The Optimist #52

Thank you fellow readers to continue reading my research about Defi on the Optimism Superchain.

If you missed the previous newsletter, it’s just one click away from you HERE.

1 month i haven’t been writing, but if you look at the chart, not much appeared on the Superchain! Well… that’s not true: From confirming my thesis that Base is the de-facto Layer 2, and with Soneium + Ink mainnet live offering nice yields that could get you exposure to the next Optimism Airdrop, let’s catch up!

🟡 Mode issued its whitepaper with regards to Synth subnet on Bittensor, and is ready to release a video on BTC Options pricing for traders, check-out James X account

🌹Unichain mainnet is live, and Bunni V2 is launching soon on it

✈Aerodrome is teasing Slipstream V2, enabling dynamic fees (high fees during high volatility, low fees during low volatility)

☣ Infected.fun has WL’ed 500 users out of 132k participants to the next pandemic game on Base → Honestly something to watch out as it generates a lot of interest

🤖Giza, an DefAI protocol live on Mode, has now launched on Base, integrated Morpho Labs to automate lending through several vaults, and reached 600k$ TVL in less than a week

🚴‍♂️ Velodrome will launch on Swell Chain

🧰Nexus Mutual has significantly reduced its cost to insure your funds for less than 1% per year premium on 11 battle-tested protocols

⛵Opensea announced its SEA token, who knows where it could land, maybe on Base like $KAITO?

🅰 Arcadia finance announced also its token launch on Base AAA. The protocol is backed by Coinbase Ventures

👂Midas collaborated with Risk Curator to issue 3 new stablecoin strategies with APR around 15%-20%. Users receives Yield Liquid Tokens (YLT), which are yield bearing assets, that can benefit Defi composability

Very interesting ranking through 30days.

Source: https://defillama.com/chains/Superchain

Interesting to note that the last newsletter you received was from the previous $BTC ATH:

Since, then $BTC lost 15%, $ETH close to 30%, ignoring the wick at 2,164$. I don’t want to spend this article to talk about how to manage this price action. My strategy is not yours, yours is not your friend’s one… The best you can do is: listen to yourself, learn from your mistake and adapt your strategy accordingly to sleep well and survive this market. If you haven’t done this yet, then change your gameplay NOW

So, let’s forget the price action, and focus on the Superchain. What happened this last month.

My previous newlsetter about Coinbase end game is by far the most attractive content i’ve ever written with more than 5k readers. And I think we continue to see that BASE will be the defacto layer sucking all liquidity from Ethereum L1 and all other L2. And when I say Sucking Liquidity, I cannot stop thinking about this to land on Aerodrome, and this has already started:

• $AAVE & $GHO (AAVE stablecoin): I kept asking the AAVE DAO, wen liquidity on L2? Dream come true: Now tradable on Aerodrome (AAVE/wETH) with 10m$ TVL

• cbBTC asset keeps growing onchain, with 100m$ TVL crossed thanks to the Bitcoin-Backed loan powered by Morpho/Moonwell:

• COINBASE 2024 earnings: The onchain economy is now at the center of the one-pager! Do you think it’s only a coincidence? base reached 16b$ TVL onchain in January 2025

During the last earning call, Coinbase said:

So this weights my thesis that Coinbase strategy is not to list tokens on Coinbase Exchange, but more to focus on user-friendly product (Aka Coinbase Wallet) where they can charge a higher fee rate.

Pure coincidence again? Coinbase Wallet team has merged with the Base team. Listen to this record where you can see next to each other: Jesse Pollak (Director of Base), John Granata (Director of Product) and Dan Romero (Founder of Farcaster).

Imagine what could become: Crypto + Self custody + Mobile APP + Social APP in one tool: Your mobile phone 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

• $KAITO seems to be launching on Base, that is a no brainer that it would be launched on Aerodrome too. Again, expect a lot of trading volume, a lot of fees, a lot of rewards to veAERO holders

• Coinbase promoting $USDC in a fully open manner whereas the asset is minted by another company = Circle… But if you read this newsletter, you’d have remembered that Coinbase has a stake in Circle!

• Ether.fi launched BTC defi integration on Base. User can now mint eBTC natively on Base and earn a bunch of points. eBTC is fully composable and can be used in 3rd party projects like Aerodrome (still low TVL so beware of slippage):

I could write infinite facts about Base crushing this space, but better stop here for your fragile heart.

Q1 has been really great so far for the Optimism Superchain.

As of February 2025, 4x L2 of which 3x building on the Superchain, are now Stage 1, increasing the sequencer decentralization. Base is still expecting to become Stage 1 this year, and this could generate a catalyst to attract more TVL.

And yes, Unichain is now live on Mainnet. “Wow, uniswap launching its chain MUST be a banger!!” Well, this is the difference between expectations & reality:

After 1 week, the TVL has some difficulties to exceed the 10m$ milestone, with the largest TVL dAPP being Stargate (bridge) with 5m$ TVL. Someone said one day: “The success of a chain is the sum of every applications success deployed on that chain”. The chain currently offers no interesting yield, so why moving liquidity there?

So the real objective here is how Unichain is going to attract builders? Why a project that can permissionlessly launch a token on Uniswap on any L1/L2 or using another DEX on Solana, would want to launch on Unichain? I don’t get it personally.

Note: Study Berachain

Q1 saw also 2 other mainnet launchs, for Ink & Soneium.

INK was said to be the new DEFI layer, but is also struggling to gain traction, same as Unichain. However, it differentiates from the latter one by having partnered with Key Defi company: Dinero for its own Liquid Staking Token iETH, and Tether for USDT0, that can be seamlessly bridged without any slippage through chains.

But good thing for us, the #1 APP in TVL is not a bridge but Velodrome, and you can find some very nice Yield: https://velodrome.finance/liquidity?filters=Ink

Stable: 37% APR if you select 1 tick range, but more likely to be between 12%-18% if you select 3 to 4 ticks range.

ETH: 11% APR

iETH is an ETH liquid staking solution built for Ink layer 2 network powered by Dinero, formerly Redacted Cartel.

And $DINERO just went live on Velodrome too:

After 4 years in Crypto, I’ve learned one thing. Things do not happen by pure coincidence.

1. Kraken (INK) ETH Liquid Staking is powered by Dinero.

2. Dinero is now launching on Velodrome

3. Velodrome is the main DEX on which Ink expects to use to support the liquidity growth on its network (like Base is doing with Aerodrome).

=> I would expect Kraken to announce a liquid investment into DINERO protocol.

So how to benefit these nice above yields, how to bridge to Ink?

1. Go to the official bridge page: https://inkonchain.com/dashboard?category=bridge

2. Or, check the cheapest route here:

• Buy USDT on Arbitrum → Contract : 0xFd086bC7CD5C481DCC9C85ebE478A1C0b69FCbb9

• Go to https://usdt0.to/transfer

• Bridge from Arbitrum to INK => 0 slippage

Thank me!

Soneium seems to have a bit more traction with 35m$ TVL

Velodrome is ranked #6 by TVL, with a nice farm for stablecoin: APR 1 tick 42%, but likely to range between 15%-20% for 3 to 4 ticks range.

Something interesting to do on Soneium is to chase any future airdrop. So don’t fade the OG Badge:

How to get your OG Badge?

• Complete 45 txns on Soneium before February 27th, 2025

• Your soulbound badge will be rewarded straight to your wallet by the Soneium team on February 28th, 2025

Easy way is to provide liquidity on Velodrome, and claim XVELO every day, swap into your LP token, and provide more liquidity. In approx a week time, you’ll have made 45 tx.

And now comes the interesting part. Previously OP airdrops have been very well aligned with any incentive campaign objectives run by the OP foundation. Usually OP Airdrops happen around March & September (twice a year)…So we might be close.

In Season 7, all contributors to the Collective will be focused on a core pillar of our Superchain Product Vision: Interoperability. And on a pre-selected number of chains have been selected to be eligible to this new incentive campaign:

A total of 18 chains have been selected. So being active on those chains can be rewarding. I would focus on the following:

• Providing liquidity through Velodrome on Base, OP, Mode, Ink, Soneium, Lisk, Polynomial

• Mint on Zora & Mint blockchain

• And finally, continue voting or delegating your OP that should stay in your wallet. This has always been a multiplier to the airdrop allocation

And go on each chain website and see where you can make some tx on each & every chain. Patience & perseverance is key here, and yes, i can understand this is not the funniest part of all!

As the market continues to puke, and the money extraction flywheel continues through the mania of memecoin, AI-Agent coin, Celebrity coin, more & more people will go back to utility coin. But that doesn’t mean the market will go back upwards. The total MC of utility coin is ridiculously tiny compared to the total crypto market cap.

So there only 2 possibilities:

1- Market has locally bottomed and we go for a new BTC ATH and only some Alts will shine again, the ones which people have enough trust to buy & not get rekt instantly

2- Market has topped in January ‘25 and we are here for a long Winter that can last some months or more. Like in 2022, focus on where the money goes and project building 1 of-a-kind product. Always bet on the leader that’s simple as that.

• Choose Pendle over Spectra

• Choose Aerodrome over Solidly

• Choose AAVE over any other fork

• Choose Lido over any other LST

• Choose Ethena over any other similar stablecoin

So my main conclusion is: Don’t leave this space except if you cannot handle it. Base is building an amazing ecosystem where Defi will strive. And only this is enough to get you busy to continue learning and see which project will have an edge and could become the next unicorn.

Remember:

• 2021 was the bull phase

• 2022 was the puke phase

• 2023 was the investment phase

• 2024 was the bull phase

• 2025 is going to be the …

• 2026 is going to be the …

=> Fill the missing word.

Investment Funds have been pretty quiet on Base & OP. Nothing really interesting to not. However, Nansen has recently started tracking Berachain (smart money, tokens & contract). Worth having a look at it.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this content is financial advice. I may have some positions on the presented projects, however these articles are written in a non biais way so that you can make you own opinion out of it.

Do your own research before investing, and remember that Crypto is extremely volatile and risky. Be ready to loose everything you invest in.