One other yr within the books. That is the fifth year-end take a look at the highest DeFi memes and charts from us at Dose of DeFi (check out what was in vogue in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 DeFi). Memes and charts are info items of DeFi and crypto; they seize the vibes and market exercise of the years in digestible nuggets.
2024 was a yr the place progress and success simply weren’t quick or large enough. We’ve constructed infrastructure, merchandise, grown TVL and even had quantity go up, so the place’s the mainstream impression to silence the haters? It’s already there in the event you squint relating to stablecoins, prediction markets, and non-sovereign cash. From right here, it then turns into a query of adoption velocity and the emergence of some new model of Moore’s legislation referring to monetary exercise shifting onto blockchains.
DeFi is virtually able to scale to a billion customers. The chain is virtually quick sufficient. Transactions are virtually low cost sufficient. And we virtually have sufficient regulatory readability to onboard institutional and retail traders. All of it feels tantalizingly shut, as a result of we are able to see the progress: from the depths of the bear market in 2022, and from the euphoria postDeFi Summer time in 2020. At each factors,this DeFi factor already felt like the long run (to us).
Anyway, with out additional ado, let’s get to the top-five memes and top-five charts of 2024:
Prime-five memes of 2024
What a yr for Bitcoin, beginning in January with Bitcoin ETFs, all over the election and previous $100k. To say ‘Bitcoin has arrived’ is a bit clichéd, however there’s a new stage of mainstream acceptance as a macro asset that doesn’t really feel prefer it’s going away. Bitcoin, within the phrases of Fed Chair Jay Powell, is “just like gold, only digital”, which makes it the final word meme coin.
The Bitcoin neighborhood has additionally largely deserted the Bitcoin blockchain, solidifying across the meme of a set provide of BTC the asset. Final yr and early this yr, there was talk of Bitcoin Season 2, a route for stablecoins and DeFi apps to finally come to Bitcoin via L2s. Progress up to now has been minimal, and most bitcoiners are as an alternative speaking about BTC the asset in a US Strategic Reserve. Possibly the scare from Google’s Willow quantum computing chip will rekindle curiosity within the underlying blockchain, but it surely’s laborious to argue with the product-market-fit of Bitcoin – particularly after its stellar 2024 and its seemingly inevitable path in direction of digital gold and non-sovereign cash.
Bitcoin going up is undoubtedly good for the remainder of crypto. Whether or not or not alt season takes off, the general temper in direction of crypto experimentation in TradFi is way brighter when Bitcoin shines. At a person stage, after holding BTC for some time and it going up, the need is to attempt extra. And DeFi-enabled merchandise are adjacent-possible for the crypto curious.
Mirror: After twelve years of writing about bitcoin, here’s how my thinking has changed [JP Koning/Moneyness]
This was additionally the yr that crypto really arrived in American politics, with an especially profitable 2024 marketing campaign season up and down the poll for crypto candidates. There’s Trump on the prime, who has wrapped himself in crypto from NFTs to DeFi forks, and naturally together with his speech in Nashville on the Bitcoin Convention, the place he known as for the US to develop into the “crypto capital of the planet”. And for the reason that election, issues proceed to look up for crypto in Washington. Even this week, with the apparent cancellation of an anti-crypto Democratic SEC commissioner within the lame-duck session.
It’s laborious to explain simply how huge of a turnaround this has been from a yr in the past, and even six months in the past. Again then, the SEC was actively suing Coinbase and sending wells notices to each DeFi mission it might get a US deal with for.
As we strategy year-end, Jake Chervinsky of Variant is calling for the crypto industry to rethink their legislative preferences, now that it’s negotiating from a place of energy. We’ve been overly optimistic that crypto laws would get completed however Republicans are keen to perform one thing that doesn’t price any cash and a few Democrats shall be keen to precise bipartisan bonafides.
What might this imply for DeFi? Try DeFi splits in two for our take or try CoinCenter’s 2025 Top policy priorities for 2025.
The success of the ‘Parasitic L2s’ meme demonstrates the ability of the meme. It doesn’t actually matter if it’s true or not, as a result of the message is obvious. In response, the L2s have wrapped themselves within the Ethereum flag, espousing their allegiances. This social layer is an underrated market enforcement mechanism for decentralization on Ethereum, however the greater uncertainty is on the long run Ethereum roadmap. Solana’s success has shaken many locally and questioned Ethereum’s commitment to a rollup-centric roadmap. Many declare that L2s are incomes charges that ought to go to ETH holders, whereas the Ethereum L1 is abandoning its core use case (DeFi) to help L2 improvement.
Echoes of this dialog have dominated the discourse for why ETH has trailed BTC and SOL during the last twelve months. L2s are parasitic, whereas the shared state of Solana makes it simple for builders to launch their app with out conducting a market analysis research on which Ethereum L2 to choose.
Parasitic L2s have been considered one of many critiques hurled at Ethereum this yr from an eclectic class of parents who’ve both migrated to Solana (Max) or who straddle a number of communities (Jon Charbonneau of DBA). These critiques have had three results up to now. First they’ve provoked an autoimmune response from some previous Ethereum neighborhood members who’re pushing again with the Ethereum concernoooorrrrs meme. Second, L2s are draping themselves in the flag of Ethereum. And lastly, core devs have “publicly voiced support for scaling the L1” within the final month.
So the memes (and the criticism) work?
Discover extra: Abstract away! The race towards interoperability [Dose of DeFi]
Throughout a gold rush, promote shovels (so the saying goes). And it definitely rings true for Pump.fun, the primary and main meme coin launch platform, because it has generated $180 million in income since its launch in March. The numbers concerned are an indication of the occasions, with the top-three tokens launched on the platform boasting spectacular market capitalizations: $1.2 billion for Peanut the Squirrel, $800 million for Goatseus Maximus, and $640 million for a 3rd token (whose name we won’t disclose right here).
We see the irony in one of many yr’s prime memes being about buying and selling memes. Regardless, this does inform an even bigger story concerning the rise of Solana, which has been the middle of the memecoin frenzy that has pushed utilization metrics that surpass Ethereum. Solana has arrived in its personal means in 2024, commanding sufficient of the market that it’s presenting progress alternatives for Ethereum DeFi tasks. For instance, in November, Sky launched its new USDS stablecoin on Solana and one wonders when Aave will comply with (though rewriting a codebase is a bit tougher than minting some tokens). Solana can also be carving its own path and approach to MEV that also wants work, however fortunately, Ethereum exile Max Resnick is taking his talents to Solana to assist. In the intervening time, Solana’s ecosystem is producing extra MEV. This can be as a result of there’s extra fats, but the sizable alternative finally means extra persons are prepared to fireside up Solana bots to play within the sport, bringing extra liquidity to the system general. Jito has been a large success and arguably the second most necessary MEV mission after Flashbots.
Again to the memes and their buying and selling. We aren’t very nihilistic right here at Dose, nor are we judgmental, so we’ll hold our feedback temporary. Crypto financializes all the things. The flexibility to create and distribute a token might be crypto’s largest unlock; it should simply be utilized in a mess of various methods. However yeah, possibly don’t purchase or promote memecoins?
Discover MEV on Solana extra with Solana’s fee-market fork in the road from April in Dose of DeFi
Software Particular Sequencing (ASS) is a deliberate provocation. Its creators are using meme warfare to try to manifest into existence an idea around MEV architecture. And it’s largely labored? Effectively, for an admittedly small viewers (MEV researchers). Atlas and Sorella Labs are main the meme cost. Each have merchandise constructed round the concept functions can dictate the financial distribution of its MEV provide chain. This offers them the power to attenuate MEV for customers, but in addition decide who can extract and the way.
Constructing ASS functions is difficult as a result of any try and bypass validators — and thus reduce them out of the worth chain — dangers censorship from those self same validators (or actually, builders). In essence, as we speak’s blockchains aren’t censorship-resistant sufficient to completely help ASS architectures inside their present frameworks. That’s why tasks looking for to regulate their sequencing have resorted to launching new chains or L2s, just as Uniswap did this year. Nonetheless, new proposals like Braid, Focil, Monad, and SUAVE present promise in making ASS deployments possible. In the meantime, Flashbots continues pushing MEV analysis ahead, championing its personal very important meme: TEEs
Total, it was a little bit of a down yr for MEV meme-wise, after dominating the dialogue over the previous few years and arguably nonetheless “THE problem to solve in crypto”.
A deeper look: Order flow auctions’ bumpy road to credibility
Note: charts are interactive online!
Yield is the lifeblood of DeFi. Double digit returns have at all times been the rationale for main inflows. 2023 was a very robust yr for DeFi yields as a result of common financial institution financial savings charges have been greater than stablecoin DeFi deposit charges. That modified in 2024 because the market roared. This time the double-digit yield was not from random governance tokens, however from somebody on the opposite facet paying curiosity. We’re seeing billions of {dollars} of borrowing at 15%+ returns all throughout DeFi the final month.
Why? Ethena’s USDe is capturing the yield supplied by the idea commerce on centralized exchanges, the place bullish crypto traders are prepared to go lengthy BTC & ETH even with excessive curiosity on their margin loans. This will generate 20%+ APY staking USDe for further bullish occasions, which is why its market cap has exploded to almost $6bn from nothing a yr in the past. The yield from staking USDe (sUSDe) is lifting charges throughout DeFi because it represents fairly good collateral (backed concurrently by a protracted and brief place in ETH or BTC) to borrow towards. So, sensible traders have looped their sUSDe to borrow USDC, USDT or one other stablecoin after which buy USDe and stake and repeat. It is sensible to maintain looping so long as the borrow charge is under the yield you may get from staking USDe. In actuality, the one factor stopping extra looping is as a result of the sUSDe provide caps have been hit on Aave, Pendle and elsewhere.
Ethena’s success is likely one of the largest tales of the yr and one wonders what number of extra eye balls come to DeFi if deposit charges keep double digit for for much longer.
Stablecoins have develop into huge crypto companies. There’s roughly $200b in complete trade market cap backed by primarily greenback property incomes a mean of 4%+ yield. That’s virtually $10b in curiosity that’s being earned by corporations or distributed to DeFi traders by way of tokenized yield.
Tether is an amazingly environment friendly firm, with lower than 200 workers and annualized income of $6b+. It’s virtually double its 2022 market excessive in circulating provide. USDC, in the meantime, is rising however not appears in the identical league as Tether. There’s fairly clear motion away from USDC in direction of Tether after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March 2023. Sky* has remained related however has not taken off. Its rebrand to Sky & USDS is focused at mass retail however they haven’t gotten there but. USDe from Ethena will not be actually a stablecoin (artificial greenback is what they like), however its dimension ($6b) and far greater yield alternatives imply its going to be related to the stablecoin dialog no matter what you name it.
Lending has at all times been DeFi’s most attention-grabbing and aggressive market. Property borrowed in DeFi have grown from $7.6b a yr in the past to over $22bn. The chart above reveals the market share of the entire quantity borrowed in DeFi (a tougher metric to sport than TVL) with plenty of modifications from a yr in the past.
For starters, Compound and Spark/MakerDAO/Sky noticed their market share decline precipitously. For Sky, this was not such a nasty factor because the lower in complete quantity borrowed displays a transition to RWAs, which have higher margins and are extra constant. Compound, in the meantime, bled property because it continued to suffer from a vacuum of leadership. Morpho now has extra property borrowed than Compound, marking an enormous shift within the lending market towards a modular world. Fluid, from DeFi OG InstaDapp, additionally burst onto the scene in 2024. After which there’s Aave, which began the yr with a public split with Gauntlet to associate with tussles with Morpho, Ethena and Polygon (okay possibly it’s simply Marc), however regardless of all of that, property borrowed on Aave has outpaced the remainder of the trade and offers Aave probably the most lending market share since MakerDAO in 2020. What’s extra, their token price has additionally been on a tear, main all DeFi tokens with a 300% return in 2024. However will their success proceed or is the expansion of Morpho an indicator that future progress shall be in modular programs?
As we mentioned, lending is probably the most attention-grabbing and aggressive DeFi market
The general public mempool will not be useless but, however there was a constant shift away from it as customers search for MEV safety from personal mempools. Utilizing the general public mempool for a commerce transaction is just worse execution than sending it to a devoted community of solvers who promise to return a lot of the worth they may extract in the event that they traded towards you. We began the yr the place 10% of transactions have been personal and that shifted up to 30% as a result of Metamask rolled out “Smart Transactions” to combat “frontrunning”.
MEV has been pushing transaction sequencing outside of Ethereum for several years and it seems to be like that’s set to proceed as wallets, customers and functions develop into extra MEV conscious. Are extra personal transactions dangerous for Ethereum? It’s unclear but it surely certainly modifications the market construction and centralization dangers.
Polymarket was such an enormous story for crypto this yr. Its penetration into the cultural zeitgeist makes it three profitable use-cases for crypto: non-sovereign digital cash, stablecoins and prediction markets. It will make skeptics extra open to different crypto merchandise and in addition be a funnel into different crypto merchandise from Polymarket customers.
The Election put Polymarket on the map, however will it have endurance the 4 years in between elections? The chart above is encouraging, exhibiting Polymarket with over $1bn in non-election bets in December up to now, double what it noticed in August & September.
That’s it! Suggestions appreciated. Simply hit reply. I loved penning this as a mirrored image on the yr. Hope everybody has a beautiful vacation season.
Dose of DeFi is written by Chris Powers, with assist from Denis Suslov and Financial Content Lab. *I spend most of my time contributing to Powerhouse, an ecosystem actor for MakerDAO/Sky. A few of my compensation comes from MKR, so I’m financially incentivized for its success. All content material is for informational functions and isn’t supposed as funding recommendation.
