Weekly Alpha #29 - Maximizing Airdrops in the Cosmos Ecosystem 🪐
Weekly Alpha #29 - Maximizing Airdrops in the Cosmos Ecosystem 🪐
Latest DeFi Alphas Delivered in a Concise Newsletter.
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekly Alpha.
Every Friday, I deliver insights on the cryptocurrency market, emerging projects, macroeconomic trends, and DeFi directly to your inbox.
In this edition of The Weekly Alpha:
🗞️ Weekly DeFi News Digest
🚁 2024 Strategy for Maximizing Airdrops in the Cosmos Ecosystem
📈 Market overview
Your Weekly DeFi News Digest 🗞️
In this section, I highlight the week's most impactful DeFi news. This way, you can bypass the chatter on Twitter and concentrate on the essential updates.
Rainbow Wallet's Points Are Attracting Thousands of MetaMask Users
Ledger Code Library Attacker Drains $480k After Compromising Dozens of Web3 Dapps
Arbitrum suffers ‘partial outage’ amid traffic influx
Manta Pacific adopts Celestia, embraces native Ethereum yield
Mantle’s Throughput Peaks At 200 TPS As Inscriptions Expand Across Layer 2s
Ethereum Developers Target January for Testnet Launch of Major DenCun Upgrade
2024 Strategy for Maximizing Airdrops in the Cosmos Ecosystem 🚁
Over the past few years, I have dedicated most of my free time to exploring the Ethereum ecosystem, including rollups. My journey through platforms like Uniswap, Paraswap, and DyDx has been driven by curiosity and genuine engagement with the protocols. This involvement has rewarded me with six figures in airdrops, significantly transforming my portfolio's dynamics. It has enabled me to take greater risks and reinvest in fundamentally robust projects like Ethereum and Bitcoin. Additionally, this success has afforded me more leisure time for travel and pursuing my passions.
Now, I've decided to continue engaging with intriguing protocols, like Gravita, which currently doesn't have a token. Moreover, I'm keen to delve into the Cosmos ecosystem. Projects like Celestia, which align closely with Ethereum, catch my interest, as they don't stray far from my initial beliefs. My profound interest in Ethereum and Bitcoin stems from their potential as tools against censorship, primarily due to their decentralized nature. In my view, these are the only two projects currently with a substantial chance of withstanding state-level attacks.
Moving on, let's discuss my strategy for Cosmos airdrops.
Stake Stake Stake… 🥩
The recent Celestia airdrop provided me with an excellent entry point into the Cosmos ecosystem. Although I already owned some ATOM tokens, my holdings were not substantial. However, the Celestia airdrop has enabled me to implement what I believe is an effective strategy for future Cosmos airdrops.
Initially, I researched how past Cosmos airdrops were distributed and came across the Cosmos Airdrops website. It quickly became apparent that these airdrops were predominantly allocated to stakers.
Consequently, I decided to stake my $TIA tokens, earning rewards at an approximate rate of 17% APR at the time of writing. I then use these rewards by transferring them to Osmosis, where I exchange them for OSMO or other tokens within the Cosmos ecosystem, thus gradually increasing my holdings. I am confident that this staking strategy will grant me access to multiple future Cosmos airdrops, such as Dymension.
The Ethereum alignment 🌠
Many projects within the Cosmos ecosystem, particularly those focused on Data Availability, are aligning with Ethereum's Rollup-Centric roadmap. Therefore, I believe that being an early adopter and regular user of rollups will undoubtedly position me well for multiple airdrops, potentially yielding rewards in the five-figure range.
Take Celestia as an example. It aligns with Ethereum and has rewarded early adopters of Ethereum rollups. This precedent suggests that similar opportunities could arise for those who are actively involved with rollups from an early stage.
In the context of Ethereum, my strategy remains consistent. I avoid farming airdrops with multiple wallets as I anticipate the increased implementation of anti-sybil mechanisms. Instead, I prefer to concentrate liquidity in a few wallets that I have been regularly using for several years. I believe that my long-term on-chain activity speaks volumes about the kind of Ethereum user I am. Consequently, it's likely that I will receive substantial rewards from protocols I actively use or those that align with my user profile.
Weekly DeFi Market Update 📈
In this section, we'll take some time to examine useful metrics within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Daily Active Addresses on L2’s
If we examine the daily active addresses, we can see that airdrop farmers have returned to zkSync Era after a brief stint on Linea. Although I'm not a fan of the high gas prices on Linea, it's noticeable that their user activity significantly declined following the end of their incentive program, leading users to revert to farming on zkSync Era. There is certainly an incentive for blockchains like zkSync to delay launching a token, as they are well aware that people are taking advantage of this opportunity for farming.
Some Starknet Stats 🐺
Starknet recently announced an upcoming airdrop, and while this did not have a direct impact on the Total Value Locked, either positively or negatively, we can certainly observe an effect on Ekubo. Ekubo, an Automated Market Maker akin to Uniswap V3 built on Starknet, does not yet have a token. However, its TVL saw an increase of +77.69% in one month.
I am personally a user of Ekubo and really appreciate what they are building, especially their implementation of concentrated liquidity on Starknet.
Looking at data from Token Terminal, we can observe a slight decline in the number of active users over the past 30 days.
Conclusion 🧠
Overall, we are witnessing another bullish week in the crypto market. Considering the macroeconomic conditions, this year has been remarkably positive in terms of market performance. I anticipate that the period from 2024 to 2025 will be even more favorable. However, it's important to acknowledge that unforeseen events, such as black swan events or regulatory burdens, could trigger another bear market. Therefore, I try to maintain a stoic attitude and avoid succumbing to euphoria prematurely. Personally, I'm quite satisfied with my portfolio. While I have taken on more risk in terms of diversification compared to previous years, the accumulation of airdrops has given me the capacity to comfortably bear this risk.
How are you positioning yourself for the upcoming bull market?
Wrapping up for this week. For daily DeFi updates, follow me on Twitter
None of the information in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. While I personally use most of the protocols that I discuss, it's important to understand that they involve substantial risk. Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose