Frontier Lab Crypto Market Weekly Report｜W45

Frontier Lab

14 min readNov 9, 2024

Market Overview

Summary of Major Market Trends

Overall Market Sentiment Optimistic: With Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and a recent Fed rate cut, the cryptocurrency market sentiment index rose to 77%, indicating a state of greed. This reflects investors’ positive outlook for the future of the crypto market. Based on current market dynamics, the optimistic trend may continue into next week, but investors should remain cautious of potential short-term pullbacks.
BTC and ETH Lead the Uptrend: As core assets of the market, the strong performance of BTC and ETH has driven the overall market upward. Investors maintain confidence in the long-term prospects of these two major cryptocurrencies.
Strong Performance in DeFi and BTCFi Sectors: This week, the DeFi sector achieved a return rate of 12.06%, leading all major sectors. BTCFi projects were particularly noteworthy, with several projects experiencing significant TVL growth, reflecting investor enthusiasm for Bitcoin-related financial innovations.
Stablecoin Market Cap Growth: The market cap of major stablecoins like USDT and USDC has steadily increased, with USDC notably up by 6.68%, indicating fresh capital inflows into the market.
Layer 1 Ecosystems Active: Major Layer 1 blockchain projects, such as Solana and Ethereum, saw active performance within their ecosystems, particularly among DeFi and meme coin projects, which brought significant capital inflows and trading volume to the Layer 1 chains.
Meme Coin Craze Continues: Meme coin projects, especially on Solana and Ethereum, have created notable wealth effects, reflecting a heightened speculative sentiment in the market.
Diverse Capital Flows: While large capital inflows remain focused on BTC, innovative sectors like DeFi and BTCFi are also attracting substantial investor interest, with funds beginning to diversify across multiple sectors.

Market Sentiment Index Analysis

The market sentiment index rose significantly to 77% from last week’s 14.9%, placing the market in a state of greed.
Altcoins followed the overall market trend this week, with broad-based gains across the sector. Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has fostered optimism about the future development of the crypto market, bolstering users’ confidence in the market outlook. As a result, altcoins saw a general uptick this week.
Currently, the market is in a greed phase, with altcoins likely to continue following the broader market trend. Investors should remain cautious of potential short-term pullbacks.

Overall Market Trend Overview

The cryptocurrency market was in an upward trend this week, with the sentiment index entering the greed phase.
DeFi-related crypto projects performed strongly, showing sustained market interest in enhancing base-level yields.
In the DeFi sector, BTCFi projects also saw an increase in TVL, following the overall market uptrend, with even stronger growth than the broader market. This reflects investors’ optimism about its future prospects.

Hot Sectors

DeFi Sector

TVL Growth Rankings

The top 5 projects by TVL growth over the past week (excluding projects with smaller TVL, with a minimum threshold of $30 million). Data source: DefiLlama.

Burrow Finance (BRRR) (Recommendation Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Project Overview: Burrow Finance is a decentralized, non-custodial interest rate platform built on the Near blockchain. Users can provide assets to earn interest and use those assets as collateral to unlock liquidity. Similar to pool-based protocols like Aave and Compound, Burrow Finance supports a range of DeFi activities, including leveraged positions and the use of liquidity mining tokens.
Recent Developments: Recently, Burrow Finance launched a new mining campaign offering users participating in liquidity mining over 100% APY and a 200 USDC reward. It also supports borrowing wBTC, which has seen increased deposits due to BTC’s recent uptrend. Additionally, Burrow Finance announced its 12th buyback of BRRR tokens this week, boosting BRRR’s value and further enhancing liquidity mining users’ APY.

ZeroLend (ZERO) (Recommendation Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Project Overview: ZeroLend is a decentralized lending protocol focused on providing a seamless lending experience and attracting more users to the DeFi space. Built primarily on the zkSync blockchain, it’s an open-source, non-custodial liquidity market protocol that enables users to supply and borrow assets at variable or stable rates. ZeroLend One, its latest version, introduces a highly scalable multi-chain lending protocol, which is permissionless and separates markets to manage risk.
Recent Developments: This week, ZeroLend expanded support for long-tail assets, adding lending options for IBGT, KDK, NECT, and POLLEN. It also launched an activity on DeBank, offering rewards for zLP stakers: 1st place — 1 million ZERO tokens; 2nd place — 500,000 ZERO tokens; 3rd-10th places — a split of 500,000 ZERO tokens.

Bedrock (Unreleased Token) (Recommendation Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Project Overview: Bedrock is a multi-asset liquidity re-staking protocol that provides native token rewards through re-collateralization, supporting ecosystem security. It allows re-staking of various assets via a non-custodial solution designed in collaboration with RockX. Bedrock uses a universal standard to unlock token liquidity and maximize value.
Recent Developments: As BTC’s price increased this week, more users chose to hold BTC and simultaneously deposit it in BTCFi projects to earn additional yield. Bedrock collaborated with Penpie this week, offering uniBTC pool users 60% APY and rewards including 6,300 USDC and Bedrock Diamond Points. Pendle also launched high-reward policies for uniBTC holders: YT — retain points, forgo tokens and yield to gain 107x Babylon Points; LP — retain tokens, yield, and points to earn 105x Diamond Points + Babylon Points + yield; PT — retain yield and tokens, forgo points.

Avalon Labs (Unreleased Token) (Recommendation Rating: ⭐️⭐️)

Project Overview: Avalon Labs is a BTCFi-focused project aimed at building a comprehensive ecosystem that integrates BTC lending, collateralized debt positions (CDP) stablecoins, yield generation, and credit card services. Avalon Labs also collaborates with leading liquidity staking projects, enabling retail users to use BTC liquidity staking tokens as collateral for loans.
Recent Developments: This week, Avalon Labs partnered with Bitlayer, which launched the S3 mining campaign. Avalon Labs provided an 8% fixed rate for stablecoin borrowing during the event and awarded completed borrowers with Avalon Labs points and at least 0.0001 WBTC.

Solayer (Unreleased Token) (Recommendation Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️)

Project Overview: Solayer is a re-staking protocol on the Solana blockchain that enhances decentralized applications (dApps) performance through stake-weighted service quality and transaction prioritization. Solayer allows users to convert their SOL to sSOL, a liquid subscription token that ensures block space, maintains liquidity, and generates additional yield through DeFi strategies. It supports native SOL, mSOL, JitoSOL, and leverages Solana stakers as validators to ensure high decentralization and security.
Recent Developments: With Solana’s ecosystem seeing high activity and strong performance in SOL, user confidence in holding SOL has strengthened, leading more users to participate in SOL re-staking projects. This week, Solayer held an event with Bitgit, offering 30% APY on BGSOL.

Summary: The projects with the highest TVL growth this week were mainly concentrated in BTCFi and lending sectors.

Overall Sector Performance

Stablecoin Market Cap Growth: USDT increased from $125.9 billion last week to $126.7 billion, and USDC rose from $34.4 billion to $36.7 billion, with growth rates of 0.63% and 6.68%, respectively. The total stablecoin supply in the market remained stable, though USDC saw rapid growth primarily in the U.S. market, indicating a substantial influx of new capital from U.S.-based sources into the crypto market.
Liquidity Gradually Increasing: With ongoing rate cuts, the risk-free arbitrage rate in traditional markets continues to decline, while the arbitrage rate on-chain in DeFi projects has been rising due to the appreciation of cryptocurrency assets. This makes DeFi an increasingly attractive choice for capital allocation.
New Growth Drivers: In addition to traditional DeFi projects like lending and DEXs, two new engines have emerged: BTC and ETH LSD (Liquid Staking Derivatives) and re-staking projects, which are contributing to market momentum.

Capital Inflows: The TVL of DeFi projects rose from $33.6 billion last week to $34.2 billion, with several weeks of sustained growth, demonstrating a consistent inflow of capital into DeFi projects.

In-Depth Analysis

Drivers of Growth:Market investors remain optimistic about the future price trajectory of BTC and ETH, the foundational assets. With BTC’s price in an ongoing uptrend, investors are seeing increased returns, prompting them to actively engage in various DeFi projects to maximize the yield on their holdings.
Growth Leaders:For DeFi projects, TVL growth is the most direct measure of performance. According to the TVL growth rankings, BTCFi projects in the DeFi sector showed significant gains this week. The core purpose of BTCFi projects is to encourage users to deposit assets, helping them identify underlying protocols with the highest returns in the market. Ultimately, the funds users deposit are redirected to various underlying protocols.

Therefore, investors should consider focusing on BTCFi projects that issue BTC-based Liquid Re-staking Tokens (LRT) when making investment decisions in the near term.

BTCFi Sector Overview

Sector Update

Due to the U.S. presidential election, the crypto market saw broad gains this week, and BTCFi projects followed suit. Within the BTCFi sector, liquid staking projects that allow BTC staking to mint wrapped assets (LST) performed best, with all projects showing varying levels of TVL growth. This indicates that liquid staking for BTC remains a strong-performing sub-sector in BTCFi.

Current Sector Status

BTC gained 7.12% this week. Excluding BTC’s rise, TVL growth across BTC-based LRT projects was as follows: Bedrock (38.76%), Lombard (5.22%), Lorenzo (1.72%), Pell Network (3.35%), PumpBTC (16.27%), Solv Protocol (7.07%), and Stakestone (5.91%).
Bedrock partnered with Penpie this week, offering users of the uniBTC pool an annual yield of 60% APY, 6,300 USDC, and Bedrock Diamond Points. Pendle also incentivized uniBTC holders with high reward policies: YT holders earned 107x Babylon Points by keeping points but forgoing tokens and yield; LP holders earned 105x Diamonds, Babylon Points, and yield by retaining tokens, rewards, and points; PT holders retained tokens and yield but waived points.
Lombard collaborated with Euler Prime, enabling users to borrow, collateralize, and leverage LBTC, as well as conduct arbitrage between yield-bearing LBTC and non-yield-bearing assets. Lombard also partnered with Vanguard Vantage, introducing LBTC as a liquid staking BTC asset in the Venus Core Pool on Ethereum and BNB Chain to boost BTC lending yields, with users receiving Babylon Points and Lombard’s Lux rewards to enhance the value of LBTC collateral on Venus.
Solv Protocol partnered with Taiko, integrating Taiko into Solv Protocol’s Staking Abstraction Layer (SAL), granting SolvBTC users increased yield and liquidity options. Through a partnership with Folks Finance, SolvBTC holders can supply assets on the xChain application for cross-chain collateral, enabling seamless cross-chain borrowing to maximize capital efficiency and user flexibility.
Lorenzo Protocol held a joint mining event with Bitlayer, offering 1 million Lorenzo Points as rewards for user participation.
PumpBTC partnered with Bera Chain, becoming a validator node and launching the PumpFellow loyalty program to reward community creators and supporters. To attract more users, PumpBTC raised its APY to 11.49%.
Pell Network launched a testnet in collaboration with Intract, providing higher points for event participants. The network also upgraded BTC re-staking in partnership with Babylon, unlocking new earning and decentralized service opportunities for BTC holders.
Stakestone introduced the StakeStone Vault this week, a new multi-yield product platform that optimizes yield strategies. Within one hour of its launch, the Vault reached its $30 million cap.

In conclusion, Across BTCFi, projects issuing BTC-based LSTs have shown remarkable performance recently. For BTCFi projects, TVL is a critical measure of prosperity. This week’s BTC price increase has spurred BTCFi TVL growth, largely because users remain optimistic about BTC’s long-term prospects. Many investors believe BTC should be held firmly at this stage; therefore, they deposit their BTC into protocols to convert it into LST tokens, which can then be staked in other projects to earn additional returns, allowing them to maximize yield on their BTC holdings. From a mid- to long-term perspective, BTC has potential growth room, providing foundational momentum for the BTCFi sector’s expansion. Thus, BTCFi is a worthwhile consideration for investors.

Other Sector Performance

Public Chains

Top 5 Public Chains by TVL Growth Over the Past Week (Data Source: DefiLlama)

Near: This week, the TVL of Burrow Finance on the Near chain grew rapidly, increasing by approximately $70 million. Near itself also saw a TVL growth of about $70 million, but this increase was primarily driven by Burrow Finance’s growth rather than any specific positive development on the Near chain itself.

Bitcoin: This week, BTC saw a significant increase due to the positive market factors from Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts. Investors grew more optimistic about BTC’s future, and as a result, they were more determined to hold BTC. Consequently, many opted to invest in BTCFi projects to earn additional yields. This led to a rapid increase in the TVL of Bitcoin-based BTCFi projects, which in turn caused a substantial rise in Bitcoin’s overall TVL.

Hyperliquid: Hyperliquid is primarily a Perp DEX platform that provides leveraged trading of various assets. This week, the market experienced significant price fluctuations due to the U.S. presidential election, causing a surge in contract trading as users sought high returns. The increase in Perp DEX activity on Hyperliquid led to a substantial rise in TVL.

Core: Although there were no major positive developments for Core this week, its TVL increased mainly due to the rising price of wrapped BTC on the Core chain, which led to a growth in its overall TVL.

Sui: In the Sui ecosystem, Suilend Protocol and Cetus Protocol account for 52% of the total TVL on the chain. This week, Suilend Protocol and Cetus Protocol saw their TVLs increase by 21% and 11%, respectively. The rise in Suilend’s TVL was mainly driven by the launch of its DEX aggregator, sui.ag, which spurred the development of the project. Meanwhile, Cetus Protocol’s TVL increase was driven by the token’s significant rise after being listed on Binance, which caused a sharp increase in the APY offered by Cetus Protocol. As a result, many users flocked to Cetus Protocol for liquidity mining.

Top 5 Tokens by Growth in the Past Week

(Excluding tokens with low trading volume and meme coins. Data Source: CoinMarketCap)

This week, there was no clear sector concentration on the growth leaderboard, with most of the top-performing tokens belonging to the DeFi sector.

CETUS: Cetus Protocol is a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol focused on supporting the Move ecosystem, including blockchain platforms like Aptos and Sui. As a decentralized exchange (DEX) and liquidity protocol, Cetus Protocol aims to provide secure, transparent, and efficient financial infrastructure for cross-chain asset trading and liquidity provision. This week, Cetus Protocol was listed on Binance.

COW: CoW Protocol is a decentralized finance infrastructure provider known for its product, CoWSwap. CoW Protocol uses batch auctions as its price discovery mechanism and operates as a fully permissionless trading protocol. This week, CoW Protocol was also listed on Binance.

RAY: Raydium is a DEX and automated market maker (AMM) platform built on the Solana blockchain. Launched in February 2021, Raydium is the first hybrid AMM that combines an on-chain order book with its liquidity pool, offering users fast trades and low fees. It utilizes Serum’s on-chain central order book, enabling nearly real-time trades, shared liquidity, and new yield farming opportunities. The market saw a significant uptick due to the U.S. presidential election, leading to a rebound in market sentiment. The increasing number of successful meme coins launched on the Solana chain, with most of them trading on Raydium, led to a surge in trading volume and boosted the price of RAY.

ENA: Ethena is a synthetic dollar protocol based on Ethereum, designed to provide a crypto-native currency solution without relying on traditional banking systems. Its core product, USDe, is a stable, scalable digital currency supported by collateral on Ethereum. USDe ensures its stability through incremental hedged derivative positions and is pegged to the U.S. dollar. This week, Ethena proposed that sENA holders could directly share in Ethena’s revenue. With a noticeable rebound in DeFi projects, Ethena, as a representative project in the DeFi space, saw a significant price increase.

UXLINK: UXLINK is a Web3 social platform and infrastructure based on personal social relationships, aimed at promoting the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency by building a decentralized social ecosystem. The platform leverages real social data from Telegram to create a “personalized social network” that helps users establish real-world social connections. This week, UOB Venture Management and Signum Capital Fund in Singapore announced additional investments in UXLINK and will participate in staking.

Meme Token Gains Ranking

This week, Meme projects outperformed the broader market, with meme coins on both the Solana and Ethereum chains experiencing significant price increases, creating a wealth effect.

Social Media Hot Topics

Based on the top five daily growth data from LunarCrush and the AI score rankings from Scopechat for the period of November 2–November 8, the most mentioned topic was Layer 1 blockchains. The listed tokens are as follows (excluding those with low trading volumes and Meme coins):

According to the data analysis, the most attention on social media this week was focused on Layer 1 blockchain projects, which generally showed an upward trend, with growth outperforming the broader market. Throughout the week, Meme coin projects on various public chains were highly active, attracting significant funds to these chains. Additionally, the DeFi ecosystems within these public chains saw a recovery, with both TVL and trading volume increasing. This phenomenon reflects the optimistic sentiment investors have toward the future market conditions in the current environment.

Overall Market Themes Overview

According to weekly return statistics, the DeFi sector performed the best, while the SocialFi sector performed the worst.

DeFi Sector: The DeFi sector includes many projects, with LINK, UNI, and AAVE having the largest market share in SoSoValue’s sample, at 31.48%, 27.76%, and 11.05%, respectively, totaling 70.29%. This week, LINK, UNI, and AAVE increased by 5.6%, 15.9%, and 22.3%, respectively, boosting the overall DeFi sector’s growth. As market sentiment has warmed in recent weeks, users are entering the DeFi sector to enhance their returns, further driving the sector’s development.
SocialFi Sector: In the SocialFi sector, TON remains the dominant player, holding 91.71% of the market share. Although TON did not face any negative news this week, it failed to follow the broader market’s upward trend, declining by 0.7%. While other tokens in the SocialFi sector showed gains in line with the broader market, their small market share led to the poor performance of the overall SocialFi sector.

Upcoming Major Crypto Events

Monday (Nov 11): Superintelligence Summit
Tuesday (Nov 12): Fire Now Asia Web3 Institution Summit; Global AI & Web 3.0 Summit
Wednesday (Nov 13): BNB Chain x RaveDAO: Thailand Nightopia; U.S. October CPI Year-over-Year Adjusted
Friday (Nov 15): DePIN Day Bangkok; Developer Brunch with Hemera; Hong Kong Stock Exchange to launch virtual asset index series; U.S. October Retail Sales Month-over-Month
Saturday (Nov 16): Thailand Summit 2024

Outlook for Next Week

This week, Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, along with the Fed’s expected 25 basis point rate cut, has led to a surge in market sentiment. Trump’s more crypto-friendly stance has improved market outlook, with funds that had previously moved to safety before the election returning to the market, along with new capital, pushing the market higher. Next week, we expect this optimistic trend to continue, with large institutional funds still focused on BTC. The funds flowing into other sectors are unlikely to see exponential growth.

The BTCFi sector, closely tied to BTC, continues to benefit from BTC’s price increase. Data indicates that BTCFi is currently the strongest sector, reflecting investor optimism for the future. Looking ahead, BTCFi projects will likely continue to issue more LST and LRT, and expand BTC-backed LST into other public chains, integrating into broader ecosystems. Similar to the 2020–2021 DeFi Summer, a DeFi wave around BTC is expected to emerge, leading to significant growth in areas such as yield optimization and lending. Therefore, we will continue to monitor developments in DeFi projects related to BTC.