Bitget Research: Federal Reserve Signals Potential Rate Cuts, Cancun Upgrade Approaching Enhances Ethereum High Certainty Opportunity

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Bitget Research2024/03/08 08:00

By:John & Cary

In the past 24 hours, many new popular tokens and topics have emerged in the market, which could potentially be the next wealth creation opportunity.

In the past 24 hours, many new popular tokens and topics have emerged in the market, which could potentially be the next wealth creation opportunity.

Overview

In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin has continued to consolidate within the $64,000 to $68,000 price range, while the price of ETH has steadily risen, breaking through $3900. The highlights are as follows:

Sectors with strong wealth generation effect: Parallel EVM, Layer 2, and Storage sector small cap projects.
Top searched tokens and topics by users: BODEN, SOL, Wormhole, Jupiter, and other Solana eco-projects.
Potential airdrop opportunities: Marginfi and io.net.

As the price of Bitcoin enters a consolidation phase and the Cancun upgrade approaches, investment focus is gradually shifting from the Bitcoin ecosystem to the ETH ecosystem. In terms of trading, ETH, EVM chains sector (such as SEI, NEON), and Layer 2 sectors (such as OP, ARB, STRK) present highly promising opportunities. Pantera Capital is also raising funds from large investors to buy discounted Solana tokens from the FTX Estate. Investors may consider investing in Solana and its ecosystem tokens (such as RAY, PYTH, SILLY).

Data collection time: March 8, 2024, 4:00 AM (UTC+0)

1. Market Environment

In the past 24 hours, the price of BTC has continued to fluctuate within the $64,000 to $68,000 range, while the price of ETH has steadily risen, breaking through $3900. The Cancun upgrade, scheduled for March 13, will introduce Blob transactions that separate L2 transaction data from the EVM, significantly reducing the gas fees required for digital asset transactions on the Ethereum Layer 2 network, potentially by up to 14 times. As the upgrade approaches, investment focus is gradually shifting from the Bitcoin ecosystem to EVM chains (such as SEI) and various Layer 2 projects (such as OP, ARB).

In the macro market, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated at a Senate hearing that confidence in beginning to lower interest rates is not far off, and if inflation meets expectations, interest rates can and will begin to be lowered this year. The three major U.S. stock indexes collectively closed higher on Thursday, with the Nasdaq reaching a new intraday record high. Popular tech stocks rose across the board, indicating that the macro environment has a positive impact on the cryptocurrency market environment.

2. Wealth Creation Sectors

1) Sector Movements: Parallel EVM (SEI, NEON)

Primary Reason: First, the Ethereum Cancun upgrade, scheduled for March 13, will reduce the costs for EVM projects; second, Coinbase International Exchange and Coinbase Advanced will add support for SEI perpetual futures.

Price Increase: Over the past 24 hours, SEI saw a 16.12% increase, and NEON saw an 18.31% increase.

Factors affecting future market conditions:

Major product releases: The SEI parallel EVM testnet has been upgraded to version 2, in which applications based on Ethereum can be deployed on the network without any changes. The Sei parallel EVM mainnet is expected to be launched in the first half of 2024.
It's important to monitor whether more projects will adopt the parallel EVM approach: A significant reason for the importance of the parallel EVM sector is that it solves the issue of traditional EVMs processing transactions sequentially, significantly improving the network's throughput and performance. If more projects like Neon and Scroll adopt parallel EVM, there could be further upside potential for the entire sector's token prices.

2) Sector Movements: Storage Sector (AIOZ, AR, TFT)

Primary Reason: The Solana ecosystem's DePIN protocol io.net announced the completion of a $30 million Series A financing led by Hack VC, valuing the project at $1 billion. DePIN utilizes GPU and other supply chain cloud services or mobilizes hardware devices across the network to form an infrastructure network. This development has expanded the market cap potential for related storage projects, thus attracting investment to some small-cap storage projects.

Price increase: AIOZ has risen 41.4% in 24 hours, and AR has increased by 4.69% in 24 hours, with a weekly gain of 39.82%.

Factors affecting future market conditions:

It's important to monitor the development of DePIN+AI: Shared cloud storage services will generate strong demand in areas such as large model training, distributed machine learning, data storage validation mining, distributed inference, etc. As a component of DePIN, storage will solidify its status as a "fundamental service" as DePIN+AI continues to evolve.
The expansion of the sector's concept warrants attention: The cloud computing sector is highly challenging, particularly for clients needing complex real-time rendering or streaming media GPU infrastructure, due to high development and usage costs. The introduction of more decentralized computational power projects like io.net, AIOZ, and TFT could extend the range of applications for the storage sector. Combining decentralized cloud storage with cloud computing has the potential to elevate the price of the storage sector projects.

3) Sectors to focus on next: Solana Ecosystem Tokens (RAY, PYTH, SILLY)

Primary reason: According to Bloomberg, Pantera Capital is raising funds from large investors to buy discounted Solana tokens from the FTX Estate. Mechanism Capital co-founder Andrew Kang stated that new funds might buy a large amount of SOL tokens on-chain. The Solana ecosystem could potentially see significant growth opportunities in the future.

Specific tokens list:

RAY: Raydium is the first AMM and liquidity provider built on the Solana blockchain, with its core product being the Raydium DEX platform, comparable to Uniswap based on the ETH chain.
PYTH: Pyth Network is an oracle project based on the Solana blockchain, with over 190,000 stakers, making it an important infrastructure project in the Solana ecosystem.
SILLY: "Silly Dragon" is a character that appeared in the Solana ecosystem, officially launched by Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko during Halloween in 2023. It is one of the few Solana ecosystem memecoins strongly backed by Anatoly.

3. User Trending Searches

1) Popular DApps

Wormhole:

The cross-chain protocol Wormhole opened its airdrop inquiry yesterday, with the snapshot for airdrop eligibility taken on February 6, 2024, at 11:59 PM (UTC+0). The airdrop will allocate 6.17% (617,305,000) of W tokens, benefiting a total of 397,704 wallet addresses, including users who interacted with the protocol, Mad Lads holders, and other NFT communities, Discord users, the Monad community, and the top 10,000 Pyth stakers. Users are advised to verify the correct link to avoid phishing sites and check the official website for airdrop eligibility.

2) Twitter

Parallel Finance (Has no token issued yet):

An all-chain Layer 2 network, which received a $30 million investment from Sequoia, Polychain, Founders Fund, announced early access to its testnet, allowing users to participate and earn point rewards. Originally, the project issued the PARA token on Polkadot, which has since been delisted, with plans to issue a new token in the future. Currently, opportunities for user participation mainly include engaging in the testnet for token staking and interactions to earn various benefits. These benefits include ETH staking APR, restaking APR, EigenLayer points, Liquid restaking token points, Parallel diamonds, and additional bonuses from Parallel and its partners. Participating in these opportunities is likely to qualify for an airdrop of the project's tokens.

3) Google Search

From a global perspective:

The memecoin $BODEN based on Solana has garnered significant attention:

On Solana, memecoins related to the U.S. election, such as Doland Tremp and Jeo Boden, have hit new highs, with $BODEN achieving a 24-hour trading volume of $14 million. It has been widely discussed, including by Phantom and several prominent VC figures on Twitter, reaching a market cap of up to $35 million. The token's price fell after attempting to rebound and test its previous highs, a level that often presents significant resistance. It is not advisable to chase highs at this point.

From a regional perspective:

(1) English-speaking countries and Europe have shown keen interest in Solana ecosystem projects such as SOL, Wormhole, and Jupiter:

The Solana blockchain token SOL continues to set new highs in the current bull market. Ecosystem project Wormhole opened airdrop inquiries, and the lending protocol Kamino announced its airdrop schedule. Meanwhile, the core liquidity protocol Jupiter has launched its first round of Launchpad, with its token JUP experiencing a 24-hour increase of 26%, significantly boosting the ecosystem's wealth effect and capital activity. The market is generally optimistic about SOL's continued rise. For users with a higher risk tolerance, strategically investing in Solana and its core ecosystem projects during dips could be a wise choice.

(2) Asia has shown interest in the derivatives project AEVO:

AEVO is a decentralized derivatives exchange offering perpetual futures, options, pre-launch token futures, and other types of derivative trading, using an order book and margin model. The platform's 24-hour trading volume has reached an astonishing $3.1 billion. The project has participated in Binance Launchpool’s mining promotion, allowing its original token Ribbon (RBN) to be converted into AEVO at a 1:1 rate, with a 2-month lock-up period required. Users arbitraging RBN should be aware of the associated risks.

4. Potential Airdrop Opportunities

Marginfi - A Solana lending protocol in the point mining phase

With Kamino, the second-ranked Solana lending protocol, announcing that it will convert mining-generated points into tokens for an airdrop in April, its TVL surged by 20%, surpassing the formerly leading Marginfi. Marginfi has yet to announce a token launch date and continues its lending points mining, allowing users to earn points expected for future airdrops through lending and borrowing.

As of now, Marginfi's TVL stands at $660 million, backed by investors such as Solana Ventures, Multicoin, Pantera, Sino, and others.

To participate, visit the official website, connect your wallet, select the appropriate deposit or lending token, and proceed to receive point rewards in real-time. Currently, the platform supports lending and borrowing in various tokens, including Solana, BTC, USDC, USDT, and JUP.

IO.net - A decentralized computing network for computational mining

IO.net is a decentralized computing network within the Solana ecosystem, with an AI+Depin concept. It allows machine learning engineers to access distributed cloud clusters at a significantly lower cost than centralized services. It launched the first phase of the point reward program on March 1, continuing until April 28, rewarding points based on the GPU power users provide to the network.

IO.net recently announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round at a valuation of $1 billion, led by Hack VC with participation from Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, M13, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs, Aptos Labs, Foresight Ventures, among others, boasting a highly reputable backing.

To participate, users need to connect their GPU computational power to the IO.net platform via the network and maintain connectivity to earn point rewards. Even ordinary computers with certain computational capabilities can contribute.

Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.

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