8 Degen Opportunities in August
Dear Bankless Nation,
As we did last month, we're opening our DMs and sharing the degen opportunities that the Bankless analyst team is watching. These could pay off big or could be a regret-in-the-making. Ape responsibly!
Below, we're again surfacing 8 new degen-only investment plays that we're eyeing – available in full exclusively to our paying subscribers.
- Bankless team
8 August Degen Opps
Bankless Writer: Jack Inabinet & William Peaster | disclosures
Often, the best plays in crypto appear a little degenerate.
Just like we did last month, we’re covering eight opportunities designed to intrigue your inner degen! Each project listed below has its own opportunities – but all are likely to send risk-averse investors and users running for the hills…
Most of this month's degen action has been tied to friend.tech, and we've got a few tangential plays you might want to check out.
Take note: this guide is for DEGENS ONLY 🦍
🪄 HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu
Website | Twitter (currently suspended 🙃)
Opportunity Type: Ape the Token
Ticker: $BITCOIN
Market Cap: $135M
What is it?
Unlike the Bitcoin that BlackRock is excited about, Ethereum’s homegrown $BITCOIN is strictly powered by memes; a quick glance at the memecoin’s webpage will inundate you with all kinds of dank memery.
The token’s success has managed to kick off a wave of obnoxiously named copycat tokens, like HarryPotterObamaPacMan8Inu ($XRP) – a sh*tcoin that managed to briefly achieve a market capitalization as high as $95M.
Why it’s a degen play:
While it is unclear how much further $BITCOIN has to run, this ticker has emerged as the market leader among a sea of derivative projects. It is possible that this coin will receive the strongest inflows of any in the memecoin sector, given its relative establishment.
Catching a ride on a memecoin rocketship has previously offered some a path towards profit, but it is vital to remember that you are always someone else’s exit liquidity when trading sh*tcoins! Ape with caution, anon.
🐂 Rodeo Finance
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Ape the Token
Ticker: RDO
Market Cap: $4.5M
What is it?
Rodeo Finance is a yield protocol on Arbitrum that makes use of undercollateralized leverage, which lets users amplify their positions in various DeFi strategies. At its heart, Rodeo Finance revolves around two main stakeholders: liquidity providers, who serve as passive lenders and earn yield by providing single-sided deposits, and yield farmers, who can borrow using up to 10x leverage for farming opportunities.
Why it’s a degen play:
After suffering an exploit in July 2023, the Rodeo Finance team is on the rebound and just relaunched its yield farms. As part of the relaunch, the project also just unveiled new vault products and evolved RDO tokenomics. RDO is very small right now, but if Rodeo can continue to bounce back with this second wind and become a major yield hub on Arbitrum, then RDO may do numbers from here. Or the project may face more challenges and RDO never runs. Hard to say, so place any bets accordingly!
🫂 friend.tech
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Use the Protocol
Activity: Trade Keys
What is it?
friend.tech is an invite-only web3 social dApp native to Base that allows you to buy and sell "keys" of connected Twitter accounts. Owning someone's keys grants you access to a private chatroom with them and other key HODLers!
The dApp has obtained some popularity beyond the crypto industry, with professional athletes, esports gamers, and OnlyFans models spinning up their own accounts on the platform to connect with fans. Many have criticized the premise of friend.tech and see it as just another ponzi to get burned on, yet others have lauded it for implementing user-friendly features that have been able to attract a non-crypto native crowd.
Users, meanwhile, just can’t seem to get enough! Over 110k accounts have purchased keys from friend.tech and 2M cumulative friend.tech transactions have been processed, with the application seeing over 40k ETH ($70M) in all-time inflows.
Why it’s a degen play:
As pointed out by the critics, friend.tech is a very degenerate play! People are spending upwards of a thousand dollars on access to exclusive chat rooms with zero guarantees they respond.
Speculate on keys you think will moon or simply engage in an innovative way to interact with your Web3 friends; you have the power to make friend.tech as degen as you want! Some have walked away with multi-thousand dollar paydays and others have served as their exit liquidity. While all users are likely walking away with a future FREN airdrop, the fact remains: being a friend.tech degen and actively engaging key trading can boost your point score!
Go direct to DeFi with the Uniswap mobile wallet. Buy crypto on any available chain with your debit card. Seamlessly swap on Mainnet and L2s. Explore tokens, wallets and NFTs. Safe, simple self-custody from the most trusted team in DeFi.
⚫ Aevo
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Use the Protocol
Activity: Long or Short the FRIEND Index
What is it?
Aevo is a new decentralized derivatives exchange that specializes in options and perps trading. Built on its own bespoke optimistic-style Aevo Rollup and secured by Ethereum, the Aevo protocol represents the next wave of “appchain” DeFi apps. The exchange combines an offchain orderbook system with onchain settlements, allowing for the efficient matching of orders while ensuring that trades are executed and settled securely through smart contracts. The idea? Offer traders the best of both worlds: the speed and flexibility of offchain operations, coupled with the transparency and security of onchain execution.
Why it’s a degen play:
Aevo just listed FRIEND-PERP, which allows you to long or short FRIEND, an index that tracks the current market cap of social tokens on friend.tech. It remains to be seen whether friend.tech will continue to boom in popularity for the foreseeable future, or if it’s going to pan out as a fad, but it’s got huge attention right now and it could swing either way, so the surf’s certainly tradable here and perps offer a way to leverage up on the action in either direction. Derivatives and new L2s aren’t for the faint of heart though, so approach cautiously if you want to try this!
🌊 Hyperliquid
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Use the Protocol
Activity: Long or Short the FRIEND index
What is it?
Hyperliquid is an orderbook perpetual futures decentralized exchange that aims to bring some of the best features of centralized exchanges (CEXs) into the onchain world. Operating on the Hyperliquid L1, a purpose-built blockchain utilizing Tendermint for consensus, it's designed to handle all core exchange processes transparently onchain and support up to 20,000 orders per second thanks to its block latency efficiency.
Why it’s a degen play:
Like the Aevo FRIEND-PERP play, Hyperliquid just launched its own FRIEND-USD perp that also allows traders to long or short a FRIEND index. This index contract tracks a formula instead of market cap, and the formula monitors the accounts of 20 top friend.tech users. Trading on Hyperliquid's FRIEND-USD is on low leverage (max 3x) and isolated margin only, reflecting the inherent risks. The platform itself has also warned of low liquidity, high volatility, and increased liquidation risk, so watch out if you jump in.
💱 Base Velocimeter
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Use the Protocol, Ape the Token
Activity: Trade Wrapped Keys
Ticker: BVM
Market Cap: $3.9M
What is it?
A Velodrome fork, Velocimeter is a decentralized exchange that started out on the Canto network but has since expanded to a handful of other L1s and L2s, including most recently to Base where considerable activity has flowed to in recent weeks. Whether you want to swap tokens, provide liquidity, or receive pool vote bribes, Velocimeter is an early avenue to consider while the Base DeFi scene is just beginning to come into its own.
Why it’s a degen play:
Is this just another Velodrome fork? Perhaps at first sight, yet it’s also the first DeFi project to implement foobar’s Wrapped Friends mechanism into its frontend. This system lets you easily mint your own ERC20s via the “factory” function of the friend.tech platform’s smart contract, and now it’s straightforward to try and trade these tokens on the Velocimeter. Currently the DEX is even offering token farming opportunities on some prominent people's key pools.
🧌 Sproto Gremlins
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Ape the Token
Activity: Buy an NFT
Floor price: 1 ETH currently
What is it?
Despite your better judgments, are you intrigued by HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu? Perhaps you should also check out the token’s absurd NFT counterpart series, Sproto Gremlins, which are “3,333 unique manifestations of the $BITCOIN egregore.” If you’re wondering what egregore means because you’re not an esoteric wizard, it’s a “non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people.” So let me help you get this straight… Sprotos are digital manifestations of the nonphysical HarryPotterObama spirit entity that itself has been manifested by sh*tcoin traders.
Just another day in crypto.
Why it’s a degen play:
On the shoulders of the $BITCOIN surge, Sprotos have captured attention in recent months at a time when many NFT PFP projects have faded into the background. If the HarryPotterObama spirit gods continue to smile on us with more good tidings for $BITCOIN, these Gremlins have a chance to be the associated alpha play in the NFT ecosystem in kind for the duration of the bullishness. It does seem unlikely this collection will have staying power beyond this current absurdity meta, but on the flip side we should expect the unexpected these days in the cryptoeconomy. Keep an eye on the Sprotos accordingly.
🟣 Ajna Finance
Website | Twitter
Opportunity Type: Use the Protocol
Activity: Create Lending Markets for Long Tail Assets
What is it?
Ajna Finance is a governance-minimized lending protocol that does not depend on external price feeds, like an oracle. The protocol enables the creation of permissionless lending markets for any ERC-20 (fungible tokens) and permissionless borrow markets for any ERC-20 and any ERC-721 (NFTs).
Instead of relying on oracles, Ajna uses an internal order book that makes lenders set the value of their assets. Ajna can be accessed through third-party interfaces, like Summer.fi.
Why it’s a degen play:
On Tuesday, Ajna announced the release of their Lite UI to put the full power of the protocol’s permissionless architecture at the fingertips of its users, meaning anyone can now easily create a lending pool for any ERC-20 pairing!
With permissionless pool creation now easily accessible, more ERC-20 lending markets will become available on Ajna, presenting degens with more opportunities to leverage trade long tail assets. Sadly, multiply – a feature that allows users to leverage a position in one click – will only be available for “curated” Ajna pools, but thankfully, the team will add the most popular pools to their curated selection of pools that receive an enhanced feature set.
Action steps
- 🐸 Read last month's 8 Degen Investment Plays report
- 👁️ Review the State of Ethereum Q2 2023 Report