The Humble Farmer's Digest 11/29

Your weekly dose of Crypto, DeFi, and more...

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Nov 29, 2023

Hello Humble Farmers, thanks for reading!

This substack aims to share everything we’re paying attention to, including new launches, good farms, tokens, and much more. If any of that sounds interesting to you, please subscribe!

What We’re Watching

Blast

Blast has become the center of CT’s attention recently, and has already managed to onboard $600M+ TVL in just a few days. For those unfamiliar, Blast is a Paradigm-backed L2 that provides a native yield for your tokens via stETH/sDAI. The point of excitement regarding Blast is their points program, where users can deposit and refer others in order to increase their points score, which will be redeemable for an airdrop in the next few months.

Many people have serious doubts about Blast, even Paradigm itself is hesitant to support their launch program. At the moment, Blast is simply a 3/5 multisig with no actual L2; it’s essentially just a wallet holding hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tokens. There has also been the question of whether or need we really need another L2. While Blast aims to differentiate itself by providing a native yield for your ETH/stablecoins, is that really enough to justify its $4B+ valuation (via Aevo pre-market futures) and $600M+ in TVL?

While the airdrop farm itself seems crowded at the moment, it could still be worth depositing based on your time horizon/sentiment on Blast. You can also stake BLUR to earn Blast points, which could be more lucrative than locking up your tokens for the next few months. In general, this trade/farm is probably worth avoiding unless you have a strong conviction in Blast’s future valuation.

Bridges

Bridges are a vital piece of infrastructure within DeFi, yet their tokens continue to be beaten down due to a lack of utility/use case. Many people see this sector as a race to zero in terms of fees, and while this is likely true, it doesn't mean that these tokens aren't worth looking into further.

Why? Well, the looming catalyst is the launch of the Layer Zero token, which will likely launch within the next few months at a multi-billion dollar valuation. In comparison, most of the current bridge tokens will seem extremely cheap and will stand to benefit. Bridges will also always be needed, and this will only be more true as we see more L1s, L2s, and even L3s, continue to launch.

Circle’s Cross Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) has been another major point of discussion when comparing bridging protocols, and many believe that it will remove the need for bridges altogether. However, the success of bridges and the growth of CCTP are not mutually exclusive, and we are already seeing many bridges integrate CCTP. We’re even seeing bridges like Across expand to cross-chain intents, which are starting to look like the next step in the bridging landscape. If you want to learn more about Across, we recommend checking out the below report by Tumliet

Apart from Across, bridging protocols with tokens like Connext, Axelar, and Synapse could be interesting bets going forward. Many of these tokens have already seen substantial gains in the past few weeks, and we believe it could be worth keeping an eye on this sector going forward.

Farms of the Week

Upcoming Projects

Blast (The L2 with native yield backed by Paradigm)
Grace Protocol (A maximally resilient lending protocol)
Penomo Protocol (Tokenizing Batteries and Unlocking Capital)
KintoXYZ (An L2 focused on providing safe access to financial services)
Fiefdom (A blockchain network dedicated to gaming and trading in the metaverse)
Parabol (A globally accessible stablecoin protocol, offering superior yields through an innovative risk-free yield mechanism and diverse maturity options)
Superform (Building the Superform Protocol — The Universal Yield Marketplace)