Finally we have something to bond over with normal people: we're all in the same boat sailing the red seas that are our portfolios.
Story One
There's things still going up like RWAs
And your anxiety. While tariffs have negatively impacted crypto prices, one niche has escaped the downturn trajectory: Real-World-Assets.
A lame term to describe all the financial assets that are administered the old-school way, through human bureaucracy and Excel sheets.
How I feel about those hot takes.
Ever since Blackrock got into the onchain asset game, the market cap of tokenized treasuries has been growing steadily, and their BUIDL fund hit $1.9 billion just recently.
In this economy, people aren't interested in vaporwave yield earnings provided by the next dumb trader. Instead, suddenly, a mere 3% yield offered by a government seems like a sweet deal.
What else is hot in times of uncertainty? When in doubt, can't go wrong with gold. Even when your whole mission was to get away from TradFi – that explains why tokenized gold has been flying off the metaphorical shelves, pushing onchain commodities to a nearly 1.3 billion market cap. In this economy!
Takeaway: For the purist, this might be a bit annoying. You set out to replace the system, now you create some Chimera where, without the TradFi apparatus, you can't provide stable yields. Consumers won't care. Stable yield and digital (real) gold win in times of anxiety.
Story Two
Lens mainnet goes live
If watching your life savings evaporate isn't enough stress for you, you might be scrolling on X. Ever since Elon took over, the rage has accelerated, and all the ads I receive are hopelessly mistargeted. The problem is: where to go from there?
Lens tries to provide an answer with its decentralized social protocol, where everyone's posts and interactions are stored onchain. While the team initially launched on Polygon, the chain turned out to be too expensive for Lens' aspiration.
To fix that, they simply built their own chain: Lens Chain – because why be a tenant if you can be an owner (a question I won't ever have to ask myself being born in the wrong generation for home ownership)?
Lens' migration was impressive—it moved 125 GB from one chain to the other and 12 million posts. Still, mainstream adoption is far off, with 650,000 users.
Takeaway: The idea of having open social graphs is great, the challenge is switching costs. All my frenemies are on X. Once I quit, I can't see what they're up to anymore. Unless someone figures out how to fix that, I don't foresee DeSo taking off.
Story Three
Soneium thinks Anime will make people care about it
Sure, Soneium is backed by Sony, a well-known brand, but let's not forget that Sony's glory days are decades behind, and their mission statement for their chain is as opaque as it gets. It's giving IBM vibes if you know what I mean.
Their latest idea to get people invested in their L2 is anime. Soneium wants to change that by launching an Anime ID in collaboration with Animoca, "targeting global anime and manga fans." The idea is that having one Anime ID to engage with apps on Soneium is an attractive proposition. To further the appeal they're launching it alongside the "Anime Art Festival" campaign, probably their interpretation of Base's onchain summer – but instead of Coca Cola NFTs, people will get to mint Solo Leveling NFTs.
Takeaway: I don't see how having an embedded ID for one specific chain is such an amazing feature. Being a fan is more than just having a wallet in my view. Not impressed. And I'm an Anime fan and Manga reader. I am the target audience.
Fact of the Week: According to the internet, the real Red Sea is a much more pleasurable spot than the one in my portfolio. It's one of Earth's saltiest bodies of water, making it a great place to float around.
Naomi for CoinJar
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