Jax 斩棘

Undoubtedly, EigenLayer has pioneered the narrative of 'Restaking', extending Ethereum's security economic model to more middleware and services. However, a truth that many people overlook is that EigenLayer mainly addresses the issue of 'security supply', and has not perfectly resolved the resulting issue of 'liquidity demand'. This is precisely the stage where @Lorenzo Protocol comes in; I believe it is defining the ultimate form of 'Liquidity Restaking'.

Viewpoint 1: From 'Security Restaking' to 'Liquidity Restaking', it is an inevitable evolution of value capture

In the era of DeFi 1.0, "liquidity mining" was undoubtedly the spark that ignited the market. However, this model, which relies on token inflation incentives, is difficult to sustain. Once subsidies stop, liquidity quickly dries up. We believe that DeFi is entering its 2.0 phase, with its core paradigm shifting from "inflation subsidy-driven" to "sustainable real yield-driven." Lorenzo Protocol (@LorenzoProtocol) is an outstanding representative of this new paradigm.

What is "real yield"?
Real yield refers to the income generated by the protocol through providing valuable financial services (such as asset management, lending, trading, etc.) in mainstream assets (like BTC, ETH, stablecoins) and distributing it to token holders or participants. This is different from subsidizing through the issuance of native tokens.

If you are looking for a platform that can provide real on-chain returns while sharing the growth dividends of the protocol, Lorenzo Protocol is a name that cannot be ignored. This article systematically outlines its core gameplay and participation opportunities.

What does Lorenzo do?
In simple terms, it is a 'tokenized supermarket of yield strategies'. It packages professional yield strategies (such as BTC staking, quantitative trading, RWA investments) into standardized 'products'—namely on-chain trading funds (OTF)—for ordinary users to choose from. You do not need to perform complex operations yourself; just hold OTF tokens (like sUSD1+), and you can automatically earn returns corresponding to the strategies.

In the traditional financial world, especially in hedge funds and private equity, it is a game for high-net-worth individuals and institutions, with high thresholds, opacity, and expensive fees. The On-Chain Traded Fund (OTF) model launched by Lorenzo Protocol is initiating a 'tokenization revolution of returns' using blockchain technology, aiming to disrupt this situation.

What is OTF?
OTF is a tradable token representing fund shares that encapsulates one or more income strategy vaults. For example, its flagship product USD1+ OTF aggregates three strategies: RWA government bond returns, quantitative arbitrage, and DeFi liquidity provision into one fund. After purchase, users receive the sUSD1+ token, which accumulates returns in real-time. This is similar to traditional ETFs but operates entirely on-chain.

Bitcoin, as 'digital gold', has long faced issues with capital inefficiency. The BTCFi (Bitcoin Finance) sector has emerged to unlock the liquidity and yield potential of trillions of BTC assets. Lorenzo Protocol has become the leader in this sector, currently providing yield services for over $600 million in Bitcoin. How has it achieved this?

Core solution: Dual drive of liquidity pledge and yield tokenization.
Lorenzo's solution is not a single function but a combination of strategies:

1. Liquidity pledge token stBTC: Users deposit native BTC into the protocol and receive stBTC pegged 1:1. This addresses the pain point of assets being locked in traditional staking; the stBTC held by users is itself a yield-generating asset that can be freely transferred or used in other DeFi scenarios.

Recently, the institutional-grade on-chain asset management protocol Lorenzo Protocol has presented an intriguing market phenomenon after it launched on Binance: its Total Value Locked (TVL) has continued to climb to the billions of dollars, while the price of its governance token $BANK has not shown a corresponding strong increase and has even seen a pullback. Is this 'divergence' a risk signal or an opportunity due to market perception lag?

Firstly, the growth of TVL is a solid support for the fundamentals. TVL is a core metric for measuring the scale of use and trustworthiness of a DeFi protocol. Lorenzo's TVL has rapidly increased from hundreds of millions to over 1.6 billion dollars, not merely due to liquidity mining incentives, but rather a true reflection of the demand for its core business—yield strategy tokenization. Institutions and large funds are flooding into its platform, depositing assets such as BTC and stablecoins into various strategy vaults to exchange for stable, transparent returns. This growth is organic and sustainable, reflecting the market's recognition of its position as a 'on-chain investment bank'.

As KITE (@GoKiteAI) secures massive funding and enters the market, debates about whether the market value of $KITE is reasonable have also begun to emerge. One side believes its AI narrative is glamorous but the valuation has incorporated too many expectations; the other side believes that compared to its vision and fundamentals, it is still a value gap. Let's examine the arguments from both sides.

The argument that 'valuation is too high' may be based on:

1. Early Stage of the Track: The AI agent economy is a grand vision, but large-scale commercial realization still takes time. The current valuation largely pays for 'future potential' and carries uncertainty.

In the bustling world of Web3 gaming, where high-spec AAA titles are chased, a highly promising yet often overlooked sector is quietly rising – casual games. Yield Guild Games (YGG) has keenly captured this trend and, through its publishing division YGG Play, has initiated a strategic transformation called 'Casual Degen.' Recently, YGG Play reached an important partnership with the veteran game development studio Proof of Play Arcade. This is not just a simple project collaboration but a crucial step for YGG to upgrade from 'game investor' to 'ecosystem builder and publisher,' with the core engine being the already launched YGG Play Launchpad.

After experiencing the collapse of UST, the flash crash of HUSD, and an endless stream of decoupling events, the entire cryptocurrency world has placed a huge question mark on the term 'stablecoin'. The cornerstone that we once trusted, which served as a medium of exchange and a measure of value in the crypto world, is facing an unprecedented crisis in its underlying trust model. Users' core anxiety has never been so clear: what exactly guarantees my money? Is it really safe? Will it suddenly disappear or freeze one morning?

It is on this ruins of trust that @USDD - Decentralized USD brings USDD 2.0. It does not tell a complex algorithm myth, but chooses to use the simplest financial logic and the utmost on-chain transparency to launch a trust reconstruction project named 'Seeing Trust through Stability'.

When discussing the rise of Yield Guild Games (YGG), there is one game that cannot be overlooked, which is (Thetan Arena). This mobile esports game, centered around MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and boasting over 25 million global users, is one of the eight key games YGG partnered with and invested in during 2021. The combination of the two can be seen as an early example of the integration of 'high-quality content' and 'innovative economic models' in the Web3 gaming space.

Unlike many later projects, (Thetan Arena) is not a purely blockchain-native game, but rather a successful example of combining the vast user base of Web2 with the asset ownership of Web3 and the Play-to-Earn model. YGG's entry into this already popular game injected a new dimension of 'play-to-earn' and validated the scalability of its 'scholarship' model.