New week - 8 new DeFi protocols with potential
Hello, friends!
Happy Wednesday
Here are some DeFi protocols that might have potential if you’re looking for airdrops, yield, or points programs.
I am trying to make this research piece weekly from now on as it helps me stay even more updated in the space.
Let’s go.
New week - 8 new DeFi protocols with potential
Here are some protocols with untapped opportunities like yield, airdrop, etc. that you can explore today, consisting of potential projects from different networks either EVM, non-EVM, or Cosmos in a wide range of DeFi sectors like derivatives, yield, DEX, and many more. These projects are highlighted due to their prominent backing, yield opportunities, etc but none of it should be considered as financial advice do well to also do your research before interacting:
1/ Zircuit
It is an L2 with fully EVM-compatible and AI-enabled security at the sequence level. What makes Zircuit unique among tens of thousands of existing L2s? Smart contract hack has been one resilient problem facing Defi and the numbers keep going up with no definite solution instead of being another arbitrum fork L2, Zircuit introduces a novel approach to on-chain security that safeguards users from smart contract exploits and malicious actors while making it usable for consumer through low fees & fast transaction. They've amassed undisclosed investments from Binance Labs & Pantera. The network is currently on testnet with Mainnet coming soon than we'd imagine:
In anticipation of their Mainnet launch, they have an ongoing point program where users stake supported assets to earn Zircuit points which are presumably convertible to tokens at TGE. Over 2.9B has been staked, thanks to the support of different LRTs assets that allow the user to earn other yields such as staking Apr, Restaking Apr, and LRT points while simultaneously earning Zircuit points:
The best asset to deposit now is $mETH which yields 5x powder /days in the Methamorphosis Campaign in anticipation of mantle LRT $cMETH governance token $COOk that's ending in October.
2/ Allora
Currently, machine learning(AI) is siloed and monopolized by industry giants which limits transparency and accessibility Allora stepped in to build a self-improving decentralized AI network, which they achieved through the contributions from their ecosystem with assigned roles as follows: Workers who provide Ai powered inferences, Reputers who evaluate the inference quality and consumers who request and pay for inferences.
Allora isn't another vaporware project that coattail AI narrative but with logical use cases like in the prediction market and to prove this, they recently collaborated with Robonet to build a Political trading agent — Pauly that uses Allora network to analyze the Political market on Polymarket, finding trading opportunities such as underpriced/overpriced market by using AI-driven analysis and real-time market data:
They've also raised $33.75m, participation from S-TIER investors like Polychain, and Delphi ventures among others. Their tokenomics is community-centric with various ways provided for $Allo holders to earn for participating in the network while keeping token emissions like Bitcoin that decrease over time which aids the token appreciation. Allora network is currently on testnet with various ways to get involved with the network like participating in the Galxe campaign, Zealy, and running node.
3/ Superposition
Superposition is a Layer3 chain built on top of the arbitrum stack, engineered to facilitate native liquidity and utility mechanism dApps.Superposition transcended from popular use case all L1 and L2 promise users like speed and low fees to build a rewarding system through a novel yield mechanism called Super Assets that reward users for the usage of their assets–when assets are bridged into superposition they turn into Super Asset, an asset that pays yield when you hold or use them which aligns with their bio 'first Blockchain that pay you to use it'. They haven't announced any funding rounds or investment yet but they are working side by side with the arbitrum team even to the extent of co-hosting space with them which presumed they'll announce an investment soon:
Their incentives testnet has achieved a monument milestone with over 1.1m transactions from over 140k addresses, there are currently three ways to get involved with testnet — firstly by swapping on Longtails, V3 AMM that follows concentrated liquidity model introduced by uniswap, Second by doing social tasks on Intract and last but not the least getting your meow domain name akin to Ens but on superposition. You can on notifications for their social media accounts for future campaigns.
4/ Movement Labs
Unlike other L1s that chase the goals of defeating the giant Ethereum which none of them have achieved so far, Movement built an L1 that enhances the security of user assets by leveraging Move programming language developed by Facebook which simplifies the development of safe smart contracts for common Blockchain tasks like transfer ownership of assets, minting, etc. Move has two flagship products which are M1 and M2, M1 is the permissionless move Blockchain while M2 is the fastest and most secure (Mevm) L2 that settles on Ethereum with Celestia as Data availability, users can interact seamlessly between Move and EVM– M1 serves as M2's PoS sequencer network. The movement raised an undisclosed investment from Binance with 41.4m raised, with participation from S-Tier investors like Polychain.
The network is currently on testnet with various tasks you can do to get involved as highlighted on this doc and there's a rumor Tia Staker might also be eligible for a future airdrop but before you stake do well to manage your position as their upcoming 88% unlock don't let VCs dump on you.
5/ Gunzilla Games
Is a AAA games studio and developers of Gunz blockchain, Unlike other vapourware gaming projects that keep selling inflated tokens to users, Gunzilla focuses on building an interactive ecosystem that allows gamers to get paid doing what they love through in-game assets that are convertible to an NFTs and $Guns token. Their team consists of gamers with diverse backgrounds in Fintech, video, etc that shows their competency which would allow it to gain the heart of not only web3 gamers but a broader audience of web2. They've also raised $76m in funding rounds from notable investors like Animoca brands among others.
The gaming sector is one of the undervalued sectors in crypto with a tiny percentage of degens interacting with it, which makes their reward lucrative as we've seen with Ace. Gunzilla is currently in the testnet phase with mainnet rumored to be this year or early q1 2025, they've two flagship games which are playoffgrid and Guns Blockchain.
Playoffgrid isn't live yet but you can apply as a pioneer on the #OTGPioneers program that allows you to have access to the pre-release version of the game and exclusive reward which presumably be an airdrop, Guns has ongoing point programs that reward users based on their interactions and pretty underfarmed as I ranked top 200 with only 20K points:
Here's a good YouTube video that teaches you how to play the game and tricks to max farm the point: Link
6/ Usual money
Stablecoin is one of the profitable sectors in crypto even tether's Q1 net income surpassed BlackRock's earnings but this was an impressive number only to Tether not to token holders as there are no value prepositions for holding it. Now imagine owning a tiny percent of tether? That's where Usual money comes in, a decentralized Rwa stablecoin that redistributes ownership and governance via Usual token. Their core goal is to eliminate the traditional financial approach of distributing wealth among few shareholders to return power to the ecosystem participant:
They raised $7m at a $75m valuation from notable investors like Mantle, GSR among others.
They recently launched their Mainnet with an ongoing campaign where participants accrue 'Pill' for holding their stablecoin— USDO or by providing liquidity to the incentivized pool:
7/ Plume
While almost all L2 is a fork of the existing one with no unique selling point that makes most of them a ghost chain plume finds its uniqueness in Larry Fins (BlackRock founder) bullish narrative—RWA, Plume is the first modular L2 blockchain for all RWAs that integrate assets tokenization and compliance providers directly into the chain. Their main goals are to ease the deployment of RWA projects and attract high-quality buyers to their ecosystem to increase liquidity. Plume acquired a $10m investment led by Haun venture with participation from S—Tier investor Galaxy.
The network is currently on testnet and the good news it's incentivized to reward the community for their participation. Active participants will be awarded Plume Points throughout the campaign via various tasks, including completing quests, referring friends with invite codes, and so on.
8/ Blum
Unlike other telegram bots that are exclusive to a chain which makes it hard for degens to do every transaction at one click. Blum is a hybrid telegram trading bot that will be available on 30+ chains which include Evm and Non-Evm like Solana, Ton, and Cosmos. Their team competency made them to be among the winner of Binance MVB season 7 out of 700 projects that participated:
They haven't announced raises but their metric is like a hockey stick: 2.9m Twitter followers, 4.7m YouTube channel subscribers, and over 10m users. The telegram bot is currently underway with ongoing social tasks you can participate in to earn BP (Blum points) and as always the more points the better.
…
That’s it for today, anon!
Hope you enjoyed this piece.
Want To Sponsor This Newsletter? 🕴️
Send me a DM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Route2FI or reply to this email. I have a sponsorship deck I can send you.
If you just want to follow my journey on Twitter, you can simply just follow as well :)
Join My Free Telegram Channel 🐸
I’ve launched a free Telegram channel where I share tweets, threads, articles, trades, blog posts, etc. that I find interesting within crypto.
Join it for free here: https://t.me/cryptogoodreads