Bienvenidos mis ositos, tu siempre eres mis queridos! (Welcome back little bears you are always my dears!)
First I want to wish everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
My dear subscribers: PANDA!!! Why are you posting salacious clickbaity thumbnails to grab attention?
My subscriber demographics are most likely males in their late twenties to mid fifties. They are most likely employed but searching for a way to make it. Though I most certainly welcome female readership as well.
If you happen to be an attractive wealthy lady in need of a mate let me know in the comments below. Until that miracle happens, I will stay in the trenches to help my awesome subscribers navigate the DeFi world to achieve financial freedom.
Now you may think that I hate Ethereum based on my thumbnail, but that is not true. I hate HIGH GAS FEES on Ethereum. Now I can hear the ETH maxis shriek things like “BUT gas fees are burned and it’s deflationary now!” or “it’s the most decentralized!” or “XYZ network experienced a setback HAHA”.
As humans we are prone to tribalism and I think it’s fine to play favorites. Sometimes all this infighting is not productive. We have bigger problems like a hostile regulatory environment. There is still a lot of cool stuff on Ethereum and a lot of value in the ecosystem.
Ethereum 2.0 is maybe 2-3 years away so there’s a lot of things can go wrong. Some of the rollups show some promise but there’s not a lot of good money making opportunities yet. Bridging options are getting better but they are still not seamless yet.
The biggest roadblock remains the high transactions fees. If you got in early on ETH and are a big blubbery whale I’m happy for you. However the average pleb can’t afford to spend $100+ per transaction.
While we wait for a fully sharded zkrollup enabled Ethereum 2.0 we need to find affordable options to farm some DeFi yield for survival purposes.
It makes sense for me to stay liquid and nimble. Multichain projects like Abracadabra and Curve Finance offer a great way to explore and play on different networks.
To that end I’ve already played around with the F.E.A.S.T. ecosystem
Fantom, Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, TerraLuna
Originally I wanted to dump Ethereum completely but I’ve reconsidered after a benefit-cost analysis. It was going to just be F.A.S.T. (Fantom, Avalanche, Solana, TerraLuna). However IF and this is a big IF, Ethereum can move to a fully sharded, zk-rollup enabled Proof of Stake ETH 2.0 with all the bells and whistles then we will have the undisputed smart contract platform.
But I’m not going to hold my breath and wait around. I want to put my money to productive use these next few years. If ETH 2.0 is ready then most likely I will bridge everything back but until then here are my experiences with:
– they are fast and cheap but not fully battle tested. Recently Grim finance was hacked so that reflects badly on the chain at least temporarily. However DeFi super developers like Andre Cronje and Daniele Sestagalli have big plans so Fantom should be able to put this incident behind them.
Most of the time Fantom transactions are cheap and fast but there were times when everything felt congested and even resulted in failed transactions. However I think they have a very interesting “paranormal” themed ecosystem and I hope they can smooth out the kinks.
Avalanche – Avalanche is currently available on COINBASE and a user can send it directly to the Avalanche C-Chain. They are not the cheapest but the transaction fees most of the time are reasonable. They also offer a pleasant bridging experience from Ethereum.
They have a mostly winter themed “homegrown” projects along with DeFi staples like Aave and Curve Finance. I have experienced gas spikes on Avalanche but things seemed to have gotten back to normal.
– they were off to a strong start but now the liquidity mining rewards have slowed down. Similar to Polygon (MATIC), Solana is fast and cheap for conducting DeFi transactions. Similar to Polygon there’s a lot of meme, and other low quality projects.
However they are still relatively new and I think the second generation of products should get better.
TerraLuna – LUNA represents one of my all time greatest blunders. I remember when it was about ONE dollar and had the opportunity to back up the truck. I thought I had more time to accumulate at such a bargain basement price. I managed to pick up a small amount at the $7 level. I really wish I didn’t hesitate.
TerraLuna has seen the adoption of its UST algorithmic stablecoin soar to new highs in recent weeks. It seems like they are just getting started. There’s a lot of cool projects like Astroport, Nexus, and Stader that are still works in progress.
Anchor seems to be the most popular application and they have hinted at their multichain ambitions. 2022 should be an exciting year for the LUNAtic community.
Honorable mention:
Harmony One - They haven’t moved as fast as some of the other chains yet but they are IBC (Inter Blockchain Communications) enabled like TerraLuna.
Their killer app so far is DeFi Kingdoms and they have Curve Finance and Sushiswap deployed.
Does all this mean that Ethereum is headed to the trash heap? Not so fast! They still have a loyal community and a ton of TVL (total value locked). The next few years will be critical, if they can’t deliver they will just be another dead chain.
Investors need to be patient and strategic with Ethereum. For those with modest sized accounts it’s probably best to farm on other chains and then go back to select Ethereum projects when gas fees are “reasonable”.
Right now there are not many direct CeFi to L2 options available in my area. A lot of folks need to still move funds to Ethereum L1 first and then bridge to L2. Projects that can help onboard users directly to L2 solutions could help Ethereum stay competitive.
There may be direct on ramps from a centralized exchange to a layer 2 rollups or sidechains depending on your jurisdiction. So keep an eye open.
A very interesting multichain battle is going to play out over the next few years. It’s important to keep on top of DeFi events and shift capital appropriately based on your risk and reward preferences. Get ready for an awesome 2022!
Be sharp, stay hungry let’s get that money!
