2024 Crypto Investment Themes

Welcome to Bankless Takes! This week, the first week of 2024… we have 6 Predictions for the major investment themes ahead for this year. What are going to be the trends that define 2024? What do you need to know to stay ahead of the game? At least, for what we can see today. ----- 🏹 Airdrop Hunter is HERE, join your first HUNT today https://bankless.cc/JoinYourFirstHUNT ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 https://%E2%81%A0https//k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum https://%E2%81%A0https//bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo 🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/Toku ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 04:45 Restaking and Liquid Restaking Tokens 12:34 What is Liquid Restaking? 20:26 Solana 28:18 Parallelized EVM's 37:16 Games 43:56 Data Availability 50:07 Airdrops ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ https://www.bankless.com/disclosures%E2%81%A0

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, welcome to 2024. And on the first Bankless Takes of the year, we have six predictions, six investment themes that we think are going to define the meta for the rest of the year, maybe into 2025. But from what we can see today, at least, is already setting in place some six different investment themes that we are going to watch develop over the years. Ryan, how's your holidays?

• 0:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, it's good, man. I have a little bit of COVID. So if listeners-

• 0:28David Hoffman?

  Holiday COVID?

• 0:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, if listeners hear the-

• 0:30David Hoffman?

  A present from the family?

• 0:31Ryan Sean Adams?

  In my voice, yeah. A parting present. But David, I'm excited to start 2024 on this first episode of the year. And predictions are curated by you yourself, or these investment themes, I should say. So I've gotten a chance to look at them at a high level. I think I'm gonna need your help to get us through this. Do you want to get in?

• 0:51David Hoffman?

  Absolutely. And if you've been a content consumer crypto, you know that every single content producer that exists in crypto has put out their predictions for 2024, whether you're a writer or a podcaster, you have your-

• 1:04David Hoffman?

  This is a little bit of a meta, an aggregator, because I've been reviewing all of those and also putting my own spin into these. And this is also an article that I wrote. It came out yesterday on Bankless, bankless.com. You can read it at bankless.com/2024-crypto-metas. But we will also regurgitate that content for you here on the podcast. Six different ones all across the space, both inside of Ethereum and outside of Ethereum. And so we're going to get right into all of these metas, these six different metas that will define 2024. But first, I want me to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, especially Kraken, our preferred crypto exchange for the year of 2024 all year long. If you do not have an account with Kraken and you didn't sign

• 1:47David Hoffman?

  up in 2023, well, you have a whole nother year to do it. So get started with Kraken today. Kraken knows crypto. Kraken's been in the crypto game for over a decade. And as one of the largest and most trusted exchanges in the industry, Kraken is on the journey with all of us to see what crypto can be. Human history is a story of progress. It's part of us, hardwired. We're designed to seek change everywhere, to improve, to strive.

• 2:10David Hoffman?

  And if anything can be improved, why not finance? Crypto is a financial system designed with the modern world in mind. Instant, permissionless, and 24/7. It's not perfect, and nothing ever will be perfect. But crypto is a world-changing technology at a time when the world needs it the most. That's the Kraken mission: to accelerate the global adoption of cryptocurrency, so that you and the rest of the world can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. Head on over to kraken.com/bankless to see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to US and US territory customers by Payward Ventures. PVI, doing business as Kraken. Mantle, formerly known as BitDow, is the first DAO-led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle Network, a brand-new, high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built using the OP stack,

• 2:55David Hoffman?

  but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle Treasury is one of the biggest DAO-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of projects from all around the Web3 space for Mantle. Mantle already has sub-communities from around Web3 on-boarded, like Game7 for Web3 gaming, and Bybit for TPL and liquidity and on-ramps. So if you want to build on the Mantle Network, Mantle is offering a grants program that provides milestone-based funding to promising projects that help expand, secure, and decentralize Mantle. If you want to get started working with the first DAO-led Layer 2 ecosystem, check out Mantle at mantel.xyz and follow them on Twitter at ZeroXMantle.

• 3:40David Hoffman?

  Cello is the mobile-first, EVM-compatible, carbon-negative blockchain built for the real world. And now, something big is happening. Introducing the Cello Layer 2. It's a game-changing proposal that's going to bring Cello's rapidly-growing ecosystem home to Ethereum. Vitalik has shared his excitement for the Cello Layer 2 on the Cello forum, so has Ben Jones from Optimism. But why? The Cello Layer 2 will bring huge advantages, like a decentralized sequencer, off-chain data availability, and one-block finality. What does all that mean? Rock-solid security, a trustless bridge to Ethereum, and more real-world use cases for Ethereum without compromise. And real-world adoption is happening. Active addresses on Cello have grown over 500% in the last six months. With the Cello Layer 2, gas fees will stay low, and you can even pay for gas using ERC20 tokens.

• 4:24David Hoffman?

  But Cello is a community-governed protocol. This means that Cello needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the Cello forum. Follow @celloorg on Twitter and visit cello.org to shape the future of Ethereum.

• 4:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we have six crypto investment themes for 2024 and let's take these one by one. So let's start with the first one, David. All right. So last year was a big breakout year for LSTs. That was liquid staking tokens. This year, a major investment theme is restaking and LRTs. That's liquid restaking tokens. That's what you're saying here. Tell me about this, David. Why this theme going here?

• 5:02David Hoffman?

  This theme begins with Eigenlayer, who of course brought restaking into crypto at all. Now there's already Eigenlayer kind of copycats. There's an Eigenlayer on Bitcoin. There's an Eigenlayer in the multi-chain, but really Eigenlayer itself has kind of dominated the narrative. Right in the last week or maybe week before, yeah, the week before Christmas, $1 billion of TVL was hit by Eigenlayer. And the caps that Eigenlayer has, the liquid staking token caps, every single liquid staking token has a limit as to how much can be deposited into Eigenlayer just as a safety precaution, keeps getting hit over and over and over again. The most recent cap that was raised just a couple of weeks ago was hit yesterday.

• 5:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wait, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? So it's like ST ETH has a cap of how much ST ETH that is Lido's staked ETH, how much Lido staked ETH you can put in Eigenlayer right now. And our ETH has a similar cap. That's what you mean by by cap. And Eigenlayer is self imposing this cap, I believe, just because it doesn't want to grow too fast, too quickly. It's still in kind of an early form, like call it like a beta type form. Is that what you mean by these caps?

• 6:11David Hoffman?

  That's exactly right. And the caps for kind of the longer tail liquid staking tokens are lower than the Lido cap. But everything that is a liquid staking token has a cap. Lido is the largest, the next largest deposit into Eigenlayer is Swell. And then Rocket Pool as well, Coinbase. But all of these individual liquid stake token has a limit on them. Ether, vanilla ether has no limit. So you can deposit as much ether into Eigenlayer to farm Eigenlayer points, which is kind of where this whole investment narrative starts is Eigenlayer airdrop. The Eigenlayer. Airdrop, starting with Eigenlayer points. And if you deposit ether into Eigenlayer, you get Eigenlayer points.

• 6:52David Hoffman?

  If you deposit liquid staking tokens into Eigenlayer, you also get Eigenlayer points. But you are probably also farming the liquid restaking token of the system that you are depositing into. So for example, if you are depositing into Eigenlayer via swell or via Stakewise or via any of these other, like Stata, for example, you can also farm the liquid restaking token that comes as well. And this is one of the major themes, the last major theme that we'll talk about, Ryan, is airdrops. But we'll get to that one. Right now, Eigenlayer is the dual airdrop farm. Because everyone is very hyped on restaking, but you are also able to farm two airdrops at once.

• 7:36David Hoffman?

  The Eigenlayer drop, which everyone's excited about, and also a specific liquid restaking token that is entering the competition to ultimately replace liquid staking tokens, to replace Rocketpool, to replace Lido. Because this game board for liquid restaking tokens is brand new. It's a brand new fight. It's a brand new fight for TVL and attention and liquidity. And all of the wars of LST that were so hot in 2021 and 2022 are about to restart over again with liquid restaking tokens.

• 8:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, okay. So I think we need two points of clarification here is, one, could you just reset? Why are people putting tokens in Eigenlayer to begin with? Like, what's the point? So you were kind of talking a bit more and emphasizing maybe a bit more airdrop farming and kind of that sort of use case. But of course, that is kind of a speculative use case. That is to bootstrap the network, that sort of thing. But what is the end reason for why people are actually depositing tokens into Eigenlayer? What does Eigenlayer do?

• 8:38David Hoffman?

  Right. Eigenlayer restaking networks are an additional source of yield to deposited capital. And technically, that capital can be anything, but for right now, it is just Ether. If you want to explore why just Ether, we recently did an episode with Sriram with Mike Neuter a couple of weeks ago, that's already out. And so that answers in that episode. But really, you have Ether staking and the yields from ETH staking. And this is the world, the arena of liquid staking tokens that we all know, you know, RETH, S T E from Lido, etc. We are now entering the world of liquid restaking tokens. And for all of the restaking networks that Eigenlayer enables, which is the point of Eigenlayer,

• 9:19David Hoffman?

  there is additional yield that comes from the fees or inflation from these networks that get imbued into the liquid restaking token. So the first restaking network that's going to come online is EigenDA, a data availability network. And there is going to be fees from rollups or from really anyone who wants to use and consume EigenDA's data availability. Those fees for that service will be paid into the liquid restaking token. And so you have the state, the yield from ETH staking, you also have the fees going to EigenDA. And then, you know, for any other, what is called an AVS, actively validated service, which is what EigenDA is, it's what a restaking network is, for any other Eigenlayer

• 10:01David Hoffman?

  network, AVS, that generates yield, these liquid restaking tokens will secure those networks and they capture those yields and deposit them into the liquid restaking tokens. So liquid restaking tokens are Ether, the yield from ETH staking, and the fees from all Eigenlayer networks that that particular liquid restaking token provides security for. So it's simply just more yield. And we all, we all love yield in crypto. It's Ether-denominated yield, it's Ether capital as a deposit, and also it's combined with these double airdrop farms of Eigenlayer and the specific liquid restaking token project

• 10:41David Hoffman?

  that is working in this arena. So I think it's the, an aligning of a handful of stars that are all putting Eigenlayer and liquid restaking tokens into the narrative in 2024.

• 10:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, and I should mention, of course, with any yield, there is also risk associated with a nothing fee, right? So that's a note that all Bankless listeners should always be aware of. Whenever you see yield, it's really about your risk-adjusted return. And you have to factor smart contract risk, the risk of being sloshed by all these various protocols. But let me try to make sense of that. So what Eigenlayer essentially does is it takes a monetary unit like Ether, and it uses, in the same way the Ethereum network uses ETH, staked ETH, as a bond to secure the entire Ethereum network. Eigenlayer is basically saying, now you can use Ether in kind of the validator set of Ethereum

• 11:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  to secure other applications. And Eigenlayer DA is a data availability application that Eigenlayer has kind of developed in-house. And that's one of the first applications on top of the Eigenlayer network. But there will be more in the future. You can imagine entire like chain link style Oracle networks launched on top of Eigenlayer. You can imagine entire kind of like, I don't know if we should call them rollups, but sort of chains that are economically secured by ETH in kind of a different way than a rollup is. So an entire rollup maybe secured by Eigenlayer as an app. All of these various apps, these are the AVSs that you mentioned. And so AVS stands for what? Active Validator?

• 12:21David Hoffman?

  Actively Validated Service, which is kind of a complicated name. It's really just a restaking network.

• 12:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's an Eigenlayer app. We'll just call it an Eigenlayer app or restaking app. Okay? And so that's what's happening. And then just clarify this. So what is the difference between a liquid staking token like ST ETH and RE ETH, these are liquid staking tokens, we're all familiar with that, and a liquid restaking token? Is it just that you just take a liquid stake token, you take an RE ETH and you stake it again, and then it becomes a liquid restaking token? Is that basically it?

• 12:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's basically it. So think of it as a set of concentric circles where at the very center, you have vanilla ether and one more concentric circle out, you have staked ether, either staked ether from Lido, staked ether from Rocketpool, you could also solo stake, and you get the yields baked into the liquid staking token baked into that. And so now we're two concentric circles out, ether, liquid staking tokens. And now with Eigenlayer, you get one more concentric circle out, which is liquid restaking tokens. So inside of a liquid restaking token, you also have the yield from staking, also get the yields from actively validated services in Eigenlayer. Now, you can go to Eigenlayer.com and check out all the AVSs that are either online or coming to be online.

• 13:38David Hoffman?

  There's, I think, about 15 that are on the website, but there are many, many more in stealth, still working on their systems. The amount of yield coming out of these things, we are unsure of. It's still kind of an unknown metric. It'll be a combination of network inflation, which we know is, can be significant historically, and then also fees from actually payments for these services, which I think is the largest unknown. We don't really know how large these fees can get. I would guess it's going to be a much less amount of yield in comparison to network inflation. So there's still some numbers that are still to be determined here. Ryan, you talked about the risks of slashing and the risks of restaking,

• 14:22David Hoffman?

  and that is definitely a very important theme that I think is going to differentiate certain liquid restaking token teams. There are many different reasons as to why a liquid restaking token team will win or lose this game. But really, the game is ultimately defined as maximizing exposure while minimizing risk. Can you maximize your liquid restaking token to every single restaking network and capture all of the inflation and all of the yield and bake that into your liquid restaking token? And can you do that earlier than the other teams while also minimizing risk? And so the event of getting slashed, if you are a restaking network, because you are providing these actively validated services, is significant. Because A, you're losing capital, but you're also losing trust.

• 15:07David Hoffman?

  So this is kind of how I think this game will win. There's the classic, like, there needs to be BD efforts, there needs to be integrations, there needs to be partnerships, but really, the liquid restaking game will be won by maximizing exposure to AVSs and then minimizing risk.

• 15:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  And the reason this is a big deal is from a supply-demand perspective. I guess from a supply perspective, there's a lot of ETH out there. There's a lot of staked ETH out there in search of yield. So this is another use case for ETH kind of as the internet bond to secure non-Ethereum networks, non-Ethereum applications as well, which is kind of novel, and that's on the supply side. I guess on the demand side, it will really be a function of, you know, how many networks, how many applications require ETH or can benefit from the economic security of ETH. Rather than, I suppose, bootstrapping their own token,

• 16:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  you kind of use Ethereum's validator and Ether as a monetary asset to bootstrap your network's security. I guess that's on the demand side of things. How many of these applications will really, like, really take off? It seems like DA, I know that's another point that we'll get to, but DA, Eigenlayer DA in and of itself, might be a huge catalyst for demand here, but there could be others. And I guess Eigenlayer is waiting for its breakout app. Now, Eigenlayer is not the only restaking protocol. It's probably the most well-known and the biggest, but are there others as well, David?

• 16:40David Hoffman?

  Not natively on Ethereum, and in my opinion, not having access to the capital of Ether makes other restaking networks not as interesting. But that's always, you know, my perspective. That would probably come as no surprise to listeners. There is Babylon on Bitcoin, so Bitcoin restaking is a thing. There's another one, I'm forgetting the name, but it's more in like the multi-chain, multi-layer-one ecosystem. And really, like, there's actually no reason why Ether needs to be the enshrined asset of choice inside of Eigenlayer, except for just the monetary network of ETH. ETH is money, has money-like properties, has a high market cap. Again, we talked about this point specifically in the episode I

• 17:22David Hoffman?

  did with Mike Neuter and Sriram from Eigenlayer. So go listen to that most more recent episode that we put out on the Bankless Podcast feed. There's also just- One of the reasons why I know this is a big theme going into 2024 is the sheer number of teams that are going after this. I've heard reports of up to 15 liquid restaking teams. I haven't been able to categorize them all, but just like Puffer Finance, Rio Restaking, EtherFi, Swell Network, Ender Protocol, Kelp Dow, Renzo Protocol, Restake Finance. The number of teams is like large because everyone is kind of saying like, oh, this is another shot at winning what was the liquid staking token game. But that game has kind of been won by Lido. It's hard to dethrone Lido at this point, but Lido is not in their liquid restaking game.

• 18:08David Hoffman?

  And so it's an open playing field and everyone's very, very hungry. And so this is why I think it's a theme for.

• 18:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Why isn't Lido in the liquid restaking game? They kind of are, but they're not doing the AVSs. They're not doing the Eigenlayer applications directly. I mean, but you can put STE inside of Eigenlayer, correct?

• 18:27David Hoffman?

  Correct. Yeah, you can put STE inside of a number of these applications. So Kelp Dow, for example, you can put Lido Stake ETH into Kelp Dow along with a Stater ETH, X ETH into Kelp Dow. And you can use both because they are.

• 18:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is Kelp Dow?

• 18:43David Hoffman?

  It's one of the 15 liquid restaking token projects that exist out there. And so, yeah, so the, some of these things have their own liquid staking token. So like Swell Network, for example, disclosure, Ryan and I are angel investors. They are more vertically integrated because they have SW ETH. But they are also one of the earliest teams to pivot into liquid restaking. And so they're more vertically integrated, whereas Kelp Dow isn't doing their own LST, but they are aggregating other LSTs into their LRT. So there's a number of ways, different permutations to build these systems. But the end product is a liquid restaking token, which will have more yield than liquid staking tokens.

• 19:24David Hoffman?

  And it's going to be a fight for integrations into DeFi and just more liquidity and market makers. And, you know, eventually there's only so much capital to go around. So that's where all of these teams are going to be competing on and it's going to be hot. I really like it because it's just like a dual yield farming opportunity. And so like I'm farming one of these airdrops and it's, it's nice because you get Eigenlayer points and you get the LRT points. And it's just extra dopamine, you know?

• 19:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, no, this has all of the, I guess, the setup to be an investment theme for next year. I can understand why you picked it. We've got teams developing in the space. We've got kind of a new base protocol that is sort of net new, hasn't been tried before. Right. It's kind of like, you know, using the economic security of and the validator set of a network like Ethereum and applying that to other networks and other applications. That's novel. That's new. Also has the yield side of things. Also has the airdrop hunting side of things. So I can see why this makes your list. So restaking, okay, and liquid restaking tokens. That's number one. David, let's go to number two. This is Solana. Tell

• 20:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  me a bit about Solana. Why did it make your list of investment themes?

• 20:35David Hoffman?

  Well, it kind of had to. My hand was forced here. The big question is, is the meta now Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana? Is that the new question? Is that, is Solana now a blue chip? Is now number six or number five in total crypto market cap? So it's pretty far out there. And Solana has absolutely won Q2 or Q3 and Q4 of 2023. I think now, kind of the question now that that Solana has been like repriced significantly, doing like a nine X when Ether did a two X in 2023 and Bitcoin did a three X. Now Solana, you know, it's come back from the grave. It's come back from the the beating of of FTX. Now that's in its rearview mirror. The Lido airdrop has awoken Solana's version of a DeFi summer.

• 21:21David Hoffman?

  And so now the question is, is like, can Solana follow through on this, you know, top five market cap valuation that it's that it's got itself? People are speculating that it can. In my opinion, if Solana wants to achieve its dreams, it needs to enable unique and novel applications that would be impossible to build anywhere else. Right. So like right now, we have like a very popular application on Solana is Jupiter, and it's a DEX. And there's another popular application on Solana called MarginFi, and it's like a margin collateralized lending and margin position. GTO is Flashbots plus Lido. These are all things that we have on Ethereum. And so they're important DeFi financial primitives, and Solana needs them.

• 22:06David Hoffman?

  And now they do have them. But in my opinion, Solana, in order to follow through on its newly discovered valuation, it needs to enable new categories of apps that cannot be built anywhere else. It can't just be a microcosm of Ethereum. People are calling what's going on in Solana right now, Solana's version of DeFi summer, which is necessary, but it's not novel. It's not new. D-Pin, decentralized physical infrastructure, is a contender here for types of applications that can be built on Solana, in my opinion, TBD if this is a real category. But this is kind of where I think people are focusing their attention and their energy and their capital in 2024. It's like, what new novel use cases can be built on Solana?

• 22:49David Hoffman?

  What new novel users can Solana attract? And can it follow through on its promises of being a top-five blue chip asset?

• 22:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think that Solana, the Solana community, will get serious about economic protocol upgrades as well? I mean, certainly, its fee market needs an overhaul from a variety of perspectives. There is no 15.59 type of mechanism yet, although I think there are murmurings and talk of that. I've seen over the last couple of weeks, and certainly Bankless has said this in the past too, but some emphasis and some surfacing of the idea that Solana is actually creating a lot of inflation with respect to the amount that it issues on a daily basis versus the fees that it kind of takes in.

• 23:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Do you think that these get resolved during the cycle? Or do these more get resolved during the next bear market?

• 23:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good question. I do think the, from what I've been watching my conversation with recently with Anatoly and other people that I talked to in the Solana space who are more informed than me are, they're all starting to see a elevating of priority of the economics of Solana. Not just because you have like the Ethereum bullies who are like, your guys' economics are broken, but also just for network congestion and just fee market pricing and resource pricing in Solana is under optimized and kind of blunt and needs to be perfected. You know, Solana has been focusing on other things. Now it's time to focus on Solana's fee market structure, which is also the same opportunity, similar opportunity for Solana to focus on its economics.

• 24:31David Hoffman?

  So I'm starting to see a increased priority of this conversation inside of the Solana community. We will see what they come up with because the other thing that Solana is entering, Ryan, is the arena of governance because there is now multi-client Solana coming into the fold with FireDancer and a few other clients that are being built. And so now in order for Solana as a system to upgrade, it can't just be the MB validators channel in the Solana tech discord who are all pushing updates, telling all their validators to update their software. Now there needs to be consensus among these different clients to upgrade in the same way, according to the same spec. And this is a new arena for Solana to enter, like protocol governance.

• 25:11David Hoffman?

  And so they are doing, focusing on economics while also learning how to govern themselves, which is new for Solana. So this is a topic of interest for me and definitely an area of focus in 2024, I'd say.

• 25:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  It seems to be now consensus, at least among kind of VCs and you're like other, other investors that Solana is kind of the Ethereum of this cycle. You know, last cycle famously Ethereum did like, I don't know how many, did like a 10X, something like that, you know, 20X, something like that. And the the idea is that Solana may may repeat that, basically, and and be kind of the Ethereum this cycle. Part of part of me wonders about that, and I I'm not sure that we've seen L2s really take off and have their moment. I mean, they've had glimmers in the sun, you know, Arbitrum optimism.

• 26:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  In fact, if you look at like the, you know, OP price and R price, immutable X price, it's all kind of coming closer. Well, OP is at all time highs right now, right?

• 26:15David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is at all time highs.

• 26:17Ryan Sean Adams?

  So maybe we're moving into a bit of kind of a another late layer two season. I'm not sure, but what's your take on that as a as a premise? That Solana is the Ethereum of this cycle in terms of its price appreciation? And maybe the bear the bear case for Solana is that we haven't actually seen the L2s kind of bite back and really, you know, and they are crushing it at a lot of metrics. If you kind of look at total locked value, if you look at what base is doing, all the development there, what's your take on this?

• 26:50David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the bear case for Solana is that the price movement already happened. It was 2023, like going from $100 sold to back to $250 sold is not like it's not a clear path to that happening. And so that's the bear case is like the bullishness has already happened. The more bear case is that like it's not just Ethereum layer twos biting back, but it's also other highly optimized virtual machine layer ones that are coming online, which we will also talk about in a second. That's another theme that's come. Say and Monad and Sui and like other, you know, like paralleled VMs as layer ones are also coming onto the scene. And if you are an EVM compatible optimized virtual machine like like Monad or Say,

• 27:34David Hoffman?

  then you get the network effects of Ethereum, but the scale of Solana. And so like the kind of the meme around Ethereum lately and the narrative is like Ethereum is squeezed between Bitcoin and Solana. And Bitcoin, the money, Solana, the execution network. Well, I think you could present a similar scenario that Solana squeezed between Ethereum and other EVM optimized layer ones that are EVM compatible, of which there are a couple. And so it's really, I think, about how far can the network effects around the Solana virtual machine take it? And can they attract a decent amount of network effects that adding the EVM compatibility of Monad plus the virtual machine parallelization of Monad, how much does that squeeze Solana? And is Monad too late? I think that's a big question to ask.

• 28:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So since we've been talking about it, why don't we flip to number five, David, on the list? We'll cover three and four in a second, but you've been talking about Sui and Monad and all of these things. And I think this fits with your number five investment theme, which is parallelized EVMs. So tell me about this. Why is this investment theme that makes your list? What is a parallelized EVM?

• 28:40David Hoffman?

  I recently did a podcast, Ryan, with Anatoly. I don't know if you listened to it, but I asked him the question that I also like to ask Bitcoiners, which is what is the most important component about Bitcoin? There's a number of different components about Bitcoin. The 21 million hard cap, proof of work, the ability to run your own node. What's the most important component about Bitcoin? Do you know what they all say? They all have consensus on?

• 29:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know that from our episode with Bitcoin Bull, Robert Breedlove, which comes out pretty soon, actually, a canonical Bitcoin episode. He said difficulty adjustment, which actually surprised me, but maybe you already knew that this was kind of the consensus for you.

• 29:15David Hoffman?

  They all love the difficulty adjustment. They kind of call it the capstone keystone thing that really puts the Bitcoin system into alignment. And so I asked that same question about Solana to Anatoly, and he said, "parallelization", the parallelization of this Solana virtual machine. That's really the thing that Solana is unique and differentiated about. That is its moat. Well, the thing is, there are a number of efforts to parallelize the EVM that have come online or are coming online. I started writing this six investment themes for 2024, Ryan, in a couple of weeks in December, when Say announced their pivot from being a move-based

• 29:56David Hoffman?

  virtual machine chain, I think, if I recall correctly, the move language from Facebook. And they pivoted into being a parallelized EVM, which was a surprise, a welcome surprise, because, you know, the benefits are clear. You get all of the network effects of Ethereum. If you are bytecode compatible with the EVM, your Uniswap app, your Aave app, your Synthetix app can just copy and paste now onto Say with the low fees of a parallelized virtual machine, the low fees of Solana. And so Say has attracted people's attention because its price went from 40 cents in mid-December to 80 cents now, so like a 2X in 2 weeks. Monad was the first team to really develop this parallelized EVM narrative. I met Keone,

• 30:40David Hoffman?

  the founder of Monad, because he wanted to parallelize the Ethereum virtual machine. So here's a Keone tweet where he's just posturing. He goes, "List of EVM chains, parallel EVM chains as of 2 months ago." And he goes, "A list of 1, Monad, his project." And then he goes, "List of parallel EVM chains as of today, Monad, Avalanche, Polygon, Say, Scroll, Neon," which is a little bit of, you know, "Haha, we were here first" kind of thing. There have been a number of different parallel EVM projects to all come online as of recently. I don't think this list is exhaustive. One of the reasons why I'm calling this an investment theme of 2021 is, A, the Layer 1 trade is always on. It

• 31:25David Hoffman?

  has always been a thing in crypto. VCs love it. Retail loves it for some reason. Say and Monad, we should say, are Layer 1s, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah. And then also, like, the price performance of Solana and has, you know, defined the meta of parallelized EVMs, or, excuse me, parallelized virtual machines with the SVM. But then the network effects of Ethereum are, have always been trying to be, like, bitten at by other Layer 1s. And so this is why I put parallelized EVMs as an investment theme for 2024.

• 32:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, that makes sense. And parallelized EVMs can also happen in rollups, right? On on layer two. So they don't have to be layer ones in the way that that Sui and Monad are. But you know, some on this list like Poly, Polygon and Scroll, certainly those are layer twos. It seems to me when we talk about parallelizing the EVM, what we're trying to do is we're actually trying to squeeze as much throughput and transactions per second out of the execution layer, aren't we? So it's innovation that Ethereum has actually not undertaken in its seven years of existence, which is like actually re-engineering its execution layer to support

• 32:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  like massive throughput, massive transactions per second. That's what Solana and S V M were built with from from the ground up. And Ethereum has just never innovated on that. And now it seems like it is, which is which is kind of good. When I say Ethereum, by the way, I mean, the entire crypto ecosystem.

• 33:00David Hoffman?

  The EVM counts as Ethereum.

• 33:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Exactly. And so Monad is not right now building on top of Ethereum at all, but they are creating a new parallelized EVM. That's that's going to be pretty innovative. So what do you think here, David? Do you think some of this will start to nip at Solana's narrative a bit more? And do you think some of the narrative investors might switch from like Solana to the newest low market cap, parallelized EVM layer one, like jump on Sui, jump on Monad? And that could take some of the attention away from from Solana? What's your take here?

• 33:36David Hoffman?

  I think the answer is yes, and and and it can also take it away from Ethereum. Like it's parallelized EVMs are trying to nip at both. The difference, I would say, with the parallelized EVM is that it's I don't think really the Ethereum layer one is ever going to upgrade its implementation of the EVM. But layer twos, I think, are much more free to experiment and explore with different virtual machine specs. And I would be actually a huge fan. I know I've asked Kiony, hey, like, will you ever like open source the Monad EVM? He goes, Yeah, yeah, we will. And that gives layer twos

• 34:15David Hoffman?

  the option to bump out the single threaded Ethereum virtual machine that powers optimism and Arbitrum, Arbitrum with the asterisk because they have stylus. And pop in their their parallelized virtual machine. I wouldn't, it's not really even appropriate to put a parallelized EVM on the Ethereum layer one, because there's a trade off there between execution and security that I don't think we should make on the Ethereum layer one. We want the most secure, single threaded, basic, non-complicated

• 34:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Settlement layer.

• 34:45David Hoffman?

  settlement layer for the Ethereum layer one. But let's, let's take the, let's take the monad VM and put on all the layer twos. Let's really juice those things up.

• 34:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's seem like the best of both worlds. You get kind of like highly secure, single threaded settlement. And then you get in the execution layer, parallelized like infinity, infinity TPS, like execution. So it's, I understand why that's a theme then, David. So before we get to number three, four, and then eventually six, we want to tell you about the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 35:17David Hoffman?

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• 36:02David Hoffman?

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• 36:47David Hoffman?

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• 37:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Going back to number three, because we covered five. David, this is games. Tell me about crypto games specifically. Did Vance Spencer and Michael from Framework, did they make you bullish on games? That episode that we did, was that back in November?

• 37:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, they definitely did. Definitely, if you look around at all the gaming experts, the crypto gaming experts, it's just an unequivocal fact that a strong number of games, crypto games, will launch in 2024, and then even more will launch in 2025. It's like a likely outcome that most of these will flop. But that's just, that's just a normal thing to happen in the gaming industry. Sometimes, most, most of the times, games just flop. And, you know, they get some initial experimenters who like to play new games. And then hopefully with like marketing on Twitch and, you know, influencer marketing with game streamers, they can capture some traction.

• 37:56David Hoffman?

  We only need, Ryan, one game to work to actually make a breakthrough in the world of crypto gaming.

• 38:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, this, this is the stat that blew my mind, David, is I think Vance gave it on our podcast. There are 3.2 billion gamers globally. That's a lot of freaking people. That's like half the world is a gamer of some sort or another. Like, I think, I'm sure a lot of, you know, Candy Crush casual gamers are included in this stat, but who knows?

• 38:26David Hoffman?

  This is the most expansive definition of gamers possible.

• 38:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  For sure, but that's a lot of people. And so do you think that this could be an on-ramp for all of the, like? I guess maybe the vision for crypto gaming is people don't even know they're on crypto rails. They're playing a game. They're just having fun. And underneath it all, there's like, you know, gas, block space being consumed, right? At the kind of the very basement level and it's fun and there's some economic component. And you know, like the wallet experience is seamless. It feels very much like a, you know, a typical web two gaming type of wallet. Is that where you're thinking, how you're thinking this plays out?

• 39:05David Hoffman?

  I think that's exactly right. I think when we say the words crypto gamers or gamers in general, people kind of assume people with like an ultra widescreen monitor, they have the most expensive graphics card. They're playing very intense AAA, beautiful games that took hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. We're not there yet. That won't be 2024. It'll be, it'll be like Candy Crush, probably. Maybe it'll be some, there was a pretty beautiful Dark Souls like game that I played at ETH Denver that items were assets. So there are like in these kind of these beautiful arena games, it's going to be cheaper and easier to develop the Candy Crush like games. Also like the slot machine type games, like these are kind of a little bit easier to develop and more closer to crypto because you know, we're already gambling.

• 39:50David Hoffman?

  But putting assets into these things, not that hard. And it's easier to test and iterate. One of the reasons why I think this is so bullish, Ryan, is because like, like I said, if we just have one game that's a, has crypto features, get adopted by non crypto people, it will be the first time that crypto gets adopted by non crypto people. We had a taste of that with FriendTech when we saw an NBA player, like an influencer and like OnlyFans artists briefly adopt FriendTech for a couple of weeks. So we got a taste of that. But I think this is like kind of our best shot at getting crypto agnostic people to be touching crypto stuff. And you know, now is kind of the time. And there's a clip from the Vance Spencer episode that we did that I think explains

• 40:35David Hoffman?

  why gamers are like the most likely candidate. So let's go ahead and play that. Go into that a little bit more Vance. Why are, why are gamers like crypto people? Or how cut from the same cloth are we?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  I mean, have you ever hung out in a, like a gaming discord and they're all screeching at each other?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  You really can't even interpret and they're they're on their computer, you know, they're internet people, they're obsessive, they own digital items, they participate in digital economies, like a lot of

• 41:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Freaking nerds, David.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  They are literally like, you know, somewhere in the genealogical tree, like they're our cousins. And so it just doesn't feel like a large lift to get them in here. It's a lot different than like, I don't know, say like music people, like music people are cool, they go out, you know, they do different things, they're not, they don't own digital assets other than something on like iTunes, it's just different.

• 41:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so that was Vance making the point that gamers and crypto people are very similar, have like a lot of shared culture, very online native types of communities. The question in my mind, though, is how do you get exposure to crypto gaming, right? Because the big winner from the last cycle in crypto gaming was probably Axie, and that was an individual game title. To me, it feels risky to bet on an individual game title unless you feel incredibly strongly convicted about that particular game. And the way you'd probably do that is you have to play the game, really love it, really understand it, and there's a path there for investment returns. The other path is picks and shovels, right? So you invest in platforms or you invest in tools, certainly immutable is one of those.

• 42:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  And like the price point, from the time even we did that conversation with Vance and Michael to now, this is the IMX charts, David, what are we looking at?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  It's rocking.

• 42:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And so IMX is maybe a platform, I think they have over 200 games that you could invest in if you're bullish on crypto gaming, in particular, what the, you know, like what teams are building on immutable X. Another is maybe the Ronin chain, that was the origination of Axie, actually kind of a side chain, and there's the possibility that that comes back and has a form of a Solana-style renaissance, if you will. So those are two possible bets. What else is in your mind with how you get exposure to crypto gaming?

• 42:58David Hoffman?

  I think Avalanche has a gaming division. And so that's definitely a contender if you're into that ecosystem. Beam is something to look at as well. I recently did an episode with Robbie from Immutable and Beam because they are teaming up with Immutable. How those tokens are split, I'm not too sure.

• 43:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  What is Beam?

• 43:16David Hoffman?

  But really, like Beam, it's like a gaming tech stack, for example. And so like, there's like, it's Beam built on Immutable, which was built on Polygon, which is built on Ethereum. So there's like this emerging tech stack of gaming. There's also the Immutable Passport for like gamer IDs. And let's see, off the top of my head, I'm not super deep in this ecosystem, but I think those are kind of like the big ones.

• 43:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. David, let's go to number four, which is DA, data availability. So do you think that we are going to see the data availability wars in 2024? And what could that mean? Lay out the landscape for us. Who are kind of the the big DA players coming into this year?

• 43:58David Hoffman?

  I think the DA wars, starting pistol really got fired when Celestia airdropped its network token to a lot of people at a $2 billion valuation. And then the token went from $2 to $14 without ever going down. And so big wealth effect.

• 44:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it still doing that, those kind of moves?

• 44:18David Hoffman?

  It has topped out briefly between $12 and $14. It has not gone down. Why did the price just go up, up, up, up, up? Well, because T S Dakers are earning 16%. And so there's a very strong demand to buy up tokens and to stake it to get that yield. In early bull markets, yield, we like the yield. When people are buying tokens to stake for yield, it starts to become dubious. I think we're starting, we're in the relatively early phases of the bull market. So there's still plenty of time left before the musical chairs really gets intense here. But that's kind of my model. We saw that with the yield farming of last cycle, right?

• 44:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  I mean, we're talking about, David, Celestia $12 billion market cap.

• 44:56David Hoffman?

  $12 billion market cap, yeah. I think there is a lot left to explore as to the margins of data availability as a product. That is an episode that I've scheduled with John Charbonneau and Neil Somani from Eclipse to ask the question, is data availability a good business model? But right now, people are earning 14%, 16% yield on staking Celestia. And you know what else, Ryan? They're also getting airdrops. And so staking Tia, staking Celestia has turned into an airdrop target. There was an airdrop that went out yesterday called Dimension that went out to Celestia stakers, as well as like Ethereum Layer 2 users, Pudgy Penguin holders,

• 45:41David Hoffman?

  Mad Lad holders, Tensorian holders, Osmosis on Cosmos users. So it was like a four or five network platypus of airdrop targets across many different networks. And so people have also started to speculate that staking Celestia is also an airdrop target, which makes much more sense as a margins business than data availability. But that's, of course, a short term fleeting narrative that only lasts in bull markets. So that was the reason why I think the DA wars have started to kick off. And that's just about Celestia. EigenDA, we've talked about this with the restaking meta. EigenDA is set to launch pretty damn soon here. And that will be a different kind of data availability network

• 46:25David Hoffman?

  than Celestia with different properties, more scalable, less secure. I'm not actually totally sure, I'm not totally well versed on the different properties here. This is something I'm researching in the moment. And but I think Celestia and EigenDA are the two big data availability contenders. There's so many Ethereum Layer 2s and other types of services that have integrated with EigenDA. And then people have also started to pivot into data availability. Near, Tezos has a data availability, remember Tezos, Ron, has a data availability service. Near recently pivoted. There's Avail, which is a former Polygon project. I bet you there's probably more in stealth. There's probably more coming. And so I think the DA wars are going to be a very big investment theme in 2024.

• 47:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's also interesting Ethereum is throwing a hat in the ring.

• 47:14David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, Ethereum, Ethereum is a DA layer. Well, Bitcoin is also being a DA layer for all the goddamn ordinals that people are buying.

• 47:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. I with Ethereum in particular, of course, it is a DA layer now for Layer 2s.

• 47:28David Hoffman?

  It's a shitty DA layer, but it's a secure DA layer.

• 47:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a very expensive DA layer.

• 47:32David Hoffman?

  It's highly secure, very Very expensive, not scalable.

• 47:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  And 4844 should come out probably in Q1. It seems like we're getting really close to test that.

• 47:42David Hoffman?

  Early Q2, early Q2.

• 47:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  You think, you think early Q2? So maybe late Q1, early Q2. And that will, I actually, I can't recall off the top of my head, how much of an amplification that will be for, you know, but we did that entire episode on Ethereum blob space to give you a clue there. Anyway, lots of data availability. I think the big question in investors' mind is, is DA more of a commodity? Like, will it retain and accrue value over time? It seems like everybody can provide some sort of DA with, with different security assurances? Or is this an investable thesis? Are you kind of investing in the modular blockchain by purchasing TIA at $12 billion market cap?

• 48:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Or Eigenlayer, right? That's a big TPD, and I think it's going to be a topic of research for us in the months to come.

• 48:35David Hoffman?

  I think the answer about availability is, yes, it will become commoditized. But in the same way that like internet bandwidth became commoditized, people just used more. So our capacity to consume DA is going to be matched by projects' ability to commoditize DA. So it'll be kind of an arms race of like, people will always buy more space, more data availability. And so it's a little bit of a yes and. So I think the final fully evolved economics of these layers is undetermined. But I don't think anyone's in doubt about the need for like mass consumption of data availability.

• 49:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a big question, though, in general, in these three layers in the modular stack, which will accrue the most value? You have the kind of the settlement layer, you have the DA layer, and then you have the execution layer, right? And I mean, the big contenders right now are obviously settlement with Ethereum being worth, you know, 250 billion and then execution layers, which is where we get kind of all of the L2s. But how about data availability? Will it, will it take an equal share of the pie? Will it be less? Will it be more? That's the big question. All right. So that brings us to number six. This feels like a bonus to me, investment theme, if you will, but it's more like a free gifts. We're all getting free stuff this year. David, you're calling

• 49:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  2024 kind of the year of the airdrop. You've got this tweet here, the biggest airdrops of all time. Explain this one to us and why did airdrops make your list here?

• 50:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think it's already an investment theme. Discords are a flurry with airdrop hunting strategies. Bankless Discord is buzzing with like mantas of recently. There's a lot of airdrop farmers in the bankless discord, of course, because of you have the airdrop hunter product. But like a few of the other discords I've been are also all playing these same games, just like airdrop farming, airdrop farming, airdrop farming. This is an older tweet that I put out where biggest airdrops of all time, Arbitrum coming in at number one, who put 1.5 billion dollars into the hands of its users when it dropped it at a 15 billion dollar valuation. ENS dropped 1 billion dollars at a 4 billion dollar fully

• 50:48David Hoffman?

  diluted valuation and then DYDX dropped 900 million dollars at an 11 billion dollar fully diluted valuation. And I think Eigenlayer is coming for the number one spot and it's going to be easy. And that's just because there's so much hype and demand for Eigenlayer. But it was really, it's, I think it's going to be a theme that dominates in 2024. We already saw the Dimension airdrop, I mentioned that earlier, go live yesterday or the day before. And that's a pretty hyped chain. And it really, the strategies for how to get these airdrops, I think will always be kind of a hot potato because all of the easy things are going to be You know, crowded. And so like the dimension strategy of like Mad Lad holders,

• 51:33David Hoffman?

  Pudgy Penguin holders, Tensorian NFT holders, TS Dakers, Ethereum Layer 2 users, but not the Layer 1, Cosmos Osmosis Chain users, like really getting precise and specific about airdrop criteria has got to be a strategy for all of these airdrops because otherwise, like the farmers, the farmers are taking all the low hanging fruit. And so in order to have a good airdrop, you need to become more precise. And, and like Celestia, for example, there was a bunch of Layer 2s and other applications that are using Celestia for data availability. So that's a pretty hot target, but I bet you people are going to need to become more sophisticated

• 52:15David Hoffman?

  than that to really get these things. Earlier or later last year in 2023, Ryan, I made the claim that $2 billion will be airdropped to users in 2024. I'm going to go and update that prediction and I say $2 billion will be dropped to users in 2024, not counting Eigenlayer, separately from Eigenlayer, because I think Eigenlayer can drop $2 billion by itself to users. That is my prediction for 2024.

• 52:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. That's it. Those were five and then plus this bonus one. So we talked to restaking, we talked Solana, we talked about games, we talked about data availability, parallelized EVMs, and lastly, airdrops. It's going to be an exciting year, David, for sure. Anything else before we close?

• 53:00David Hoffman?

  I think that's it, my man. Are you ready for 2024?

• 53:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, dude. 2023 was tiring in a lot of ways, but you know, we'll, we'll see what we have in store for us in 2024. And I, you know, I think I'm excited. I think I'm excited.

• 53:16David Hoffman?

  I remember going through the bear market of 2018 to 2020, and then like when DeFi summer started and then Ether broke from $400 to $700, like everyone was like, oh, it's on. Like it's a bull market. And I was like euphoric. I was like, yes, like this is the bull market I was promised. And then six months left, like later, like

• 53:38David Hoffman?

  My eyes are bloodshot, hairs frazzle, I don't have any sleep, like, like Tara Luna, frogs are attacking me, rug pulls are happening, it's just like mortar shells and dead friends, and I did not realize the insanity that was coming our way. But right now, we're in that, like, quiet limbo period where we haven't attracted the grifters and the scammers and the retail, so it's actually kind of nice.

• 54:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  They're coming though, David. They're coming. Some of them are already in our midst, we just don't really know who they are yet.

• 54:06David Hoffman?

  Some of them are already walking amongst us.

• 54:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, God. Well, hold on, everyone. This is 2024. You're definitely in crypto. I gotta end with this. Risk and disclaimers. David and I are angel investors in Swell. I think we mentioned them in this episode. We certainly mentioned Eigenlayer. We're advisors in Eigenlayer. I'm an angel investor in Monad. There's always a link to all disclosures at bankless.com/disclosures. I'll end with this. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.