gFriday #1 Love how $NILE played out (wrote about earlier this month), but mostly out of it now. The fact that it pumped before the announcement and the announcement of a new dex itself had minimal effect on the price tells you everything you need to know about the state of DeFi low/mid-caps tbh. No one from "outside" is coming to buy our bags, and everyone on the "inside" is just pvping each other and competing in who can front-run the news faster. I've been told the new Consensys-Linea-Nile DEX will have the same tokenomics as the new RAM DEX (essentially a modified version of the Shadow/Camelot model), which could be bullish (imo they are better than the "standard" ve33) + there are still some catalysts left (like actually deploying the DEX and $LINEA token, lol). Still, I don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze at this point, considering all the execution risk. Speaking of RAM, it's been going quite well, but I'm growing increasingly sceptical of the whole idea of HypeEVM DEX. Imo the window of opportunity is closing - anyone who doesn't figure out a moat for their DEX will get eaten by whoever figures out how to aggregate HyperCore liquidity. #2 $BLACK went live on AVAX earlier this week and is up 3x. Guess who missed it despite spending a lot of time talking to people about it? Can't get them all, I guess. Not going to ruin the vibes by pointing out that the Emissions vs Fees math ain't mathing (even by ve33 dex standards) or that the team controls the vast majority of voting power. I'm just happy it's bringing more eyes to DeFi from the memecoin/gaming crowd (and there are some decent yields, at least for now). Fully prepared to cope when this goes to 5 dollars next few weeks, bookmarked this post for when it goes to zero next few months (this is what is called "hedging" btw). #3 We finally got confirmation of what Kraken meant by "The first use case for INK tokens will be built around a liquidity protocol powered by Aave", as they are indeed planning to deploy a white-label AAVE instance to Ink. Still, there is no news on what the $INK token itself will do beyond incentivising some liquidity, but I like the approach Kraken has been taking so far. Got to remember that Ink isn't just getting AAVE's tech, but also the expertise and time of AAVE's service providers for 6 months, which is equally (if not more) valuable. The approach seems like a natural progression of what we've seen with Blast, Berachain, Sonic, etc., but with kingmaking taken one step further and full control by the foundation. It will be interesting how it plays out in other verticals (DEXes/Stables) and whether or not Ink could cook up some unique protocols (especially now that Base has snatched up FT).