Congratulations to Cointel on their $7.4M round!

Cointel has successfully closed a $7.4 million strategic round, with Avalanche and Sugafam Inc. as the lead investors.

At Coinstruct, we worked closely with the Cointel team on the supply side of tokenomics, providing support in optimizing the fundraising structure.

We are confident that a well-designed supply model and thoughtful valuation strategy will give Cointel the necessary upside in its public phase.

Activity in Ethereum at an all-time high, while gas fees are at a minimum

Short answer: Due to L2 solutions, we’re seeing the paradox of “ATH activity with low gas fees” on L1.

Dencun or EIP-4844 - March 2024
Rollups no longer burn expensive calldata-gas on L1-they offload data to cheap blobs with a separate fee market. This significantly reduces pressure on L1 gas, even as overall ecosystem activity grows.

L2 Batching
Millions of user transactions are aggregated into a handful of L1 commits/proofs. On charts, these are counted as L1 transactions, driving “transaction” and “active address” metrics to record highs, but each entry consumes far less gas than the previous raw traffic flow.

Slightly higher block gas limit
In 2025, validators gradually increased the gas limit (from ~30M to ~36–37M, with discussions aiming for ~45M), boosting L1 throughput slightly. Not a game-changer, but it adds capacity.

Different demand mix
More “light” operations (bridges, commits, staking/restaking routines) on L1—complex tasks have moved to L2.

Liquidity fragmentation (where different apps live on different networks, requiring constant bridge navigation) remains an issue in Ethereum’s ecosystem, but the gas problem is being addressed.

Coinstruct × Cware Labs

Web3 founders, meet your new growth stack.

We’re teaming up with Cware Labs - a full-cycle growth agency since 2020. This partnership pairs Coinstruct’s tokenomics & fundraising with Cware’s AI-powered marketing, acceleration, and venture network.

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Learn more:
Coinstruct: https://coinstruct.tech/
Cware Labs: https://cwarelabs.com

$WLFI - Make Presidential Crime Great Again

The Trump family’s lending protocol, World Liberty Financial, announced its Ethereum launch for September 1.

20% of the supply will be available to early supporters (rounds at $0.015 and $0.05).
The remaining 80% is slated to be decided via community governance.
A year ago, 25% of tokens were sold in presale, which implies ~5% of total supply enters circulation at TGE.

Premarket now shows ~$0.30.
If total supply = 100B, then at $0.30 → FDV ≈ $30B; with 5% circulating, MCAP ≈ $1.5B.

🔹 The product is essentially an Aave v3 fork with the Trump brand. Yet FDV is about 6× AAVE’s (~$5B FDV).

🔹 The “strategic partnership” saga: WLFI previously signaled 7% of tokenomics to Aave, then the team walked it back. Stani Kulechov responded with a sarcastic tweet, hinting at the toxic Trump playbook.

🔹 Well-known trader y22 publicly betting on Presidential Crime, allocating 40% of his book.

Yes, it looks overpriced, and a year out the token could be lower. But with hype and a crowded short, price could still get walked up toward $1. Remember $TRUMP: plenty shorted it around $30B FDV, then it got run to $70.

$WLFI - Presidential Crime is Real

Thirty minutes before trading, the WLFI team dropped a Medium post: at TGE it’s not ~5% of supply, but ~24.7B tokens unlocking. For some reason they chose to say it at the last minute…

10,000,000,000 — ecosystem share for World Liberty Financial. Formally a treasury bucket for growth; in theory shouldn’t hit the order book right away.

7,783,585,650 — allocated to ALT5 Sigma Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTS), a public fintech firm (custody, trading, payments). Looks like part of a broader deal between WLFI and ALT5 Sigma, but no details.

2,880,884,615 — liquidity & marketing for the initial listing. This is where extra sell pressure can show up. Why set aside 3% for listing when only 4% sits with real holders?

4,004,600,000 — public sale allocation (the ~20% presale unlock). Not everyone claimed/unlocked, so it comes in slightly below the “5% of total supply” we expected.

After the announcement and the open, price corrected to $0.22–0.25.

The “Presidential Crime” did play out, just not quite the way many expected.

Mantle ($MNT) - early BNB days for Bybit?

In this cycle, the market is paying up for real cash flow and buyback models. Naturally, CEX tokens are back in focus.

BNB. A true success story: tight integration with the Tier 1 exchange + systematic buyback/burn (since before it was trendy) → top-5 on CMC.

OKB. OKX recently burned 90% of its token supply and keeps repurchasing with a slice of exchange fees. Result: a re-rating from $45 to $195 in under a month.

Why $MNT is interesting

🔹 $MNT didn’t start as a CEX token: it’s the former BIT (BitDAO) transformed into Mantle - an L2/governance token. Bybit is integrating it deeper into the ecosystem (for now mostly via Bybit Earn). Bybit has officially announced that by end of September MNT will be usable to pay trading fees with 25% discount on spot and 10% on derivatives.

🔹 Two Bybit leads recently joined the Mantle Advisory Board — a clear signal that synergy with the exchange is set to increase.

🔹 At the same time there are 2 potential re-rating levers:

1) A buyback/burn funded by Bybit revenues (BNB-style).

2) A burn of the 45% supply sitting in Treasury (OKB-style).

Bybit is comparable to OKX in derivatives volumes, while its spot volume is ~10× higher, but the MCap MNT/OKB ≈ 0.95. In theory, that leaves room for a catch-up (or even overtake) move for $MNT.

Lighter - the Robinhood of perp DEXs?

With Hyperliquid’s success this cycle, a wave of new perp DEXs has emerged. But it’s often hard to tell who’s a real competitor and who’s just here to “raise money, list a token, and cash out” (see chart).

Against that backdrop, Lighter stands out. The exchange had been on our radar for a while, but only recently did it become clear that it’s charting its own path.

🔹 Zero-fee model - not marketing, but strategy
When Lighter launched with zero trading fees, it looked like a temporary promo. It seemed inevitable that fees would be switched on and volumes (currently 2nd among perp DEXs), suspiciously wash-trade-like, would vanish.

But the team clarified: zero fees are the business model.
The logic mirrors Robinhood in TradFi: retail traders pay nothing, create flow and liquidity, while arbitrageurs, funds, and HFT firms pay through the API.

🔹 Founder profile
The founder, Vladimir Novakovski, is a Harvard grad and ex-Citadel, where he built HFT teams. Backed by a16z and Dragonfly, he set out with the ambition to build a Robinhood for crypto derivatives.

🔹 Liquidity pool innovation
Lighter’s liquidity pool (similar to Hyperliquid’s HLP) currently offers ~58% APY on stables with $145M TVL.
The catch: without trading points, you can only deposit 25% of your capital.

This means the exchange deliberately rejects “passive” whale liquidity from non-traders, giving APY rewards only to those actively trading. It’s a tough but clever mechanism:

◆ Forces whales to trade instead of just parking capital
◆ Keeps out delta-neutral funds that usually drain yield from such pools

Few projects can afford this kind of incentive design. Apart from points, nothing is known about a potential token yet. Access is still invite-only, but the platform is reportedly opening to all in Q4.

One of the few projects bringing new economic models into crypto and so far, doing it successfully.

Listing $LINEA - Is it undervalued? Really?

The $LINEA token has finally hit the market, trading at $2.2B FDV. But is it truly undervalued?

🔹 Buyback will be minimal. In 2025 the network generated only $2.5M in revenue - hardly enough to create any real buy pressure.

🔹 Empty ecosystem. Beyond Etherex (a fork of x(3,3) models), there’s not much to highlight. Metamask Card never gained traction, mUSD is unlikely to go mainstream, and even Metamask itself is losing ground to competing EVM wallets.

🔹 The Sharplink narrative is fading. Many DATs now show mNAV < 1, including SBET. Sharplink announced a $1.5B+ share buyback, but the stock dropped. They’re only the #2 ETH DAT and lag far behind Bitmine - so no real leadership factor.

🔹 TVL is artificial. Most of the inflows came from the Linea Ignition campaign, which ends in late October. Rewards are already tapering off, meaning liquidity will likely exit.

🔹 Valuation vs peers:
• “Empty” L2s: ZKsync = $1.3B FDV, Scroll = $350M FDV
• More mature: Optimism = $3.4B FDV, Arbitrum = $5.4B FDV
$LINEA looks roughly fair on this spectrum, but not cheap.

The one positive: 87% of the airdrop has already been claimed and sold, so the main wave of sell pressure is likely behind us and now MM can pump it.

But longer term, without real ecosystem growth or meaningful revenues, $LINEA’s story looks uncertain at best.

Capped vs. Uncapped Tokenomics

Polkadot DAO recently voted to cap the supply of $DOT at 2.1B, replacing its prior unlimited issuance model, which minted 20M new $DOT per year with no hard cap).

There is a common belief that capped tokens ($BTC, $HYPE) are always superior to uncapped ones ($SOL, $CRV) is, at best, a misconception. Scarcity alone doesn’t create value. If there’s no demand, fewer tokens in circulation won’t magically fix the problem.

In fact, uncapped supply can provide flexibility and scalability. Take ve(3,3) designs: even with constant sell pressure from new emissions, the flywheel of bribes, fees, and rebase mechanics creates sustainable buy pressure for stakers.

That said, uncapped tokenomics have become rare. Why?

🔹 Retail fears hyperinflation.
🔹 VCs dislike not knowing their precise % allocation.
🔹 Many projects today prefer “stock-like” capped models to avoid trust issues.

History hasn’t helped either: most uncapped designs failed to create a true flywheel, leaving only heavy sell pressure. Even MakerDAO (long considered a successful uncapped case) is transitioning into $SKY with a deflationary model.

So, uncapped supply can work, but only if the token’s role in the system is carefully designed and directly linked to real value flows. Otherwise, capped supply will keep winning - It is easier to implement, to explain and to sell.

🎙 Coinstruct is launching a new series of podcasts.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the first episode is already live.

We sat down with our client and the founder of Mystic Finance to talk about RWAs and where this narrative is heading.

Listen now on our Twitter/X

The Tokenomic Health Check

A quick way to stress-test your model and see if everything adds up before launch.
it’s simple, free, and built to give founders and teams clarity without all the noise.


🔗 Full details on X/Twitter

Aster appeared quite unexpectedly on the Perp market and today already has twice the volume of Hyperliquid.

Despite constant protocol lags, the project's token has grown steadily over the past few days from $0.1 to $2.3 and got the whole of Twitter talking about the new Hyperliquid killer.

In terms of tokenomics, 53.5% was allocated to the airdrop (which seems like a lot), of which
-15% was allocated in the first season and another
-4% will be given in the second season ending at the end of October.
There is no allocation to investors and only 5% is allocated to the team.

I would like to believe in the altruism of the project, but looking at how CZ is promoting it on Twitter and the initial support from Yzi Labs, it seems that, one way or another, most of the supply ended up in the right hands

We’ve written about Yield Basis here before, and now the app has finally launched on mainnet, so it’s worth a reminder as new mechanics in DeFi don’t come often lately.

The main difference from other AMMs is that Yield Basis tackles impermanent loss.

You can provide liquidity and still keep full price exposure to your asset. They do this by taking about 2x leverage in crvUSD against the deposited asset.
Example: a typical LP position (e.g., BTC/USDT) moves like √P of the deposited BTC. To get full exposure, they square the LP, cancel the square root, and the position moves like P (the asset price). Gigabrain-simple explanation.

The second key difference is the tokenomics.

Users can choose to be LPs and just earn trading fees, or to receive $YB, which can then be staked to earn more trading fees. So those who don’t want the native token won’t get it, and those who want to be part of the project can opt into the protocol token - similar to Aerodrome.

On October 1, Yield Basis is holding a sale on Legion and Kraken, and the token is expected to launch shortly after. We are bullish

What Stage of the Market Are We In?

This week, the “father of DeFi” Andre Cronje announced a new product - Flying Tulip (or should we call it Tulip Mania). A good moment to take the market’s temperature.

Tokenomics

Target raise: $1B ($200M already from private investors, $800M via public sale).

Allocation: 100% of tokens to investors, 0% to the team.

Each investor gets a perpetual put option at the purchase price: you can return the tokens whenever you want and redeem your capital at cost.

The raised capital is deployed into DeFi strategies to generate revenue, which funds development and buyback & burn of the token. Flywheel effect.

Product (building everything at once)

1. Lending
2. AMM
3. Perp DEX
4. Stablecoin
5. On-chain insurance

All pitched as a super-app.

Our Thoughts

It’s effectively an experiment where investors pay only opportunity cost, while development is financed by yield on TVL (the site suggests up to $125M/yr for buybacks, and more if TVL grows).

Great narrative, but it reads like a late-cycle bull protocol: raising $1B on a super-app promise before the product exists.

Why it’s questionable

Building a super-app ≠ promising one. Even giants (e.g., Base) are taking phased steps. We’ve seen scope expansion (Aave → stablecoin; Ethena → stablecoin + perps + L2), but no one has ever shipped five complex, competitive products in one protocol and outcompeted focused teams in each vertical.

Andre’s track record. He’s a gifted visionary and narrative driver, but he often experiments with tokenomics, then abandons projects to build new ones. And the market tends to forgive it.

Professional demand. In private investor DAOs the deal has been circulating for about a month with only $200M raised. In today’s market the remaining $800M might get filled publicly, but weak VC interest is a red flag.

What It Really Is

An on-chain hedge fund that must prudently manage $1B TVL and use that revenue to build a super-app then actually follow through on buybacks.

They promise innovation, but aside from the unusual tokenomics (spiritually reminiscent of OlympusDAO), there’s little concrete so far. Hard to imagine this launching in any phase other than today’s. A useful moment to ask: how far into euphoria are we?

Respectfully,
Your Coinstruct

ICM meta and the VC money problem

Crypto is unsurprisingly cyclical.

2017 - ICO boom. A decent website was enough and users aped in money. In the end it all finished with a predictable amount of scams.
2020–2023 — “Backed by…” meta. Tier-1 funds in seed rounds = “it’s a gem, get in early” (think ZKsync, Starknet, L0, etc.).
2024 - Realization. By the time Billion dollar VC valuations hit the public, most upside is gone. Funds aren’t philanthropists: they dump on unlocks and as a result is down only. Meme coins took over - zero tech, only attention and “room to grow.”
2025 - ICM meta. We are here.

What is ICM (Internet Capital Markets)

A project sells a token directly to degens; behind the token is a real startup that generates revenue and channels it into buybacks, creating a flywheel.
In essence, we’re back to ICOs, but with emphasis on returning value to token holders via cash flow.

Key figures of the ICM narrative

Ben Pasternak - Believe. An app where anyone can launch a token; if people believe in you/your product, they support, and the founder earns from fees. A major protocl update is incoming, everyone’s waiting to see what the team built.

Mercy - Investor Center Cult. An incubator for ICM projects: selects the best, helps them grow; in return the treasury receives 1–5% of tokens.

Miya - Street. A protocol that buys equity from Web2 startups (including those backed by YC/a16z) and tokenizes it via the new ERC-S standard.

The market is testing a model where the public finances products and participates in cash distribution, not just in multiples.

Notable ICM cases

$PMX. Started as a Telegram trading bot for Polymarket; now building its own prediction market on Solana.

$VIRUS. A game studio with three releases; the latest success is Addicted, supported by Solana.

$DUPE. Building an AI search for product analogs at lower prices; the app has real usage, and the founder has launched several successful startups and raised $250M+ in total.
It feels like we’re at the beginning of something big.

Keep building.

Who’s a Market Maker and why it matters

A market maker (MM) is a contractor (exchange- or project-side) that uses team-provided inventory (tokens + stables) to keep markets liquid and tradable.

Ideally, an MM:

🔹Maintains depth and tight spreads
🔹Reduces slippage
🔹Supports key events (listing, TGE, unlocks) so the market remains tradable.

In reality:

◆ With large inventory vs. float, an MM can nudge price around events, where regulators may see manipulation. In crypto it often goes unpunished, but still carries legal risks.

◆ Professional MMs do not engage in wash trading. But crypto is still the Wild West, and some big players have inflated volumes to create artificial interest. For a team, this is both a reputational and legal risk.

◆ If an MM steps away, the bid/ask walls vanish and price can collapse anywhere within minutes. Because many oracles overweight top exchanges, a brief price hole can trigger cross-market liquidations, as seen on Friday on Binance (depegs in $ATOM, $bnSOL, $wbETH, $TON).

Who’s specifically to blame? Probably Binance itself; we’ll see which funds end up dead. CZ remains quietly silent.

Сhoosing an MM is a critical part of any token launch. Treat your MM strategy as seriously as your tokenomics.

We’re partnering with Pivot for their Open Demo Day!

Pivot is a Web3-native accelerator helping early-stage startups turn ideas into real, scalable products. Their network connects builders, investors, mentors, and ecosystem partners to give projects the momentum they need.

We’ll be supporting teams with tokenomics strategy and design.

See you there
👉 Register: https://luma.com/thhguc11

The Token Podcast's new episode is live

We sat down with William, co-founder of Sproutly RWA, to talk about
- How they’re tokenizing carbon capture,
- Partnering with giants like Lufthansa, and
- Building a new asset class for Real World Impact (RWI).

Watch here: https://youtu.be/cxjgeGBiNAg

Monad airdrop = Vampire attack 2.0?

Monad released an airdrop checker and will distribute tokens to 230,000 wallets. Only 5,500 of those belong to Monad’s own community, the rest are external addresses from the broader crypto audience.

What is a vampire attack?

Simply it is when a new project sucks liquidity/users from established protocols by offering better incentives (high APR or future tokens).

Classic examples in the past are
1) SushiSwap forking Uniswap in 2020. LPs migrated for SUSHI rewards, temporarily draining billions in TVL.
or
2) Blur, which used incentives to lure NFT traders away from OpenSea.

What Monad did

$MON airdrop hits power users from Ethereum, Solana, and beyond, like DeFi depositors on Aave, Solana NFT holders, and traders on Pump.fun or Hyperliquid. So this is a new wave vampire attack: no straight fork, and the project is already widely known in the industry (unlike Sushi/Blur at launch).

The question is how relevant it is to give tokens to users who didn’t use the product not because they hadn’t heard of it or were loyal elsewhere, but because the product wasn’t live on mainnet yet (even though everyone knew about Monad thanks to its large VC raise).

We will see the answer together pretty much soon.

P/E for Perps

With the shift toward “real business” in crypto, equity-style valuation multiples are appearing, but adapted for tokens. For example, Hyperliquid now has its own P/E.

SWPE (Supply-Weighted P/E) is the classic Price/Earnings adjusted for effective supply: locked $HYPE tokens are excluded since they don’t create short-term sell pressure. The metric better reflects what can actually hit the market.

How SWPE is used (in theory)
If 30-day revenues are rising while SWPE is falling, that can signal undervaluation: at a lower multiple, each dollar of revenue has a stronger price impact via buybacks.

That’s exactly what the screenshot shows right now.

We are confident we’ll see more of these equity-style metrics carefully adapted to on-chain realities.