DeFi Dev Corp. is running the MicroStrategy playbook for Solana. Check it out here!
GM friends.
Here’s what I’ll cover today:
🔍My playbook for the revenue meta
📊 Crypto chart of the week
🗞️ The latest DeFi news
🔍 My playbook for the revenue meta
The past few weeks have been very rewarding for bulls.
BTC finally broke above the $83k resistance level, and as long as it doesn’t dip below $82k-$83k on strong volume and stays above these levels on higher timeframes, I don’t see many reasons to be bearish.
But what’s been particularly interesting about this rally is that most of the altcoins that outperformed the market are tied to revenue-generating projects.
I’m talking about tokens like HYPE, LIT, ENA, UNI, which are up massively.
In this issue, I wanted to cover the framework I use to find profitable on-chain businesses and what I look for before investing in their tokens.
Let’s dive in:
First, the primary tool I use in my research is DeFiLlama.
It has a ton of useful features, as many of you might already know, but for this post, there’s one dashboard on DeFiLlama I want to focus on:
Revenue (https://defillama.com/revenue)
As the name implies, it shows the top projects by revenue.
Whenever I want to buy a new altcoin and I am not sure what to buy, I often start my research by sorting the projects on this dashboard by 30-day revenue.
From there, I scroll through the list and search for projects that catch my attention.
I’ll take Aave, the 28th project by 30-day revenue, as an example and show you exactly how I conduct my research and what I am looking at.
The next step is to click it to open the protocol’s dashboard and add 3 metrics to the chart on the right side: TVL, $AAVE price, and revenue.
The first thing that stands out in this chart is that Aave’s TVL, revenue, and token price are all significantly below their October 2025 highs.
Part of that decline happened due to the rsETH exploit in April, which triggered a meaningful TVL outflow from Aave. But the main reason for this TVL decrease in my view is that we’ve been in a bear market since last year.
In a bear market, the TVL of most dApps declines, and Aave has been no exception.
However, with market conditions improving recently, the chart above also shows that Aave TVL, revenue, and token price have begun to recover in the past 2-3 months.
And this is what makes me interested in researching it further.
Before I buy a revenue-generating token, I usually ask myself three questions:
Do I expect the protocol’s revenue to continue rising in the foreseeable future? (If its revenue is flat and not in a clear uptrend, its token is less likely to be attractive to other people as an investment, as markets are forward-looking)
Do token holders directly benefit from the protocol's success?
Does the protocol have any major upcoming catalyst that could drive more demand for its token?
In my opinion, assuming BTC goes higher, Aave will continue to attract new liquidity as it did over the past 2 months, since higher crypto prices will lead to more TVL and revenue, as a large share of user deposits on Aave are BTC-wrapped tokens and ETH.
So I think AAVE can be a reflexive asset that does well during uptrends thanks to this.
Regarding 2., Aave previously had a buyback mechanism, but it was paused following the rsETH exploit. This is not ideal, but the good news is that the Aave founder confirmed they are working on a proposal to restart buybacks.
There’s no timeline for this unfortunately, but I think this future tokenomics upgrade also serves as a catalyst that potentially makes the token more attractive to forward-looking investors, which may explain why $AAVE has performed so well lately.
And the upcoming public launch of the Aave App is another interesting future product catalyst that could bring more attention to the project.
Lastly, there are a few more things I take into consideration before buying a token:
Are the project and its token popular on X in terms of mindshare? Crypto is an attention economy, which is why I wouldn’t personally invest in a token with no mindshare on CT unless I am convinced that will change soon. If you search for Aave on CT, you’ll see a lot of posts about it from people outside its team, which I think is a very good sign from a mindshare perspective
Does the project have any serious competitors in its sector that have a good chance of stealing its market share? Morpho has been growing significantly faster than Aave in recent months, so I guess the answer is yes, even though I think both can continue to grow at once. But the issue I have with MORPHO token is that it has no value accrual mechanisms and the protocol generates no revenue, and the Morpho team didn’t indicate plans to change this in the near future, so if I had to choose between AAVE and the MORPHO token as an investment, I’d choose AAVE at this moment
Is there any hot narrative on CT that Aave directly benefits from? AI, perps DEXs, privacy, and the revenue meta seem to be the most popular narratives on X right now. Aave is in no way related to the first three, but it’s a profitable on-chain business, so it benefits from the last one
To sum it all up:
For me personally, AAVE seems like a good token to hold right now, as it ticks most of the boxes I look for in a revenue-generating token.
In general, I am looking to invest in the tokens of projects with rising revenue metrics, clear product-market fit, an active community on CT, and at least one significant upcoming product/token catalyst.
I have a list of tokens that meet these criteria, and whenever BTC sees a big dip, I buy the tokens showing the most strength if I want more altcoin exposure.
With that said, I hope you found this research framework helpful!
I believe the tokens with decent fundamentals that are not just overhyped memecoins will continue performing well in this new cycle.
In partnership with DeFi Development Corp.
The MicroStrategy of Solana
Strategy turned a public company into a massive Bitcoin accumulation machine.
Now DeFi Development Corp. (DVDF) is doing the same for Solana.
DFDV’s strategy is simple: raise capital, buy SOL, stake it, earn yield, and use that growing treasury to help raise even more capital and accumulate SOL.
Its treasury has grown by roughly 10% in the last six weeks, with DFDV recently hitting a new milestone of 2.5 million SOL in total holdings. As a result, DFDV's stock price directly benefited from SOL’s latest rally.
Recently, DFDV has also added another piece to that flywheel: CHAD
CHAD is DFDV’s Nasdaq-listed perpetual preferred stock, similar to Strategy’s STRC, but used to accumulate SOL
CHAD was initially sold at $8.00 per share, and it currently carries a 13% annual dividend rate at a $10 stated value per share, with its trading price also currently floating between $8 and $10
DFDV will issue new CHAD shares when CHAD is trading at $10+ to raise more capital and use those funds to accumulate more SOL
The idea behind CHAD is to design a lower-volatility perpetual stock instrument with daily dividends and senior exposure to the DFDV common stock.
But of course, this comes with several risks.
CHAD’s dividend rate is variable, the payments are not guaranteed, and its price could experience a serious downtrend during a major SOL price crash, as happened with STRC when BTC crashed.
Still, CHAD gives DFDV another way to finance its goal of buying as much SOL as possible without relying only on common-stock issuance.
Learn more about DFDV and CHAD here!
Chart of the week
ETH price is on track for its best quarter since Q1 2021
Crypto meme of the week😂
The latest developments in DeFi
Aerodrome announced plans to launch its new Aero DEX on Oct. 21
SEC gave projects the green light to conduct token buybacks legally
Chainlink launched CCIP 2.0 interoperability protocol
Aave V4 enabled borrowing against Coinbase’s tokenized stocks
Stacks founder Muneeb became the new CEO of Stacks Labs. STX price surged 30% in the next 24 hours following the news
Lighter announced they’ll soon roll out new products like options and Lighter EVM
Hyperliquid team announced they’re selling $320M of HYPE OTC
Kinetiq announced an “airdrop” that you have to pay to claim it 😅
Jumper’s ICO went live, with the TGE being planned for Q4
Moudinho launched stuckfunds, a free crypto tool that scans your wallets for unclaimed bridge withdrawals
Ethena announced it’s ending the token incentives for USDe. This could mean that its last Season 6 airdrop will happen soon
Open Standard launched its own stablecoin called OUSD
Near Intents was exploited for $3.8 million
Bitwise launched the first US Spot Near ETF
Arcus, the perps DEX built by the team behind dYdX, launched its S1 points program
That’s all for this week!
Until next time,
The DeFi Investor
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