Author: Rainy Sleep
GM, the December outlook is here.
Dino coins are not my forte, and it's also difficult to grasp these ancient old coins. In this outlook, I mainly want to talk to you about some directions I'm looking at.
If you find this content useful, feel free to like and share it.
1/ AI Agent
After a series of hype around AI Memecoins, AI Agent applications, and infrastructure, it's time to shift our focus to the longer term.
Let me share my personal perceptions⬇️
1. It's unlikely that new pure AI MEME will emerge, the market will be winnowed down, leaving only $GOAT and $ACT, the two AI Memes that have been listed on Binance. However, $GOAT and $ACT are both market-made by Wintermute, so I believe the people on board are in a lot of pain, including myself.
2. The market's aesthetics have improved: AI MEME—>AI Agent application—>more sophisticated AI Agent applications & AI Agent infrastructure.
Here are my thoughts on future development⬇️
1. AI Agents with completely new output forms will be more popular;
For example, the AI Agents currently popular in the market are basically tweet bots, and what people compete more on is "new and interesting content", such as $AIXBT's market analysis. As long as you can produce differentiated high-quality output, the market will buy it.
Differentiated high-quality output covers two levels,
One is new content forms, the key of which is "traffic", i.e., the ability to attract enough audience. Now it's text content, and we can see new AI Agents exploring and trying video content and podcast content (including things like $ZEREBRO and $LUNA releasing music singles, and $POD doing podcast-related things);
The other is new behavioral patterns, such as launching an Agent that can trade memecoins on its own. In the future, we should see more exploration of new behavioral patterns (which is also why I was bullish on $FLOWER and $LOLA before). If the new behavioral patterns produce good results, the market will buy in.
2. The market will show more demand for AI-related infrastructure;
This is easy to understand, and I won't elaborate too much. Building a high-rise on flat ground requires a solid foundation. $VIRTUAL, $AI16Z, and $VVWIFU are representatives of such tokens. In addition to these basic token issuance facilities, you can also pay attention to the infrastructure that integrates these infrastructure, such as Seraph on Virtuals.
3. The future trend is "independently running and collaborating Agents";
We can already see this trend, such as what $UBC is currently doing (Agent to Agent), and in the future, the AI Agents on Virtuals may also develop in this direction. $LUM is the beginning of this type of conceptual token, it is a cultural meme without practicality (although there are now teams starting to do some things based on $LUM, but I still haven't fully understood their ideas).
P.S. My $LUM is currently in a loss state, mentioned for reference only, not as financial advice.
2/ Ethereum
Personally, I am optimistic that Ethereum will have a major bull wave (referring to the ETH exchange rate), I just don't know when this major bull wave will appear, I still hold the same view as in November⬇️
1. The BTC ETF will have a spillover effect;
2. Big institutions like BlackRock are doing RWA on Ethereum, which means the underlying value of Ethereum cannot be ignored;
3. The rise of the Base AI Agent ecosystem.
Looking at the price performance, tokens like $ONDO, $LINK, $UNI, and $ENS have started to become strong. This means that the market has started to focus its attention on Ethereum-related Beta targets. This is a Bullish signal.
As for the choice of Ethereum Betas, there are basically three directions:
1. ETH staking related ($LDO, $EIGEN, LRT);
2. DeFi & RWA ($AAVE, $UNI, $COW, $MKR, $ONDO, $LINK);
3. Meme ($MOG, $PEPE, $SHRUB). Personally, I prefer DeFi-related ones, and indirectly hold $PENDLE and $EIGEN through $PNP and $EGP.
3/ Blockchain Wars
In my previous article on Stacks, I mentioned that the blockchain wars are about to begin again - in December you can see: 1) Fantom Sonic mainnet will be launched soon; 2) Avalanche9000 mainnet will be launched on December 16; 3) Aptos data growth + institutional adoption + ETP; 4) Stacks will introduce sBTC after the Satoshi upgrade to gain more adoption, etc.
Most of the surviving old public chains are trying to stir things up while the market is good. We should see a new round of Layer1 wars in December and Q1 next year. Don't forget that there is a brand new participant in this blockchain war: HyperLiquid. From my perspective, the $HYPE train is not as heavy as we imagined, with fewer participants/holders in the Chinese community (especially compared to $ACT and $PNUT). $HYPE still has upside potential in the future.
The few I mentioned above are all quite good in my opinion, and their common point is "willing to release expectations to drive prices" (my favorite among the old public chains is Fantom). I'll write a separate article to introduce the updates of Fantom and Avalanche.
In addition to Layer1, in Ethereum Layer2, I will pay attention to $METIS and Base. You can follow the project @ScoreMilk on Metis, which is the reason I'm interested in Metis.
Finally, a word about Base. Base has a very special tone, when participating, try not to focus on whether the concept is good or not, but focus on whether it meets the needs of the Coinbase Cabal. Otherwise, even if the concept is good, it is most likely a one-wave flow.
4/ Chain Abstraction
Just a brief mention of chain abstraction.
Chain abstraction/intent abstraction is a concept I'm quite optimistic about, as it can lower the entry barrier to blockchains and the complexity of on-chain operations.
In this track, I only look at the product, not the token price - as long as the product is usable, the token price fluctuation is not that important. Moreover, I believe that chain abstraction/intent abstraction still needs time to mature and develop.
Friends who like this track can take a look at the @ParticleNtwrk project. Particle is a modular & chain abstraction Layer1 (which I've also introduced before), and its core function is "to provide users with a single address and interaction front-end for cross-chain through a universal account".
You can also take a look at the chain abstraction framework of @NEARProtocol.
5/ What else is worth mentioning in December?
1. $IO will announce something this week (remember the AI three musketeers I was bullish on? $IO, $GRASS, $TAO);
2. 12.10 $ME TGE (we can see some signs of NFT recovery, I personally think it may be related to Opensea);
3. Coinbase will delist $WBTC;
4. The AI infrastructure on Solana is worth watching, $SHDW, $SNS;
5. $HNT is a project I'm quite bullish on, and I think $HNT will have a relatively good performance in this round (just look at the Mobile data, although few people mention it, Mobile users have actually maintained a good growth rate)⬇️
