Bet on popular projects in advance and take stock of the current status of pre-launch protocols

Original author: THOR, HYPHIN

Original compilation: Luffy, Foresight News

Speculation is the lifeblood of the cryptocurrency market, and savvy opportunists often find new ways to bet on assets. In most cases, people invest in something that already exists because there is some data that allows people to make an informed decision. However, recent market trends indicate an increase in airdrop allocations and trading volumes of unreleased assets.

introduce

The surge in pre-market trading interest can largely be attributed to numerous airdrop events and highly anticipated projects looking to take advantage of the booming market and positive sentiment to push their tokens onto the public market.

With all the necessary catalysts for a new narrative in place, protocols like Aevo, Hyperliquid, and Whales Market are already moving to seize this opportunity. These platforms offer perpetual futures for tokens that have not yet been released.

Pre-market trading volumes for Aevo, Whales Market and Hyperliquid

Please remember that these instruments are extremely volatile and should be used with caution as their liquidity is questionable and determining the fair value of their underlying assets is difficult.

Given the highly speculative and risky nature of the financial products just mentioned, what value and opportunities do they hold for traders? We’ll try to find out in this article by analyzing market data.

Aevo’s Pre-launch Market

Historical performance

With the help of exchange API and historical data, we can observe the price performance of all assets that were once traded in the pre-market and understand their performance after they were officially launched.

Comparison of asset prices before and after the launch of some protocols

A common pattern for most of these assets is that trading volumes are relatively low post-launch, with volatility and trading volume peaking as the launch date approaches, after which activity begins to decrease.

Objectively speaking, the initial listing price of each asset in the table is not its peak price. Airdropped tokens have performed exceptionally well over the past 6 months, despite widespread belief that airdropped tokens will have a huge impact on price once they become tradable.

However, this does not mean that one should buy an asset immediately after it is listed on the pre-market. Price changes may result in positions being liquidated, and since listing standards are unknown, returns are not guaranteed.

In terms of trading volume, it’s clear that assets that are being sought after, rather than just being circulated on Twitter because of their incentives, are gaining more traction than other upcoming coins, with most of them having daily The transaction volume cannot exceed $100,000.

JUP’s trading volume proportion in different pre-markets

In the case of Jupiter, after being hyped for a while during the Solana expansion, they stole the show by absorbing the massive liquidity.

Current pre-launch market

Having reviewed the historical data, let’s look at the current opportunities. As of today, there are a large number of unreleased tokens available for trading on Aevo and Hyperliquid.

Currently active pre-release assets on Aevo and Hyperliquid

Except for Parcel and Portal, which have just been listed, there are not many active transactions happening. Looking at price performance, most tokens are performing well, with a few rising several times over the course of a few months.

Let’s select some interesting projects from the list and see if we can determine whether their valuations are comparable to similar protocols:

Wormhole （W）

Wormhole’s FDV is calculated by multiplying Hyperliquid’s W/USD mark price by the total token supply (10 billion)

Wormhole’s current theoretical valuation may be overstated compared to alternative solutions on the market. Unless breakthrough developments are announced, token prices are likely to move lower after the token generation event ends as investor interest reflected in volume is at a low point.

BLAST

Blast’s FDV is calculated by multiplying Aevo’s BLAST-USD token price by the total supply (billion)

While speculation makes FDV subject to multi-billion dollar changes at any time, TVL metrics indicate clear interest in the Blast ecosystem (most likely due to airdrop expectations).

Judging from the way L2 is priced, Blast appears to be undervalued on paper right now, but more information needs to be considered when trying to draw a firm conclusion. Unfortunately, apart from TVL, there is very little information about its on-chain status, which makes the evaluation process difficult.

Points Transaction

Whales Market Points Trading

Points can now be traded on Whales Market, a decentralized over-the-counter trading platform.

“2024 will be the “golden year” of airdrops” - @CC 2 Ventures

One of the most prolific airdrop farmers in the crypto space says becoming an airdrop farmer may have never been more profitable. The sheer number of protocols announcing points programs has brought us to the point where user interaction is monetized and incentives are a must if you want to gain traction as a project.

The emergence of a trading market for these points is natural. Such channels allow airdrop farmers to realize their harvests in advance.

To date, Whales Market has facilitated $6.3 million worth of peer-to-peer points transactions and is set for further growth as more offers come to market.

There are currently 9 protocols that allow points trading on the platform: Parcl, Kamino, Ethena, Magic Eden, Hyperliquid, EigenLayer, friend.tech and ether.fi. Marginfi, Drift and Blast should also be available in the near future.

Here’s an overview of the most popular points deals right now:

Looking at the average order price and median order price, it is clear that in some cases the price distribution is not concentrated.

By now, the fair value of some of these points seems to have been established, but what does the value of points actually mean?

The price of a point may give a hint as to how much the market expects the upcoming protocol to be currently valued. As more points are issued, their price will likely decline due to reward dilution, unless market sentiment changes and valuations are expected to rise.

Let’s test this idea using EigenLayer as an example.

Price per point = 0.155 Total points = 1, 963, 113, 523 Airdrop value = Price per point* Total points = 304, 282, 596 (Theoretical) Airdrop Allocation = 0.1 (10%) Fully Diluted Value = Airdrop Value / Airdrop Allocation = 3, 042, 825, 960

Since snapshot dates are often closely guarded secrets, we can’t say for sure how many points will ultimately accrue in total.

in conclusion

Through historical observation and taking into account frequent trading patterns, under bullish trends, these pre-market assets continue to perform well even after going live, with the peak usually being on the day the token is launched. Aevo, Hyperliquid, and Whales Market protocols offer users another way to bet on airdrops.