched at the same time it would have probably the thing is that I don't want to be the hyper liquid guy but like hyper liquid people always do this and it's just becoming a little bit I like I was annoyed that myself when I like was messaging in chats it set this expectation that when a token launches it has to go up 10x and the chain can't take any VCS and they need to do a 35 40% a off and it's just ridiculous you know you're not you can't do that ever um so any chain that launches now is going to like if

price dips 10% like this is a scam this is why hyper liquid is better um which is kind of good for hyper liquid if you think about it it's like Luna 2.0 we're not supposed to I think hyper liquid's a good example of like maybe this point we're getting at is that like there's timing and like the the path matters for a lot of these things and if hyper liquid in the token had dropped in like two weeks ago like it would be hard to say that the chart would have looked the exact same as it did when it launched in what a few weeks after the ction like it was in the right environment to go up I mean also you know the launch valuation other like they played into that but if everything was bleeding you know it'd be hard to to see something like that

pull you know the same 10x and then and then pull back from there in a launched that similar Val I think like hype launched that two bill I think bar launched that three to four 2.5 to three or something it didn't launch that much higher um I don't know anyway D you wanted say something oh I was I mean I was just going to say like I almost think about uh like past L2 launches like when arbitrum launched and like uh like optimism all those right those were like completely baren ecosystems uh more or less and you know I I I kind of think in a weird way people were happy with the

outcome at least with the air drop I can't or especially for arbitr I can't really recall like um people really being angry with uh the air drop outc come for like arbitrum they bootstrapped like users uh in a organic way so to speak like they had like nothing and people came and built stuff and then got like a big airdrop for it I I'm like butchering this really but like I I wonder how much is like being over complicated if that makes any sense like we over complicating this I AUM also La launched a different time where there weren't as many chains and assets and ethereum was King and

then I remember they had WID listed it for certain like D5 protocols to launch and and they went through that whole period and made sure everything was running properly so by the time it actually went from Main net devet test net to actual main net then you know things were a lot more a lot more smooth then but I mean that's just for the launch for the token price it's hasn't been it hasn't been performing well at all I think that's mostly due to dilution because if you look at 2024 arbitrum market cap and it's the same for True for many of the other L tubes like optimism and many of the others their market caps are up believe it or not but the token price is down and that that just shows you how much dilution plays into your returns in like a longer time period which is

something you need to watch out for all the chains even like the new ones like bar chain or whatever else I'm not familiar with their tokenomics but I assume some dilution will be coming in a year or so I mean I think if I recall arbitrum actually like going into that kind of hype cycle of like late 23 early 2024 when the market was you know Bitcoin was going up lots of things were going up I think ARB objectively performed fairly well as a token um I think Mark's Point like it was a different time the token basically launched during the depths of the bare Market I mean early what would that have been like March of 23 um you know Bitcoin was like kind of starting to go back up at that point but it was probably what in the 20s um 20,

thousands at that time so just totally different than like launching at some maybe even higher valuation when things are not like bitcoin's now at $100,000 a coin and then you know the market turns sideways and Al go down for you know half a month um yeah it was also the matters basically path matters for a lot of these things yeah I agreed um it's going to be tough we'll I think we'll see quite a few people shift away from God I feel like every cycle we say this but like surely people will now start building apps right like if the L1 valuation gets compressed

maybe what do you define as apps here because I could see that like two things like one I could see that like happening in this weird way where like an L1 launches but then they build out like a a ton of apps themselves like they launch their own decks they have like infrastructure to go with it like all that but it's like just the team right or like you know they recruit people Etc right that's barricade that's what they do it's also sui though right yeah it's also SOI they're supporting a lot of the apps but also on the app we we we're pretty last month January I think R for all each chains was 830 million

application Revenue was around 800 million yeah so it's the I mean r and revenue obviously two different metrics entirely but you know it's it's getting there I feel like it's it's it's getting to where we all wanted to get to at least at least Us in research to be fair gonna kill you for sorry Danny I wanted to make a Ryan Conor joke can I say go for it I'll is gonna kill you for saying R is not Revenue um I was going to say there are there are plenty of apps like like to Mark's Point there's plenty of apps that make money I think a lot a lot of these apps are like people don't want to talk about them right it's it's like Photon it's bullex it's all these like meme coin trading apps and they they're

printing a ton of Revenue um and I and I think people look at that and they're like well maybe somebody will build apps we're hoping for someone to like start building apps and not chains but it's like there are apps and people are using them it's just not the ones that you want to talk about I guess well yeah it's people like more izing over like meme coin revenues and it's also just like I almost want to say like there's this hate between like true altcoins and like meme coins like I I think Bach brought this up before like there's a chart that's going around where it's like meme coins like uh like meme coin growth or something and then it's like how altcoins have performed and I like sure like you can view it like that or you can view it as though people think

that the that there's more opportunity in meme coins than like whatever altcoin that had like you're advertising that has fundamentals right I don't know are you promoting meme coins as an American citizen no absolutely not and besides they're collectibles I don't know I'm I don't want to talk about the meme coin thing because I yelled at Danny and Danny yelled back at me last week about it and so Ryan but I wanted to touch on something you said Darren no something you said Danny um yeah these apps make a lot of money because they take 1% feeds on volume and eventually that's going to get compressed down but like until then if you're an app devel it makes sense to like build out something gamified people

say like oh we we don't have any ponified stuff anymore we do um or you just haven't built like anything that we had ponified you can build out the same thing now um and take 1% on volume which is fantastic like you can make a lot of money um apparently 800 million app Revenue Accord according to mark So app rev sorry not Revenue yeah totally agree like I mean these guys are absolutely printing I think Photon itself is doing like 200 million in volume a day so they're just like printing $2 million in Revenue I mean you know whatever their salaries are but that's an absurd amount of money um I that probably does get compressed it probably gets compressed at the same

time that like activity and and usage would likely also go up or at least competition over those things would increase it's surprising that I mean we've talked about this before as well but like it's surprising that those haven't come down with just how many of them are competing for that set of users in that trading volume but uh I don't know um we we fight about mcoin and mcoin trading the whole industry is doing it right now it's kind of like the Hot Topic pump fund ruin crypto um maybe keep it lie hearted who I don't know if any person here were to list a meme coin and then crash out live on Twitter who do we think it would be I'm gonna have to vote on Bach here he really uh he seems like most likely to be our our our crash out

resident no B 100% it's not even a debate I want no other answers OB sected what the hell does that mean what does this mean what am I gonna do post a meme coin and then crash out you think I'm are you trying to say I'm gonna go I don't want to say it I don't mode yeah he's pretending like he hasn't talked about this before I have talked about I've I I i' I've considered never doing it but increasingly dollar B is becoming more and more a everyone is seeing how successful poroi has been on Twitter lately and and you know you've even if you're not going

to do it and you know in your heart you would never do it you've thought about it it's come across your mind and I think a lot of people it's it's run across their mind but NFA I wouldn't really recommend doing that publicly um and letting that live on the internet forever um to have officials go and comb through the records of how you made money pump it uping a coin I will say one thing on Solana Soul scan has now only shown the past 20 thou no past 200,000 transactions or so so and in fact you can't even nobody can even read Solana block explorers anyway so I think that's part of my I think 10 to 15% of the reason why people launch meme coins on salana is because crime isn't legal but it's very hard prove because of how

the block explorers work but what I'm saying is um Danny if you actually wanted to launch to coin you can just do it and people wouldn't be able to catch you so jail Dany token out this week next week we're going to delay the launch um I'm a little too worried even if 99.99% of people cannot read Soul scan I know that Zach is out there he's looking on chain he's finding people and Reporting them uh so we're GNA we're going to hang on until maybe that maybe that threat goes away all right appreciate you guys coming on today this was a good chat we will see you all next time [Music]