This article takes stock of the 7 hottest projects in the current market

If you are one of those waiting for the tokens and airdrops to launch, this article is for you.

Written by: Ignas

Compiled by: Luccy, BlockBeats

Editor’s note: Recently, many projects have released airdrops or have potential short expectations. Defi researcher Ignas gave a detailed introduction to several of the popular projects, including the modular blockchain Dymension and the automatic provision of application-specific information in the multiverse. Blockchain protocol Saga, elastic execution layer AltLayer on Ethereum, DeFi-centric and EVM-compatible layer 1 Berachain, Bitcoin ZK Rollup SatoshiVM, parallel EVM narrative Monad, and modular blockchain execution layer Fuel .

First of all, sorry for the headline-grabbing comments.

But the protocols I describe in this article do appear frequently in my X feeds. However, few people seem to actually know what they are doing.

So, if you are one of those people who is scrolling on X waiting for tokens and airdrops to launch with hype for the project (without actually really knowing what they do), this article is for you.

Eigenlayer will open for deposits on January 29th. What’s your plan?

While most people are waiting for deposits to open, you can deposit to some protocols without queuing in “Local ETH EigenPods” and mine EIGEN and Liquid Restaked Protocol tokens all at once.

Three leading LRT protocols: EtherFI, Renzo and KelpDAO

There is fierce competition in the LRT field. Which protocol will win the LRT war? I’m not sure, but I’m betting on a few protocols:

• EtherFi: Leads LRT with $195 million in deposits. You can get 2x points by using eETH in cooperative DeFi protocols.
• Kelp DAO: Re-stake stETH or ETHx to earn Eigenlayer points and KelpDAO miles. Although there is no recommendation, you can consider depositing to participate in Kelp’s airdrop.
• Renzo: Just announced a $3.2 million seed round led by Maven11 Capital with participation from OKX, Mantle and others.
• Swell: Its LST (swETH) is supported by Eigenlayer, but Swell will launch rswETH LRT soon.

Dymension

Dymension’s mission is to build the “Internet of RollApps”, which consists of RollApps (second layer) and Dymension Hub (first layer).

Looks like Cosmos $ATOM, right? But let’s get on with it.

RollApps is a modular blockchain that is easy to deploy and integrates natively with Dymension Hub. The Hub leverages Cosmos’ inter-chain communication protocol (IBC) to provide security, liquidity and connectivity to these RollApps.

Similar to Cosmos, but Dymension enforces Cosmos Interchain Security on all RollApps and integrates Osmosis-style liquidity.

Another difference is data availability. RollApps can publish transaction data to external blockchains such as Celestia, Avail, NEAR, etc., choosing the best option based on their needs. This is also the reason why Dymension airdrops to TIA stakers.

This unified experience simplifies the crypto experience of depositing, gaming, withdrawing, exchanging, and more within one Hub (website).

You can check out RollApps on the testnet here, as well as the IBC bridging and exchange on their portal.

DYM is a staking token and I believe it will become the primary liquidity provider on their Hub. 7% of the total supply will be airdropped, so the liquidity injection into the ecosystem is solid.

Overall, Dymension doesn’t seem too innovative technically, but it combines the best of multiple ecosystems into one Hub. This is an innovation in itself.

Ultimate success will depend on unique RollApps.

Saga

I guess the main reason Saga is so popular is thanks to airdrops. And I love airdrops!

Saga is another Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) project that enables anyone to launch an application-specific chain (they call it a Chainlet) as easily as deploying a smart contract. Saga also uses Cosmos IBC to connect Saga Hub with Chainlets.

Starting a Chainlet is really easy. Should I start IGNAS?

And like Dymension, Saga also offers “Saga Shared Security” so that Chainlets don’t need to pay for security (and increase supply) with their own tokens.

Saga Documentation

There’s more to the Saga, but that’s basically what you need to know when it comes to airdrops. The team says they want to reward loyal users, so the snapshot deadline is October 2023. Avax, Atom, Matic, and Celestia stakers are eligible, so check their blog posts for information.

Overall, competition for RaaS is growing, check out more RaaS protocols below:

• Initia - “intertwined rollup network”
• Caldera - “Modular blockchain platform: one-click rollup deployment.”
• Movement - RaaS for Move-based blockchains such as Sui and Aptos.
• Espresso - “Developer of the Espresso Sequencer, a rollup that supports decentralization, scale and interoperability.”
• Conduit - “Deploy a fully managed, production-grade rollup on Ethereum in just a few clicks, no code required.”
• Astria - “Shared Sequencer Network”
• Layer N - “Unlimited scaling is coming to Ethereum - a new type of ultra-high-performance rollup network.”

AltLayer

AltLayer is possible thanks to RaaS and Eigenlayer’s re-staking. It facilitates the launch of native and re-staking rollups with optimistic and zk rollup technologies. From what I understand, current L2s (such as Arbitrum and Optimism) may use this technology for a few reasons.

Re-staking Rollup is a novel Rollup design and a new way to expand Ethereum L2s.

In a world with many application-specific rollups, restaking rollups focus on solving key issues such as decentralization, security, interoperability, user experience, and slow finality.

It’s a bit complicated, but I think it’s important to understand because AltLayer demonstrates Eigenlayer’s re-pledge potential.

AltLayer introduces three Active Validation Services (AVS). VITAL for decentralized verification, MACH for fast finality, and SQUAD for decentralized ordering. These are three key elements missing from current L2s.

For example, MACH solves the problem of slow finality in Ethereum by verifying the Rollup state, including pessimistic, optimistic and validity proof modes.

Check out the post below to find out what it means.

Re-stakers with re-staking ETH will be able to choose which AVS to re-stake their ETH to and earn rewards for it. Because of Eigenlayer, cryptocurrencies will look completely different and shocking.

Additionally, there is indeed an airdrop for Eigenlayer and TIA stakers on January 17th! Details are shown below.

AltLayer is supported by EigenLayer, Balaji, Polychain, Celestia, Jump, Gavin Wood (Founder of Polkadot), Kain (Founder of Synthetix), Binance, and more.

Berachain

Berachain is an “EVM equivalent enhanced” blockchain built on the Proof-of-Liquidity consensus mechanism. It’s that simple! Okay, here’s what it really means.

First, it is a Layer 1 blockchain built on Cosmos-SDK. But since Cosmos-SDK does not support EVM, Berachain added EVM equivalent functionality. Equivalency is a step back from 100 EVM compatibility, as Berachain only supports some interoperability with Ethereum’s smart contracts and tools, but does not fully replicate the EVM environment.

Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) aims to improve upon traditional Proof-of-Stake (PoS) by focusing on liquidity, decentralization, and alignment between validators and the protocol. It uses a two-token system to achieve this.

• Users provide liquidity pools to Berachain Native DEX (BEX) and earn Bera Governance Tokens (BGT).
• Users delegate BGT to verifiers.
• Validators generate blocks based on their delegated BGT, and rewards are distributed between them and their delegates.
• Validators vote on BGT inflation in various liquidity pools.
• Optionally, validators can distribute bribes to their delegators.

The local DEX is Kodiak, which has centralized, full-scale AMMs and has the No-Code Token Deployer Factory (Panda Factory) for permissionless memecoin deployment. Oh, this thing expands quickly.

Key aspects of PoL:

Liquidity and Token Separation: Users earn governance tokens (BGT) by providing liquidity. This separates the staking token (BGT) from the on-chain transaction token (BERA), encouraging more on-chain liquidity.

Bera document

Collaborative incentives: Verifiers can support the protocol liquidity pool, and the protocol can incentivize verifiers to improve the security and performance of the overall chain.

Finally, there is Honey, a stablecoin that seems to be a wrapper of USDC.

Overall, if you actively participate in the DeFi summer of 2020, you will enjoy the fun of farming with high APY returns. Just make sure you know when to leave.

##SatoshiVM

This project is indeed high-profile and will be promoted by many opinion leaders in the cryptocurrency space, so please do extra due diligence and don’t get swayed by FOMO before doing enough research.

In essence, SatosiVM Layer 2 combines the best of Bitcoin and Ethereum: Bitcoin’s security and Ethereum’s virtual machine. It uses BTC as the fuel token.

It uses ZK Rollups (similar to zkSync or Polygon’s zkEVM), which are like securely packaging a bunch of transactions together and then processing them in a way that is compatible with the Ethereum system but securely protected on the Bitcoin network. Transaction data will also be stored on Bitcoin.

Stacks is currently the leader in Bitcoin’s second layer, but the hype around SatoshiVM is the ability to copy-paste all Ethereum’s DApps.

However, I would need to dig deeper to understand how decentralized and secure it really is, but I can’t imagine it being fast and cheap if the data is stored on Bitcoin. There’s a lot of conceptual buzz surrounding SatoshiVM, but I’ll keep an open mind.

Monad

Parallelized EVM has become a meme on Twitter, and Monad is one of the first chains to adopt the technology (the other two are Sei and Solana’s NEON).

As an L1 built from the ground up in C++ and Rust, Monad should be able to reach 10,000 transactions per second, similar to Solana and Sei.

Monad also built their own HotStuff consensus - MonadBFT, which includes Sybil resistance, 1 second PoS block time, and single-slot finality (meaning transactions only require one confirmation to be finalized).

Monad also built their own custom database (rather than using a third-party data availability layer).

Now, for parallel execution, imagine doing laundry.

Instead of washing clothes first, then drying them, then stacking them, and finally storing them, parallel execution using superscalar pipeline processing starts washing load 2 when load 1 enters the dryer.

And all this while keeping hardware requirements minimal (unlike Solana’s higher requirements).

Monad was co-founded by former Jump Trading developers who raised $19 million from Dragonfly Capital, Naval Ravikant, Cobie, Hasu and others.

The testnet should be launching soon, so make sure to give it a try. You never know what airdrop criteria they will apply.

Fuel Network

The Fuel team believes that the era of monolithic blockchains is gradually fading. The future will be modular and execution, data availability and consensus will be decoupled.

Fuel, on the other hand, focuses on building the fastest execution layer in a modular blockchain stack.

How? There are three innovations to achieve this goal.

• Parallel transaction execution: A model similar to the Monad I introduced above.
• Fuel Virtual Machine (FuelVM): It is designed to be smarter and more efficient than traditional blockchain engines. By learning from the past, it gives developers more freedom to create and innovate.
• Developer experience using Sway and Forc: They have their own language (Sway) and toolset (Forc) to make building on Fuel easier. This is a mix of Solidity and Rust.

Interestingly, as more and more chains/rollups turn to EVM and Solidity, Fuel insists on using its own virtual machine and programming language.

As with different languages, I’m optimistic about this because it prevents low-cost copy-paste Ethereum forks. For this reason, I like Solana, Starknet, and will pay more attention to Fluid.

Oh, and as for transactions per second (TPS), the team said in Discord that it’s 7,000 TPS per core (not optimized) and 56,000 TPS for 8 cores (not optimized). Whatever that means.

Try Beta testnet bridging here.

Get Fuel testnet tokens here.