The on-chain frenzy sweeps the market, can exchange tokens rise?

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has shown a thriving trend, with Bitcoin's market share dropping from 60% to 55%, marking the arrival of altcoin season. Remarkable performances have emerged across various sectors: AI Agent-related projects are leading the trend, with a certain protocol's market cap once surpassing $300 million; an AI project within a certain ecosystem has also crossed the $1 billion mark; and the increase of a specific ecological coin has astonishingly exceeded 10 times. In terms of products, the open interest on the exchange platform has repeatedly hit new highs, surpassing $4.3 billion. Even the NFT sector, which was once neglected by the market, has revitalized, with multiple well-known projects issuing tokens, driving up the prices of numerous blue-chip NFT projects.

Looking at the current market hotspots, it is not difficult to find that most are focused on on-chain projects. So, can we say that the tokens of centralized exchanges have been forgotten by the market?

That's not the case. Another potential catalyst for this bull market that cannot be ignored is that Trump may be re-elected as President of the United States.

The election of Trump may bring cryptocurrency officially into the public eye. The improvement of regulations and the relaxation of supervision may promote the inflow of external funds into the cryptocurrency market. This can be seen from the phenomenon of continuous net inflows of funds into Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. The Trump family's cryptocurrency project also supports the market with actual actions, purchasing a large number of DeFi-related tokens in just one month, including ETH, CBBTC, AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO.

So, how have the purchased tokens performed? What common characteristics do they have? What other concept coins are worth paying attention to? Let's analyze them together.

Purchase Record Overview

Starting from November 30, a certain project has invested a total of 44.75 million USD to purchase various cryptocurrencies. As of December 18, all these holdings are in profit.

It is worth noting that, unlike traditional institutions that focus more on Bitcoin, the amount of ETH held by this project far exceeds that of Bitcoin, which may reflect their optimistic view on the future price trend of Ethereum.

AAVE, as the leading lending platform in the entire market, ranks first in TVL among all protocols, with a deposit size nearing 40 billion USD, setting a historical high. In the recent seven days, the price of AAVE has increased by 35%. Additionally, a community vote for a certain project has approved a proposal to collaborate with AAVE, which is currently in the TEMP CHECK phase at AaveDAO. If the proposal is ultimately approved, it will bring new users and more actual benefits to AAVE.

LINK is a well-known oracle project. On November 14th, a certain project announced that it would adopt this technology as the standard for on-chain data and cross-chain connectivity, to safely drive the next phase of large-scale application in DeFi.

The development of ENA is closely related to the current bull market. Since its revenue comes from arbitrage between futures and spot markets, the more optimistic the market sentiment is, the higher the Ethereum funding rate, allowing ENA to gain more revenue. Recently, its TVL has surpassed 6 billion USD, setting a new historical high. In terms of products, they have also collaborated with a leading asset management giant to launch an RWA stablecoin based on government bond yields, which has alleviated market concerns about the potential negative turn of funding rates leading the protocol into a death spiral.

ONDO is the current leader in the RWA sector. After a major asset management giant announced the launch of a specific fund, ONDO invested over $95 million, becoming the largest holder. Whether in terms of compliance, legitimacy, funding scale, or market recognition, ONDO is the best choice in the current RWA sector.

In addition to the aforementioned positions, COW is also worth mentioning. When purchasing these tokens, a certain project only used a specific protocol for trading, so COW is also regarded as a relevant concept coin.

Possible Investment Directions for the Future

Based on the investment strategy of a certain project, we can speculate on the targets they may focus on in the future.

First of all, the most ideal tokens are those that have a cooperative relationship with the project. Secondly, they seem to prefer "clear business models" and "stable actual returns". AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, etc. all have clear product positioning, a large ecosystem of users, and actual revenue models. This indicates that they will not blindly pursue "novel" or "pure concept" tokens, but are inclined to invest in protocols that can bring long-term value.

LDO: Given the significant holdings of ETH by a certain project, it is clear that they have a strong belief in the long-term potential of Ethereum. As the Ethereum staking mechanism matures, coupled with the potential introduction of ETF-related Ethereum staking yields, LDO, as a leading protocol, may become the preferred choice. LDO is the largest liquid staking protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, with a TVL of $37 billion, accounting for 30% of the entire Ethereum staking market.

Pendle: Focused on the yield splitting market, allowing users to trade future yield rights. As Ethereum staking rates and yields from certain protocols rise, the demand for yield trading has continued to increase, making Pendle highly regarded in this bull market. Recently, Pendle's TVL has surpassed $5 billion and has established partnerships with several mainstream DeFi protocols.

UNI: As the pioneer of DeFi Summer and currently the most commonly used decentralized exchange by users, UNI is the leader in this sector. Recently, they launched new products, and although the market reaction has been tepid, it does not affect users' reliance on UNI's products.

Conclusion: The Importance of Blue-Chip Projects

Regarding a project's large-scale purchase of cryptocurrency, an analyst told the media: "This purchasing behavior may be aimed at gaining more trust, or to promote the development of its own project by drawing attention to these assets. Because if these assets perform well, the project may also benefit from it."

A certain project is actively laying out blue-chip projects, which not only enhances the market's confidence in mainstream DeFi protocols but also injects more institutional capital into the crypto market. This flow of funds further stabilizes the market and pushes mainstream projects towards higher market value and development potential.