What exciting crypto narrative is there right now besides the Ethereum merger?

Here’s a quick cheat sheet of everything exciting going on in the cryptocurrency space right now.

Original text: "Top Narratives & Catalysts to Watch" by Onchain Wizard

Editor: Kyle

If you don’t have time to spend all day researching what’s trending on crypto Twitter, what narratives are driving the market, and what catalysts are worth watching, don’t worry. Here’s a quick cheat sheet of everything exciting going on in the cryptocurrency space right now (none of these are suggestions, do your own research).

Narrative:

1) The Merge

Some high level thoughts on this narrative were written here - this will clearly be the most important catalyst in all of crypto right now, and the latest Ethereum merge date is set for September 13th, which is less than 2 weeks away from now.

2) Real Yield

This is one of the new narratives that is getting the most attention right now, especially for DeFi. The basic premise is that investors are looking for tokens that are truly operating as profitable businesses, by bringing in more money than they spend, and token releases that enter the market. I also wrote about my thoughts on this topic, including how you can calculate true returns for yourself.

Token Watchlist:

BTRFLY, SNX, GMX, MKR, UMAMI, DPX, GNS

3) NFT x DeFi

This is a less talked about narrative, but it is undoubtedly there. I think the theme is NFT trading + on-chain lending, and who will gain TVL in these markets (and who will gain market share from Opensea).

You have projects like SudoAMM/XMON which have captured a meaningful market share in trading volume (albeit in a low volume market).

Source: Dune Analytics

While NFT trading volumes are down significantly, this thread is about picking future winners in the space, especially once trading volumes + speculation return (LOOKS are another major focus on the trading side)

Source: Dune Analytics

In terms of lending, many new protocols have emerged, but the most used platforms are NFTfi, BendDAO, JPEG and Arcade

4) New Layer 1

Sei

The chain aims to be the fastest L1 in DeFi and just raised $5 million in funding from Multicoin.

Canto

Recently completed deployment on Cosmos with a TVL of $85 million.

Aptos

The Aptos mainnet is about to launch, and it looks like a "Solana 2.0", especially since key Solana figures (such as Solana's former marketing director) have joined the new project

Sui

You can read more background on the project below, but the chain is backed by former Facebook folks and is looking to close a funding round in July at a $2 billion valuation.

5) Layer 2

Arbitrum - Currently the leading ecosystem in terms of L2 TVL with ~$2.7B TVL. The chain just completed the Arbitrum Nitro upgrade and will be relaunching the Arbitrum Odyssey event this month. With the narrative of a possible Arbitrum airdrop, the Arbitrum token may do well.

Token Watchlist:

GMX, DPX/rDPX, MAGIC, RDNT, VSTA, JONES

6) Memechains

While memechains have received some hate, they have the potential to onboard a large number of retail users to the ecosystem in the coming years.

Dogecoin-L1, suitable for Dogecoin (DOGE) lovers.

Shibarium - An L2 chain from SHIB, it sounds like the token BONE will be the gas token for Shibarium. While many of you will roll your eyes at the SHIB chain, the BONE token is up 6x from its lows (and has seen a lot of smart money flowing in). There is a good post about all the mechanics here‌.

Berachain- This L1 is built on Cosmos and is powered by the Bongbears NFT team.

7) Fan Tokens

This is definitely something to watch as these tokens are outperforming the broader market. With the World Cup coming up in November, these “soccer fan tokens” are starting to receive a lot of attention, including Binance launching 25x leverage on its Soccer Fan Token Index.

catalyst:

In addition to sharing some of the underlying themes/narratives surrounding the crypto markets, I also wanted to share some high-level catalysts I’m currently watching:

- Fraxlend - The FXS team should be launching this project soon and will provide a permissionless lending market

- Curve’s stablecoin — Full details have yet to be announced, but this could be a tailwind for the dominant stablecoin exchange. One of the CVX developers looked

- May have purchased $1m worth of CRV before the catalyst

- Yearn v3 — I wrote about this in detail here, and this could be a big change for DeFi tokens (according to my github investigation, this should be launching soon)

- Sudo/XMON token economics - no idea when this will be released, but when there is some clarity on how the tokens will be distributed (and assuming it is favorable), XMON will probably take off

- rDPX v2 and dpxUSD - I’ll go into this more in depth tomorrow, but at a high level Dopex is launching its own stablecoin, the issuance of which should benefit rDPX (and expectedly make it deflationary)