If markets keep dumping, the short-term traders and paper handed speculators will be the bloodiest victims, and Iโm here for it.
As far back as March of 2018, BTC price had fallen by half from its blowoff top. It would then trade in this range for an excruciating two years. Years of crushed hopium. A seemingly endless void. No NFTs to keep things entertaining.
If you think itโs bad now, can your soul handle years of lukewarm McDonalds jokes?
We sincerely hope all of you have the capability to stick around though, because bear markets are where the generational wealth accrues. However, if youโre only focused on price, you probably donโt have what it takes to survive a prolonged crypto winter.
If youโre building and shipping, life goes on. If you canโt build and ship, then try learning how to do so. If you canโt, then bear hug the protocols that keep building no matter what.
Curve ranks at the top of my list for most innovative protocols in the space. Nearly every major Curve v2 announcement over the past year has rolled out among a major crash โ TriCrypto launched amidst the May nuke, and the v2 Factory rolled out in the most recent crash. Despite all else puking, Curveโs infrastructure has grown more resilient each time.
The Curve v2 Factory is also a great place to keep an eye on what other protocols are building their way out of the bear market.
Of the pools, Yearnโs $YFI Pool has been among the few to push its way through the noise and become a top tier pool in terms of yield.
Several more pools are working their way through governance on the path to incentives, while additional protocols are launching their first pools. Loads of activity coming through the pipeline.
$FRAX in particular has only increased its frenetic activity lately.
Among everything else, $FRAX launched an $FXS/$cvxFXS pool. This could theoretically have been launched as a classic v1 factory pool, in the vein of $CRV/$cvxCRV, which is optimized for pools where the price is considered to be mostly pegged. Notably, this was launched as a v2 pool though.
This may be an interesting use case in which the pools could theoretically persist as a liquidity source, even in the event of a depeg. Worth watching and seeing if v2 becomes the architecture of choice even for stable pairs.
All this comes amidst the $FPI airdrop to owners of tokenized $FXS. $FPI is a stablecoin adjusted for inflation, a truly novel and timely product.
For a bit more detail you can catch FRAX founder Sam Kazemanian at ETHDenver rocking the socks with sandals look always en vogue in the PNW. He had relatively little time to speak on the panel, but those who had the privilege of chatting with him after the panel were impressed by big plans in the works.
For their part, Convex has also taken a beating throughout the market turmoils, which feels a bit nonsensical given the innovation emerging from the ecosystem.
A new site https://vemarketcap.com/ by @imJaqen of veTokenFinance is tracking the market cap of all veToken projects.
Although Curve remains the most substantial partnership for Convex, the opportunities to partner with all these emerging protocols are exciting opportunities, whether the broader markets are bull or bear.
For more details on several of these co-belligerents of the Curve Wars, check out the Bankless interview with notable orca Tetranode.
As money grows scarce everywhere, weโre seeing some protocols forced to cut back on bribes to the ecosystem. The cutback has not been too severe, with bribes remaining in the double digits and Votium notching over $100MM revenue in just five months.
Arguably if $CRV/$CVX prices dip sufficiently, it becomes cheaper to incentivize directly, which ends up pushing their price up, which ends up driving protocols to rewardโฆ round and round the flywheel spins. However it shakes out, reduced token flow in a bear market is presumably better than zero token flow.
While weโre not traders or speculators, the continuing rollout of Dopex also provides thrill-seekers some interesting options to keep speculating amidst a prolonged bear market. Advanced traders can look into how to use their new $CRV SSOV Puts to hedge against further price nukes.
Options are of course risky and not for the faint of heart. However nothing like on-chain options really existed in the previous bear markets, so an extended bear market could be a fun time to add this skill to your repertoire (in full consultation with your registered financial advisor OFC).
At risk of triggering bullishness, the following two threads are required reading for all participants in the Curve ecosystem.
Thinkpieces and meandering social media debates are a great way to stay entertained throughout a bear market. Keep it up!
Finally, how long might the Curve Wars be affected by actual risk of war? Itโs anybodyโs guess, but this thread provides some thoughtful speculation.
Itโs a great analysis that considers most of the important factors. I personally expect things will shake out a bit different, more akin to the Crimea annexation, which unfolded rapidly with relatively little bloodshed. Weโve seen very little sober reflection on Crimea because the US was so badly outmaneuvered in the incident. I expect weโll see a repeat playbook, where the biggest casualty is Americaโs global standing and all our bags.
However military strategy is outside my lane. All I know is that the real world is heavily unpredictable. Best you can do is find outstanding projects, hug them tightly, and enjoy the roller coaster.