1. Industry Insights
In terms of macro control, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut brings positive effects at the macro level, benefiting various DeFi protocols. In September, the Federal Reserve significantly lowered interest rates by 50 basis points, bringing the federal funds rate down to between 4.75% and 5%, resulting in short-term volatility, but the long-term outlook for Bitcoin remains robust. As the global financial system deepens its reliance on monetary expansion, Bitcoin (BTC) continues to attract interest as a global asset independent of central bank policies, with cumulative net inflows into spot ETFs reaching $21.3 billion.
Ethereum’s mainnet data remains stable, with expectations surrounding the Pectra upgrade enhancing the network’s functionality, security, and efficiency. The average daily active users on-chain is 480,000, with daily transactions reaching 1.2 million. The comprehensive utilization rates of USDC, USDT, and DAI across major lending platforms have surged to 87%, the highest level since late June 2024. With the rise in DeFi yields, the interest rate cuts are expected to rejuvenate the crypto credit market and drive vigorous on-chain activity.
In the public blockchain ecosystem, major public chains represented by Sui exhibit impressive data performance, with more innovations yet to be explored. The Total Value Locked (TVL) surpassed $1.4 billion, and daily trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) reached $180 million, with daily trading volume and active addresses both hitting new highs. NAVI Protocol, as a leading liquidity protocol, has a TVL exceeding $500 million, while the top DEX, Cetus, ranks among the top 10 in total DEX trading volume across all chains, with weekly trading volume exceeding $1 billion.
The trading volume of mainstream assets in the SUI ecosystem is steadily increasing, and the trading volume of Memecoins and community assets has also surged significantly. Therefore, we are optimistic about projects like aPriori, represented by parallel blockchains. The “super cycle” concept of Memes has attracted more attention and introduced new variables for AI development, with entertainment IP drawing in greater focus. Currently, the total market capitalization of AI Memecoins has exceeded $2 billion, and the average trading volume of Memecoins has increased more than fivefold compared to last year.
The popularity of Terminals of Truth and GOAT has brought new use cases for AI-generated content, meme culture, and speculative market behavior, while also driving Solana’s single-day on-chain transactions to exceed 4.5 million and daily active users to peak at 6.9 million, with DEXs strongly correlated with Memes setting new fee highs.
OKX Ventures Q3 Investment Overview
In Q3, OKX Ventures’ investment track covered areas such as the Bitcoin ecosystem, Ethereum and other layer one networks, as well as AI and blockchain data platforms, participating in investments in projects like zkLink, Monad, aPriori, Space and Time, and Prodia. Below are details regarding these projects.
1. zkLink
zkLink is a multi-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, aimed at addressing the issues of liquidity fragmentation and high cross-chain transaction costs in the current blockchain ecosystem. By building an aggregated Layer 3 zkEVM network (zkLink Nova), it achieves seamless connectivity and liquidity aggregation between Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks. As the first aggregated Layer 3 zkEVM network, zkLink Nova resolves the liquidity fragmentation issue on Ethereum L2, allowing DApps to be deployed seamlessly across multiple L2s.
It provides a customized scaling engine for high-performance ZK applications, supporting various application scenarios, including spot trading, derivative trading, and NFT trading. The main problems this project addresses include:
– Cross-chain liquidity aggregation and seamless multi-chain interaction: zkLink connects different L1 and L2 networks through its protocol, simplifying the cross-chain transaction process, allowing users to trade freely across different blockchains without frequently switching networks or wallets.
– A rich ecosystem of projects: zkLink has partnered with multiple projects, forming a rich ecosystem that attracts a large number of users to participate in its DeFi activities.
– Innovative technological solutions: By combining ZK-Rollup and oracle networks, zkLink provides an efficient and secure cross-chain interaction mechanism, greatly enhancing ecosystem integration efficiency.
– Enhancing user experience and promoting the development of the decentralized finance ecosystem, becoming an important bridge connecting different blockchains.
2. Monad
Monad is a layer one blockchain designed to provide extremely high performance and scalability. It supports 10,000 transactions per second, has a block time of 1 second, and offers finality with a single confirmation. Monad is compatible with the existing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to easily migrate and utilize existing applications and libraries. Its low hardware requirements enable ordinary consumer-grade hardware to run nodes, providing a feasible path to decentralization. Additionally, MonadDB is designed to store most state information on SSDs rather than RAM, reducing node operating costs and enhancing scalability.
Project features include:
– High performance: Monad offers 10,000 transactions per second, ensuring a smooth user experience.
– Low fees: Nearly zero transaction fees enable applications to scale significantly.
– Fast confirmation: A 1-second block time and single confirmation mechanism enhance transaction efficiency.
– EVM compatibility: 100% EVM compatible, supporting applications within the existing Ethereum ecosystem.
– Scalable decentralization: Low hardware requirements allow more users to participate in the network, promoting decentralization.
– Innovative execution model: Utilizing optimistic parallel execution and asynchronous execution effectively enhances transaction processing capacity.
3. aPriori
aPriori is a MEV infrastructure and liquid staking protocol built for the era of parallel execution, natively implemented on the Monad platform. The project aims to optimize the processing efficiency of blockchain transactions through an innovative block space auction mechanism, thereby reducing the occurrence of spam transactions caused by MEV. aPriori enhances user experience and overall network efficiency by ensuring alignment between block producers and network goals.
The main problems this project addresses include:
– Block space auctions: Due to the limited nature of block space and the monopolistic power of block producers in transaction ordering, aPriori introduces a block space auction mechanism. This mechanism, through competitive bidding, makes the true economic value of transactions transparent, thus improving resource allocation efficiency.
– Minimizing spam transactions: aPriori’s auction mechanism reduces the phenomenon of spam transactions caused by MEV by altering the dominant strategies of searchers. This design ensures orderly and predictable transaction execution, enhancing user experience.
– Incentive compatibility: In the post-MEV era, aPriori’s auction mechanism ensures incentive compatibility, allowing transaction fees to be based on economic value rather than the private assessments of block producers, thus optimizing user experience.
– Transparency and fairness: By introducing competitive bidding, aPriori ensures transparency in the transaction processing process, reducing the likelihood of unfair practices (such as front-running).
4. Space and Time
Space and Time is a decentralized data warehouse designed specifically for blockchain applications. Founded in 2022, the project aims to provide a next-generation data platform that meets the needs of decentralized applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi), and other projects requiring robust analytical capabilities. Space and Time combines enterprise-level SQL and APIs, allowing users to seamlessly integrate and analyze on-chain and off-chain data within a single query.
Supporting multi-chain operations, it allows users to easily access and analyze data across multiple blockchains. By introducing SQL proof technology, Space and Time ensures the security, integrity, and transparency of data without compromising performance. The main features of the project include:
– Decentralized architecture: Space and Time is the first Web3-native data warehouse, completely decentralized, ensuring the security and privacy of user data.
– Enterprise-level SQL and APIs: Users can query and load data using familiar SQL commands and tools, simplifying the data processing workflow.
– Multi-chain support: The platform allows users to seamlessly access and analyze data across multiple blockchains, enhancing flexibility and scalability.
– SQL proof technology: This technology not only guarantees data security but also maintains its integrity and transparency, providing confidence to users.
– Real-time data processing: Supports high-capacity real-time transaction processing while utilizing column storage and GPU acceleration for large-scale dataset analysis.
– Customizable dashboards: The platform offers dynamic visualization capabilities, allowing users to customize dashboards according to their brand needs and automatically generate charts and visual content.
5. Prodia
Prodia is an innovative platform focused on artificial intelligence and distributed cloud computing, aiming to provide image and music generation services through its powerful APIs. The platform utilizes advanced machine learning models, particularly Stable Diffusion technology, to convert text into high-quality images. Furthermore, Prodia has built a distributed GPU network to offer efficient cloud computing services at a lower cost, supporting various application scenarios. Prodia not only provides users with advanced AI tools but also promotes innovation and development in cloud computing services.
The main features of the project include:
– AI content generation capabilities: Prodia offers various models that efficiently convert text to images through APIs, meeting user demands for high-quality content generation.
– Distributed cloud computing: Utilizing a distributed GPU network, Prodia can provide powerful computing capabilities at lower costs, adapting to the needs of projects of different scales.
– Diverse application scenarios: The platform extends beyond image generation into music generation and other fields, offering creators more flexibility and options.
– User-friendly API: Prodia’s API is designed to be simple and easy to use, enabling developers to quickly integrate its functionalities and enhance development efficiency.
– Web3 infrastructure: By combining Web3 technology, Prodia offers decentralized services, enhancing data security and user privacy protection.
3. Conclusion
From the changes observed in Q3, OKX Ventures is very optimistic about the market outlook. The macro interest rate cut serves as a significant boost, continuous innovations in Ethereum, certain on-chain data reaching new highs, and the public blockchain ecosystem represented by SUI along with the cultural innovations brought by Memes all provide continuous growth momentum for the industry. This quarter, we focus on projects with strategic potential that not only align with market growth opportunities but also exhibit unique competitive advantages in their respective fields. Whether in Bitcoin’s re-staking and DeFi applications, cross-chain liquidity integration, or improvements in blockchain performance and optimization of data processing, these projects are driving technological breakthroughs and expanding application scenarios. In addition, we continue to be optimistic about the prospects of AI-generated content and distributed computing, which will provide new momentum for future industry innovations.
OKX Ventures Disclaimer, please read carefully
https://www.okx.com/zh-hans/learn/okx-disclaimer.
Risk Warning and Disclaimer
This article is for reference only. It represents the author’s views and does not reflect the positions of OKX or the aforementioned institutions. This article is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may experience significant volatility. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. For your specific circumstances, please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals. You are solely responsible for understanding and complying with the applicable laws and regulations in your locality.