🔎 How to spot new trends early
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In today’s newsletter:
🔎How to spot new trends early
📊 On-chain alpha
😂 Crypto meme of the week
🗞️ The latest DeFi news
🔎How to spot new trends early
Back when I first got into crypto, it was a lot easier to make money.
You could pick almost any altcoin with decent fundamentals, hold it for a while, and chances are you would have walked away with a profit.
But the game has changed.
10,000 new coins are launching every day, and liquidity is more fragmented than ever. Crypto is now all about narratives.
With this in mind, I wanted to share how I use Dexu.ai to spot new narratives early and track which projects are winning the attention game.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how I use it:
Dexu.ai is an on-chain and social analytics platform created by Crypto Koryo.
It has a wide range of dashboards. The first one I typically use is called “Narrative Overview”, which you can access on Dexu.ai’s left bar.
Here you’ll find several charts that show you things such as:
Top narratives by mindshare
Narratives Price Performance
Correlations between narratives
What I do on the “Narrative Overview” dashboard is to go to “Mindshare”, and click on “Bar” and on “Relative” to see the sectors that surged in mindshare recently.
According to the platform, the fastest-growing 3 narratives in the past 7 days are Tokenless, AI agents, and Derivatives.
This seems pretty accurate, as pre-TGE projects on Kaito, Virtuals, and Hyperliquid are all currently trending on CT.
Does that mean that all these tokens will be top performers from now on?
No, but it tells me to which narratives I should take a closer look.
Once you’ve identified a few trending narratives, head to the “Sector Analysis” dashboard.
Here, on the market tab, I can see the top projects by performance from a certain sector. Let’s take the Derivatives sector as an example.
The idea is to search for the top projects by both token performance and mindshare from a sector that’s trending.
By clicking on “Social” on the “Sector Analysis” dashboard, I’ll also be able to see the top derivatives dApps by mindshare.
Across both tabs, two names stand out: Hyperliquid and Gains Network, as they are leading in both token performance and X mindshare.
With the framework I shared above, you can compile a shortlist of projects worth your attention (in this case, Hyperliquid and Gains Network).
This doesn’t mean that you should now blindly buy their tokens.
But this strategy using Dexu.ai is a great way to identify a few projects that are worth researching further, as they could prove to be good investments.
Generally, this is what I’m looking for when researching projects:
No major token unlocks in the near future
Organic hype and a strong community
A great product (that isn’t used just because of high token incentives)
Strong on-chain metrics (I look at fees, TVL, revenue, etc.)
Growing adoption (e.g. TVL or trading volume is constantly increasing)
Strong token utility (e.g. a buyback mechanism or revenue sharing)
To be frank, in a major uptrend, fundamentals are not very important.
High mindshare and hype can send any token (including memecoins) flying.
But in tougher market conditions such as the ones we’ve seen lately, the fundamentally strong tokens are usually the ones that outperform.
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On-chain Alpha🔎
DEX to CEX Spot Trade Volume is at all-time highs
Crypto Meme😂
The latest developments in DeFi
Arbitrum DAO approved an 80M $ARB DeFi Incentive Program
Chainlink partnered with Mastercard to enable Mastercard cardholders to purchase crypto directly on-chain
Jupiter Exchange released Radar - an aggregator feed that alerts you when you get an airdrop or there’s a change to your DeFi positions
Republic will soon enable investing in companies such as SpaceX on-chain on Solana
AAVE DAO voted to expand to Aptos as part of its first non-EVM deployment
KiiChain, an on-chain FX layer for stablecoins and RWA, launched its Oro Testnet
GTE, an orderbook DEX built for MegaETH L2, raised $15M in funding
Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced that banks are now free to provide banking services to the crypto industry
Celestia Co-founder proposed replacing its PoS consensus mechanism with a new system called Proof of Governance
Fragmetric, a Solana liquid restaking protocol, introduced its FRAG token and announced a 10% token airdrop
Veda, a yield infrastructure protocol, raised $18M in funding
Ethereal, an all-in-one DEX built on Ethena’s own L1, released its testnet
DIA, a trustless oracle network, released its DIA staking mechanism
X is planning to roll out in-app trading and investing
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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