The memecoin sector continues to dominate the top returns by a landslide for the third week in a row.

In this dual-token system, delegators could stake ETH (via EigenLayer) and/or EO to earn rewards. To incentivise them to stake EO without any disincentivisation stake ETH (since ETH is better than nothing), we came up with the idea of rewarding ETH stakers in veEO.

EO stakers got liquid EO, ETH stakers got veEO - locked EO with a vesting.

"The great thing about gambling projects is that the house always wins, so integrating a token that can absorb this value creates unlimited buy pressure," - we told to one of our casino clients that raked in 8 figure revenue per month.

One of their ideas was to have 'mining', but it wasn't really mining, just rewards for taking the action of gambling.

Our improvement on this was for those rewards to only be given as an added bonus to gambling winnings, thereby creating the illusion of rewards, undermined by the fact that the house always wins.

The devil's in the details.

VC investment volume picking up, with announcements this week sitting at $908,650,000.

Avg Returns per period indicated since Q1 2024:

17 Jan - 6 Feb = 4.18x
6 Feb - 7 March = 0.82x
7 March - 26 March = 3.88x
26 March - 9 April = 13.74x
9 April - 26 April = 2.72x
26 April - 15 May = 3.8x
16 May - 1 Jun = 1.7x
1 Jun - 18 Jun = 2.63x
19 Jun - 14 Jul = 2.27x
16 Jul - 14 Aug = 1.42x
18 Aug - 23 Sep = 1.52x
Sep 23 - 17 Oct = 1.3x

The trend for IDO interest is clearly in a downward trajectory, wherefore it would be smart to wait for a further increase in interest in IDOs / ICOs before launching utility tokens on Launchpads etc.

With a few exceptions, there have been very few extensively successful project launches over H2 2024, especially compared to H1 2024.

We're finally seeing some green amongst the Top 5 IDOs again for the first time in weeks.

This client wanted to reward users between $12-$31 per month. We ran this against their buy pressure, and calculated 4 scenarios: optimistic & pessimistic, with & without buybacks.

Evidently, they had a tiny deficit of $1.4-$3.8 billion dollars.

Turns out, given their revenues and how the economy worked, they could reward each user about $0.72 per month.

So, we vastly dropped their FDV so that their token wouldn't collapse by 99% post launch.

Most people have a God complex without knowing it.

Amidst IDO returns having shown an increase over the last two weeks more IDOs are lining up for their turn.

Last week BlackRock increased its holdings by 16,000 BTC, a whopping $1Bn at an average price of $66,000. That’s almost 0.01% of Bitcoin's total supply.

We asked ourselves what are the implications of these buys...

1. Bull market around the corner: with such big orders, these buys - followed by other institutional buy pressure - might kick start the long awaited bull run.

2. Trump to win election: it is no secret Kamala is bad for crypto with her proposed unrealised gains tax; this potentially signals BlackRock's faith in a Trump win.

3. Will Bitcoin finally live up to being an inflation hedge: whilst BTC has been pledged as an inflation hedge by many, it has yet to live up to that name as it has shown stronger ties to tech stocks and the S&P than gold. With the US economy showing more signs of weakness, is BlackRock playing long term games by putting its faith in BTC, or are they here for a quick profit?

Average dump sizes are down over the last few weeks, while the top gainers continue to put in 100%+ gains. Bull market is coming.

Incentive alignment is crucial in token economies.

An example of potential conflict occurring is an issue that emerged with MakerDAO on September 2020.

When $DAI holders lost about US$2,500,000 from their vaults on the system due to a hack, a governance vote was held on whether to reimburse the loses with the $MKR treasury. The governors, $MKR holders, decided against compensating the losses.

This shows a clear misalignment of incentives between different token holders and how that can impact the overall ecosystem. Avoid this by designing interlinking incentives.

All the top movers this week presented 2x opportunities, and unlike previous weeks, the list isn't dominated solely by meme tokens.

Stripe acquired Bridge this week for $1.1 billion, marking a significant move to bridge the Web2 and Web3 ecosystems. Overall, the raises have been sky high.

The VCs are back.

Or are they?

$1.1Bn of this $2.2Bn raised comes from the M&A of Bridge. This brings the raise down to $1.1Bn, which is still a very sizable increase, being tied as the most invested month this year.

Also, people who don't know about the Bridge M&A, will assume the VCs are back, which means they'll be more bullish, bringing more VCs back, etc. - self fulfilling prophecy.

One way or another, things are looking solid.

Here's 3 ways we'd fix a dead token price that's down by 95%:

1. Marketing: people care about future value, and they need to see that there are things in the works that will increase value.

Build hype about new product launches, share big partnerships and explain what they'll bring, be clear about your mission and the steps you're taking to get there.

2. Trust: speak with your community. Everyone is depressed when the price goes down, and trust flies out the window.

The team being down to earth and speaking with the community - Twitter spaces, Telegram group calls, Discord voice channels - builds this trust and keeps everyone motivated.

3. Liquidity: depending how much money you have in the treasury, you can boost the token price by buying up your own tokens and holding the supply. Fundamentally, good price action is the best way to attract more holders in this industry.

Align incentives.

One of our clients has quarterly product releases - something people buy in bulk. To access, you need to stake some tokens. However, the quantity is limited, so if they sell out, there's no real need to keep staking: users can sell and buy back in three months to try again.

To avoid this sell pressure, we've devised two incentives:

1. Locked tokens get more benefits. e.g. lock up for a year, be able to buy 3x as many products.

2. The longer the tokens are staked for, the earlier people get access to the drops. e.g. if they've been staked and untouched for 3 months, you get 60 minutes earlier access to the drop, ensuring you don't miss out this time.

Fundamental alignment of incentives between company and user shouldn't be neglected.

Here's something successful founders know about VCs that others don't:

VCs are not in the business of giving money, they're in the business of making money.

Think of them as a bank giving you a loan.

Both have a level of risk they're willing to go to, and if you can show that you're not a risky investment with a lot of upside, you will have no problem getting capital.

"If I give them $200,000, will they be able to take this idea and 5x my investment?"

That's all you have to prove.

A notably small number of IDOs are scheduled for this week, suggesting that many projects are postponing their launches.