today I'm going to be talking about an altcoin and an ecosystem which I believe is extremely underrated and undervalued this ecosystem is also currently offering a massive opportunity to farm yourself a huge airdrop in fact it could be one of if not the biggest air drops that we see in Q4 2024 so I definitely think it's worth paying attention to this ecosystem and if you can getting involved and the cost to getting involved is quite low it's likely that a lot of you are already on your way to completing some of the airdrop steps which I will talk about later in today's video but before we get into the technicals let's first start a little bit broader and set the stage for why I believe this narrative could be a strong performer heading into the remainder of this crypto cycle as you can see in front of you so far this crypto cycle the memec coins have been the dominant players in the crypto space if you look at the top performers these are the top 5050 performers across all altcoins the majority of the top 20 are memec coins now you do have some rwa coins like mancha which have performed really well you do have some layer ones in here like ton and Alf and vanry and if you go down the list you know you've got Casper and Tron which have all performed really well but it's still clear that memes are the top performing narrative this cycle now I do have an opinion this maybe slightly contrary to popular belief or maybe you'll completely agree with me but my opinion is although I believe memecoins will continue to be strong performers and that there will continue to be opportunities in the mem coin space I do think at some point this cycle and this may happen sooner rather than later we are going to see a flock from speculative assets more so into utility assets because the pump. fun meta of launching these meme coin then pumping 100x and then rugging essentially I think has made a lot of the meme coin contingent in crypto slightly jaded and I think maybe you share this feeling I kind of feel like the market has become a little bit jaded when it comes to new mcoin launches now will some of the bigger meme coins continue to perform well absolutely in my opinion but will the memec coin meta last in terms of sustainability given what we've seen from pump. fun and all these new launchers I don't think so I don't think the New Meme coin meta is going to sustain that frantic of a pace so you have to ask yourself the question then where is that liquidity going to go because if Bitcoin reaches all-time highs and Retail comes into the market if they're not purely speculating on Meme coins where else is their money going to flow I believe the answer is quite simple I think it's going to flow into utility we are already starting to see a little bit of a def fire Renaissance this is something I'll break down a bit further in a future video and thread we can see a is starting to climb in terms of Mind share with also seen some of the old defi Primitives also start to climb in terms of Mind share over the past couple of weeks this isn't a definitive Trend fully establishing but it is a sign that there is interest starting to grow in the defi sector and I don't want to be talking about utility altcoins on the day that they hit their Peak I want to be talking about them now before the rotation has happened because as you know in crypto it's all about catching rotations and that is something that I talk a lot about on this channel and I always try and give you the early crypto Alpha so if you do want early crypto Alpha and you're not already subscribed make sure to click that sub button and hit that post notification Bell so I come at you today with as I said maybe not the most popular narrative right now in crypto but one I believe is going to become a lot more popular as the cycle goes on I think people are feeling slightly jaded and I think there will be a flock to Quality there is signs not just R but also on the centralized exchanges that this rotation is already in play we have seen coins from the Defi and the L2 sector over the past week actually outperform meme coins and even l1s so l2s have been some of the weakest performers this cycle but they are now starting to show signs of Interest potentially some of these coins that have been extremely over over sold actually represent better value than some of their counterparts that have already had huge expansionary runs so far this cycle so I'm starting to turn my focus a little bit more towards the coins that I think are undervalued in the current environment potentially have been oversold and also fit within the niche of defi so the exact ecosystem I want to talk about today does in fact fall under the L2 narrative which I just highlighted is actually one of the top performers along side AI this week and as I mentioned it may be slightly contrary because this cycle l2s have been down there's been a lot of dispersion amongst the sector with coins like stocket launching ZK sync launching I'm taking a slightly different approach I'm looking at the l2s that are actually gaining traction which ones are growing which ones have strong Treasures strong ecosystems and proven teams those are the ones that I'm interested in positioning after they've experienced major draw Downs because if this narrative ever comes back these are the types of coins that can perform really well it just so happens to be one of these coins that I've become interested in recently and I've been building a position in also has a massive air drop going on so I think this video will be really interesting to those not only that invest but also that maybe want a more risk-free way to get exposure to the upside of the ecosystem without even having to invest in the token so this video will I think appeal to both camps of of people which I think makes it a valuable one and let me know in the comments if you want more ecosystem deep Dives like this in the future because my channel has become a little bit more generalist and broader but my bread and butter is defi my bread and butter are these deep Dives so if you do want more of these I'm happy to unpack more protocols across multiple sectors if you want some deeper looks at what projects actually do and how you can maximize their ecosystems so when I look at the L2 landscape you know you have newer coins like ZK sync and stocket although I think these could represent decent value on the upswing my issue with a lot of these newer l2s is that they still have a lot of dilution to come you can see zky there has roughly 7x dilution versus its current market cap if you look at stocket you can see it's in a similar boat with like a 5x dilution versus its market cap I'm generally favoring the coins that have less unlocks and that already have traction on the tvl and metric side so although technology-wise I don't mind coins like Stark net and ZK sync right now I'm more interested in the tokens that already have users these are newer tokens they're unproven and they come with really high valuations where we have alternative options which already have users already have tvl already have good incentives in the ecosystem and don't come at such inflated valuations due to maybe the valuation that they raised in terms of getting VCS on the cap table so which coin am I going to dig a bit deeper into today it's mantle now don't click off the video just yet because I don't just want to talk about the token today I want to talk about a big opportunity within the ecosystem there's a major airdrop which any of you that are holding ethereum can get involved in and even if you aren't holding ethereum you can get some exposure to the ecosystem with the method that I'm going to show you in a minute here and at the end of the video we'll go over the charts the technicals Etc and we'll build more of a case for the token but I do want this video to be more primarily focused on the ecosystem because I think there's a massive opportunity there right now if you look at the L2 landscape mantle is one of the top blockchains for tvl and it's actually the third largest platform for liquid staking with over a billion dollar worth of ethereum state so a lot of mantal success has been the traction it's been able to generate in the liquid staking realm we've also seen though many other di use cases and applications beginning to launch a mantle as you can see below as I think the market and developers have started to realize that there's a great user experience on mantle it's got great Tech it's built with modular architecture and it's an extremely high performance eth L2 if you've ever use it you know it's fast it's secure it's got a great foundation and they continue to innovate and for that reason I think it started to separate itself from a lot of the other l2s now there are great other layer tws don't get me wrong I think bass is great I think arbitrum is great and they all have a great user experience but I have found myself using mantle more and more over the past few weeks and months because the user experience has been great and now we have some amazing daps to show for it so it's definitely the mantle Stak eth which has been the primary driver of the ecosystem and that's where a opportunity is going to lie that I want to show you today but definitely don't fade some of the other stuff being created on mantle because I think there are some fantastic applications launching another unique factor is if you look at protocol treasuries across a lot of the top chains like ethereum Lio arve Etc you can see that mantle actually has the second biggest treasury in crypto with $38 million of stable coins 500 million of BTC and eth so the majors 1.
6 billion of their own Tok to and 53 million of other tokens in their treasury $2 billion of total treasury I mean that is a massive figure and that gives them a lot of Firepower to a continue to grow the ecosystem two dish out incentives and they aren't bogged down by the crazy amount of Supply that's coming onto the market versus coins like starnet and zync which I think are solid in terms of their Tech but you certainly have to factor in supplyer when you do talk about the performance of the token just for full discl closure before we get into the strategy I want to show you I want to make it clear that I am an investor in mantle I've been building a position in mantle and I've also been advising the team they've got some great figures involved in the ecosystem you guys if you've been following the channel for quite some time you'll know Jordi Alexander he's been heavily involved with mantle he's a friend of mine and someone I think you guys have loved seeing on the channel I'm going to have him back very very soon but the mtle foundation is fantastic and this and this definitely comprises some of my thesis here I mean if you want compete and succeed in a saturated Market in infrastructure in general let alone the L2 Market you need to have Firepower mantle definitely has that and the team has a good track record unlike a lot of these other l2s which I mean the jury is still out on them and at this stage in the cycle I want to be placing my capital in areas that optimize for Capital efficiency in terms of both staking which we'll talk about now and B investing I want to be in investment that I at least have more confidence are slightly more secure and solidified the more speculative stuff especially as you progress later and later into the cycle although it can give you bigger gains in a lot of cases that's better going with the proven ecosystems because you know the team's going to be able to ship and you have a limited window to capitalize on this crypto bull run so I mentioned a massive airdrop opportunity massive may be an understatement because this will be one of the biggest aird drops that we've seen this year certainly one of if not the biggest in Q4 and the entire change that has happened which contains the airdrop is called metamorphosis it's a massive campaign for you to be able to earn a brand new token that's launching in the ecosystem let's discuss it now so basically you guys probably know M eth it is the staked derivative of eth if you stake eth on mantle it's similar to how Lido works you essentially can stake your ethereum on chain you get as a receipt of staking that token M eth or on lighter you get staked eth then you can go and do a bunch of stuff with that derivative you can stake it in LPS to earn a yield you can borrow and lend against it liquid staking is great because especially if you're really involved in Defi and trading on chain it's amazing because of capital efficiency you know previously you'd have to lock your eth in a validator and the issue with this is a it would be locked and B you can't do anything with that token you can't earn yield on it you can't borrow against it there are many times where this is beneficial just so you can make more money on your Holdings right so obviously Lido's been the front runner you also have rocket P but mantle has solidified itself as the third biggest player in this space with over a billion dollars worth of ethereum state and that is in the form of their meth token now Lio has a governance token Rock which is ldo Rock AOL has a governance token that's RPL mantle to this date has hasn't had a governance token it has the MNT mantle token for the layer 2 but it hasn't had a governance token for it's liquid staking derivative meth until this year when later in the year I believe we're looking at potentially October they're going to be launching the cook token the cook token is the governance token for the liquid staking derivative mle staked eth which is M eth there's also a bit of a play on words here because you can also pronounce it meth and cook and meth kind of go hand in hand and that's been the kind of lore of the community and the interesting thing about that joke is although you know on face value it it might seem like gimmicky crypto is all about community and the amount of memes I've seen come out of this are incredible and it kind of adds that element of fun to an ecosystem which some people consider boring now I don't find defi boring as a defi head but a lot of retail that don't really understand it or don't want to put in the time to understand it you know they might fade something like this but the fact it has the memeable component with cook I think will attract more eyes to the ecosystem and maybe it's a small component but it definitely is a relevant one when it comes to discussing mind share on social media in in crypto so what's going to happen to cook when it launches well essentially cook is going to be aird dropped to Holders of M eth and also people that are able to acrw powder tokens by by either holding or staking a so powders basically airdrop points like I know a lot of other protocols have had to airdrop Point systems powder is what you want to earn in order to get the cook airdrop and you still have about a month to participate this and earn rewards now the good thing is a lot of you already hold ethereum in your wallets a lot of you already hold ethereum on chain if that is you staking it is pretty much a no-brainer yes there's of course always smart contract risk but in terms of R the fact you're able to earn an air job from staking your ethereum and the fact that you're able to earn additional APR from staking ethereum I do think from a risk Ro perspective this is a pretty clear play and even if you don't own eth this could be an additional incentive to maybe get some exposure maximize the airdrop and you can always sell your eth afterwards right you just have to work out the opportunity cost in the short term of holding capital and eth versus usdt for a lot of you it will make sense to hold Ethan stake it I'll get through the math as we go along with this video at the end I've got a spreadsheet which I'll show you which outlines how much you can earn per ethereum here so the cook air drop is a big opportunity what I also want to point out here is that in terms of Market size it's a big opportunity if you look at ligher right it went to a $3 billion valuation in January it's still sitting around a billion dollars so although the cook token May launch slightly less than that the point is there's upside in this Niche especially if it comes back around again if ethereum gains some traction again you could definitely see these lsds running higher in price and of course that would inflate the value of your cook airdrop you may choose to sell it on launch depending on the valuation you may choose to hold on to a portion of it and gain exposure to the narrative if you are bullish on it longer term so how do you earn a cook airdrop I'll go through the simplest ways that I am implementing to earn an airdrop here and then I'll give you a few more complex options in case you're a real Define nut the simplest thing you need to know is that you need to hold M eth so how do you get your hands on meth or meth it's quite simple you can a go onto an exchange like buybit and you can actually just buy me after you buy it you can withdraw it to a web3 wallet like rabby or metamask onto the mantle blockchain this will automatically get me e in your wallet the other thing you can do is withdraw eth from an exchange or if you've already got it in your metamask even better you'll just need to bridge it onto mantle their official Bridge or you can of course withdraw to the mantle network if your exchange supports it and then simply go into the stake page stake your eth and you will get me e in exchange this is the number one step you just want to have me eth mantle stake deth on the mantle Network on chain that is step one you're already going to start earning points for the airdrop if you were doing that but obviously there's more you can add in terms of staking to earn even more powder which is going to get you a a bigger cook airdrop so powder when the airdrop happens will be convertible to the Cook token you can see here the breakdown of how the tokens will be distributed metamorphosis which is the season 1 air drop which we're talking about today has the Lion Share of the me protocol distributions which is massive what can you do once you have me in your wallet now it's up to you to decide what to do you're going to get if you look down here 10 times powder per day based on the value of your me e just for holding it in your wallet so you can click off the video now essentially and just hold it in your wallet and get 10x powder per day however there are strategies that allow you to make up to 40 times powder per day ranging in Risk profile my favorite strategy and the one that's highlighted in the spotlight here is on Pendle because unlike a lot of these other options which although they give you 40x powder per day they expose you to impermanent loss because you have to to pair the meth with usdt pretty much all these options that give you 30X or 40x they're giving it to you for a reason because you're being compensated for taking on additional impermanent loss risk personally I just want the value of my ethereum to maintain the value of my ethereum and for that reason I think the best risk reward out of this entire list is this the Pendle m e staking pool so essentially what you can do is deposit me e and MNT the governor's token which we'll discuss a little bit more in depth later onto Pendle in order to earn powder which is going to be very important for earning that cook airdrop alongside the APR of course which you are getting on the ethereum side so the easiest way to navigate this in my opinion if you just want an index of everything is to go onto the official meth website I'll leave all the necessary resources in the description below click on Spotlight and this will take you straight to the correct pool the other thing you can do is go onto Pendle go onto pools make sure you're on the mantle Network and then click on the me pool you can also stake MNT but this strategy is for the ethereum holders what you're going to get is a 25x powder multiplayer one of the highest that you can get as well as a 1x igen layer multiplier because Pendle is automatically allocating some of your ethereum utilizing igen layer you're going to be able to earn an additional drop so you not only can you potentially get a cook air drop you're also helping yourself on the IG layer side for an air drop over there which is good cuz you're basically doubling up you're also getting apy on the eth side up to 7. 4% for the middle option and up to 10% for the option on the right let me explain these options cuz you can kind of screw it up here if you're not paying attention the middle one retains the most points from emth whilst earning emth yields pendal incentives and swap fees you can exit any time and no additional staking required this is probably the best option for most people it's what I'm doing because it's not taking on any additional risk and it's not the option on the right which doesn't give you the me yields it gives you a fixed yield of course you get a higher yield on this side but the objective here is to earn a bigger powder multiplier and maximize the yields across Pendle as well on the left hand side you have another option it's to leverage your points exposure at a cost by buying YT on top of yt's Leverage you get additional bonus multipliers from mantle YT will have zero value at maturity you can exit any time as its current market price while retaining all the points earned up to that point this is a slightly riskier strategy because it requires you to purchase YTM eth and personally I'm just going for the safer option in the middle which is the LP of me e this is a very simple option all you're doing is your you can zap in so if you have em in your metamask wallet you just need to go to this pool as I said I'll leave a link in the description below connect your wallet you can input your me as much as you would like let's say you have 10 m which is $24,000 worth of me of course you can use a lot less it's going to create an automatic LP and it's going to give you the apy as well as that 25x points multiplier these points as you ACR them leading up to the airdrop are going to reflect on your dashboard here so all you need to do is go to the the dashboard to see at any time how much powder you've earned and you will see your Holdings on the L1 here as well so the good thing is it's very transparent there's a dashboard here for the next month until the airdrop you're going to see all the points that you are acre so Pendle is my favorite but there are more strategies as I mentioned before you could just hold it in your wallet and earn the base multiplier there are also strategies that Alo points out here in his post that pertain to in it which is init Capital this was actually before the Pendle pools launch which I think is slightly better now but that's an option looping on lendal is also an option so on in it you can see you are earning a 20x pow multiplier so slightly less than Pendle it's a borrowing lending platform you can click on deposit SL borrow you can enter the size of your meth position and start earning points this does now become collateral of your overall position so you have to keep in mind your LTV to make sure you're not incurring any additional risk you can also look at lendle as well this is also offering an apy um this is like a looping strategy that you can use to earn additional apy but once again the more you Loop the more risk you're taking on so just keep that in mind I do prefer the Pendle option though um or for the ones that really just want to be riskof and can't be bothered with any of that or want less smart contract risk you can just hold it in your wallet if you do just hold it in your wallet this gives you a 10x multiplier you can assert that the rough value of cook based on an FTV of 500 million will be $42 aird dropped per ethereum so what's ethereum now like around $2,000 you're going to be earning a $42 airdrop based on an APR of 10. 71% now in reality it's going to be a higher APR than this if you go with the Pendle strategy because that is a 25x multiplier so the APR will be closer to 25% keep in mind though the staking period until the airdrop is not a year so the true APR um in terms of Representative dollar value will be slightly less this isn't a play to make millions of dollars in terms of some crazy airdrop this is a play to maximize your ethereum Holdings get a nice air drop and if Cook ends up performing well you're getting exposure to its upside which is always nice so that is basically the strategy here you want to hold emth you want to stake it and you're going to earn rewards you can even just hold it in your wallet but if you are an ethereum holder I think it is attractive now I want to talk about the MNT token just for a bit you kind of heard my overall thesis on the ecosystem at the start of the video but I want to just go through the token itself and a little bit of ta to talk about the token as I mentioned before I do think the fact that the ecosystem is well funded there are going to be a lot of eyes on MNT around the airdrop and the fact that the ecosystem has been growing and has technological advantages over the other l2s do put it in a good position in terms of the governance token itself I actually think this could be the more profitable play than buying cook on launch it really depends on the valuation of cook though but even at a 500 mil Val for cook I think I still prefer MNT if we do look at the current value of MNT it's 1.