Solana

I see three different scenarios playing out:

1. L1s begin to optimize for apps, allowing custom orderflow control with the caveat that a small percentage accrues back to that L1. A similar approach to what Unichain and Sorella Labs is enabling.


2. L1s focus on hyperscaling and subsidize infrastructure in order to attract users. Their moat becomes cheap

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So far, this post has focused almost exclusively on tokens’ ability to capture value by generating income streams for their holders. They are productive capital assets. This may very well be sufficient to value most tokens in the long-run. Equity-like analysis will do the trick here. Think DCF and DDM.

However, valuing tokens based on cash flows... See more

Aside from being productive capital assets, you have likely heard some variation of these two other buckets for assets (neither of which are necessarily mutually exclusive with each other or capital assets):

• Consumable / Transformable Asset – Sometimes also classified as commodity or utility value. Cryptoassets offer infinitely programmable, fast,

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The sillier conversations have been happening on the PoS side. There are a lot more variables at play to get confused over, and we all want our own bags to be special. But we need to stop looking at silly metrics then drawing incorrect conclusions around sustainability. It’s silly to say that Solana is unprofitable or unsustainable. At most, you... See more

Interestingly, Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap is implicitly a gambit in this direction. ETH is sacrificing REV to its L2s rather than capturing it all to itself, in return for spreading the moneyness of ETH the asset. It’s unclear if its L2s will win out, or if they’ll continue to aggressively use and spread ETH in the future, but it’s clearly... See more

PoS – Imagine a PoS network with 1mm validators, costing $100mm p.a. to run. Users pay $200mm p.a. in REV, and the chain issues $800mm in tokens p.a. to stakers. Operators take a 10% cut on TEV ($100mm here). The “profit = fees – issuance” proponents will say this is unsustainable: $200mm fees – $800mm issuance = $600mm loss! This doesn’t hold up.

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In a world where the Fed — and other central banks — are driving 5-7% annual debasement of their currencies, investors need to make more like 10-15% annual returns to outpace this loss in future purchasing power.

Just as falling compute costs unlocked the internet boom, lower transaction fees will unlock new application categories and use cases. The main comparison here is that general-purpose compute and coordination layers are more akin to AWS or Linux than HTTP. Ethereum and Solana are not simply “settling” transactions, but enabling programmable state... See more