New token launches have slowed, but I believe things will speed up soon because:
The market is recovering slowly.
Many projects can’t delay any longer.
These projects will test the waters, paving the way for others.
In this post, I want to highlight protocols frequently appearing in my X feed. However, it seems not everyone is familiar with what they do.
I once did a similar blog post a year ago on top 7 projects and plan to do these more often so feel free to subscribe.
So, if you are one of those scrollers on X who waits for the token and airdrop to launch for the hyped projects (but don’t really know what they do), this post is for you.
Note: This list is based on my X feed and my curiosity to explore these projects. It may not represent Kaito's mindshare map, and your X feed might differ.
Initia - Multichain Garden of Eden
Initia marked the first sale on Cobie's Echo fundraising platform within his Echonomist group.
Cobie has only did three project fundings in his group, which might make this bullish. And mainnet with airdrop should be any day now (although delayed until April, it seems).
If there’s one word you should know about Initia it’s ‘Interwoven.’
Initia is a Layer 1 that integrates Layer 2s to create a modular network of app-chains.
Sounds like Ethereum, but Initia addresses issues that ETH maxis dislike about Ethereum.
Unlike Ethereum L2s that operate in isolation, Initia fuses Layer 1 with Layer 2s, creating an interwoven ecosystem. They call these L2s Minitias. Also similar to Avalanche subnets (renamed to L1s recently).
Differing from Ethereum and Avalanche, is the the OPinit Stack supporting EVM, MoveVM, and WasmVM. So devs can use any language they feel comfortable with.
This might make ETH bulls salivate. Initia’s Enshrined liquidity allows solo INIT token staking or approved INIT-X LP tokens (which are paired with INIT) to earn rewards in Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism.
Enshrined liquidity is good ponzitokenomics forcing 50% or more INIT to be used as a pair token for all ecosystem tokens. These LP tokens must be whitelisted by governance.Like Berachain, Initia also has native dex: InitiaDEX on the L1 built by Move programming language. It’s a liquidity hub of Omnitia ecosystem and as I understood, most liquidity even among L2s will flow via InitiaDEX (and via forced INIA pools).
There’s more to Initia like native bridging (confusingly named Minitswap) and Vested Interest Program (rollups receive rewards for creating apps and new use cases for INIT) but the above 4 features stand out to me.
Initia really took what Ethereum natives are asking from Ethereum and shipping into one product. Making it interwoven ecosystem.
Token & Fundraising
Tokenomics aren’t fully out. Initia only shared four details about it:
50% of the supply to VIP & Enshrined Liquidity
No unlocked staking rewards for insiders
~30% discounted community round.
15% to investors.
We can expect airdrop with vesting as Initia co-founder Zon had posted that “vesting is a gift. It saves you from jeeting too early and forces you to believe.”
In Sept 2024, Zon had also shared to the Block that Initia last Series A round raised $14M at $350M FDV from Theory Ventures, Delphi Ventures and Hack VC etc.
The testnet is incentivized, so feel free to visit official testnet website, get testnet tokens and play in their ecosystem. All info available on their testnet page here.
As always, I don’t expect much from testnet activities.
Overall, the ecosystem is well-constructed. The key question remains: will builders and users choose to engage with it? .
Fogo - The Fastest Layer 1 Blockchain.
Fogo is another project that did a token sale in Cobie’s own Echo group raising $8m at a $100m valuation.
Fogo uses Firedancer, a highly optimized Solana validator client created by Jump Crypto, as the only execution client on the network.
It’s not even live on Solana itself yet. Solana will soon benefit from Firedancer client, but not all validators may switch to it immediately. This means the network’s speed is limited by the slowest nodes.
As Fogo co-founder Doug Colkitt said “It would be like having a Ferrari but you drive it in bumper to bumper New York City traffic.”
They shared theoretical speed up to 1M transactions per second with 20ms block times under optimal conditions, but Fogo’s live developer network reached ~54,000 TPS. In comparison Solana current theoretical limit is 65k TPS but currently pushing 4.3k.
And MegaETH testnet pushing 20k TPS at 10 ms block times.
In comparison, TradFi systems handle over 100,000 operations per second with sub-second latencies.
The Fogo team believes a decentralized network must match this for institutional-grade use cases like high-frequency trading and instant payments.
It runs the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), meaning devs can easily migrate Solana app, tools, and infrastructure on Fogo without changes. Expect a wave of forks with new shiny tokens (Jupiter, Kamino, Pumpfun etc.)
Obviously, not everyone in Solana ecosystem are happy about it.
Notably, Fogo’s contributors include members of Douro Labs, the team behind the Pyth oracle network, which itself is closely linked to Jump Crypto.
Other notable features:
Multi-Local Consensus (“Follow the Sun”): Fogo groups validators into geographic “zones” that work semi-independently. Control rotates periodically to the next region, preventing any single location from dominating. It means consensus can be reached much faster during normal operation, since messages don’t always have to travel around the entire globe. Can read more about it here.
It will initially have curated set of validators (20–50) at launch.
Fee abstraction: Can pay transaction fees in any tokens.
Token & Fundraising
Fogo raised ~$5.5M in a seed round led by Distributed Global, with participation from CMS Holdings. It’s on top of $8M round on Echo group.
Devnet is live since late 2024, testnet will launch soon, and mainnet should launch mid-2025. Not much info about the token or airdrop yet.
Succinct - Prove the World’s Software.
“Crypto is failing at its mission.
We were promised transparent, verifiable, and trustless systems for global-scale coordination. Instead, we got bridge hacks, multisig L2s with no fraud proofs, and committees of 21 validators controlling billions of dollars.”
That’s the main problem Succinct is solving.
“ZK proofs are one of the most critical technologies to blockchain scaling, interoperability and privacy, but are too complex for most developers today.”
Hard to get excited about ZK proofs right now, but Succinct got my attention with their great marketing campaign and their testnet/website dashboard as MacOS interface.
You can play games and earn points.
Anyway. The problems we face right now:
Each project has to set up their own proof system (Like zkSync and Scroll use Zero Knowledge for scaling, but infra is fragmented.)
Many rely on centralized providers for generating proofs.
This is costly and slows down innovation.
So Succinct ZKPs—a technology that cryptographically proves truth without revealing data—are hard to implement due to fragmented infrastructure and high costs.
Instead of every project reinventing the wheel, Succinct offers a shared marketplace for proof generation. Devs can focus on building apps (rollups, bridges, oracles) while outsourcing proof creation to the network.
Notable Partners: Polygon, Celestia, Avail, Gnosis.
But use cases are more diverse like private voting systems or anonymous transactions. Or you could prove that you have the money in your wallet without actually showing how much.
It’s a technical project but might become the glue that decentralizes and secures most vulnerable crypto projects.
Their testnet, "Level 1: Crisis of Trust," launched on two months ago. You earn stars by generating zero-knowledge proofs. You need a $10 USDC deposit to cover proof generation costs. But to get an invite codes you’ll need to farm it on X, Discord, etc.
I suppose it will be criteria for the airdrop but no details about token are public now.
Succinct raised $55M led by Paradigm and joined Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, and many other names.
Expecting TGE quite soon when mainnet hits the ground.
Resolv - True Delta-Neutral Stablecoin That Works
Many now believe that the next altcoin pump will be fueled by increased institutional adoption, particularly of stablecoins.
The challenge is that the main beneficiaries of stablecoin adoption appear to be institutions and stablecoin issuers, while retail investors might get left with mere scraps.
A third round of retail milking?
I wrote some thoughts on protocols that might benefit from stablecoin adoption but there’s one more I’d like to add here - Resolv.
If you know how Ethena works, you already have a good basics on Resolv.
Both share the same core idea – using crypto collateral plus short-perpetual hedges to create a stablecoin. Yet, Resolv is different by its architecture and approach:
First is Dual-Token Model vs. Single-Token: Ethena has a single-token model (USDe) where all risk and reward flows into the stablecoin holders, managed behind the scenes by the protocol’s reserves.
Resolv uses a dual-token model (USR + RLP) which explicitly segregates the risk into a separate token.
USR: Like USDe, USR maintains its peg using a delta-neutral strategy by hedging ETH price with short futures. You can stake USR to earn yield, converting to stUSR, similar to a savings account.
RLP acts as USR's insurance, absorbing losses to keep USR stable (like when funding rates get negative). RLP holders accept risks for higher rewards. RLP's value fluctuates with the protocol’s performance, acting as a buffer: it grows with profits and shrinks with losses.
This setup lets risk-tolerant users earn more while protecting stablecoin users from market risk. As of writing, the USR generates 4.3% APR and RLP 6.7%.
Not too high, but points farming for airdrop led Resolv to get $636.9M in TVL. Not too bad.
Secondly, Resolv's philosophy is to remain 100% crypto-backed. All collateral is in ETH (and BTC support just announced) with no RWAs involved.
Originally, Ethena was also crypto-only but has since introduced a secondary stablecoin, USDtb, which is 90% backed by BlackRock’s tokenized money-market fund (BUIDL).
This USDtb is in a way an insurance token like USR for Resolv aiming to stabilize USDe during bear markets by providing a traditional asset yield when crypto yields decline.
So you could say Resolv more is "crypto-native" and decentralized in spirit, though Ethena's strategy may capture additional stability by introducing centralized assets.
Fundraising & token
Resolv is yet to official announce fundraising details but backers include Delphi Labs, Daedalus, and No Limit Holdings. They are gearing to launch a community round via Legion soon.
Since September 2024, Resolv is running points program. You can still join by depositing stablecoins and earn points. Can use my ref link to get 20% boost here.
After depositing, you can maximize points via Pendle pools or other strategies.
Token launch $RESOLV is expected soon, in early 2025.
Snapchain - Probably the Largest Consumer L1 There Is
My biggest worry about Fogo, Initia and other chains launching now will they get adoption? What are the killer apps launching on them. As Kyle put it:
“general purpose blockchains will die. each one needs a specific usecase, and they will be defined by what is built on it” - 0xKyle__ on X
Here’s where Snapchain, an L1 built for Farcaster social network, comes in.
Snapchain is needed because decentralized social networks struggle to stay in sync and deliver real-time updates as they scale. Lens will use zkSync technology, but Farcaster is building their own thing.
“Twitter, for example, has 200M daily users and sees 10k TPS and is
likely to see 1TB - 10TB/day in state growth.”
Farcaster’s current system works at small scale but breaks down with more users and nodes. Snapchain will fix it in a decentralized manner.
At launch, it should support 9k+ TPS which would support 2 million daily users (currently DAU is 50k or so).
I won't focus too much on technical details, but there are two exciting parts:
First, is deleting data (pruning), lol.
On blockchains most data needs to be kept forever, but what if you post a meme and immediately regret it? It needs to be gone! FOREVER.
So on Snapchain old data (posts, likes, follows) can be deleted once it's no longer needed.
It’s important as users pay $2 or $3 USD yearly fee getting 500 tx/hr and a storage limit of ~ 10,000 tx.
So if you delete old txs, storage for new txs opens up (or you can pay more).
The second cool part is sharding. Remember that Ethereum had considered sharding before shifting to Layer 2 scaling.
Imagine putting all the social media transactions (likes, posts, etc.) on chain. Millions per day. If every node had to store and process everything, it will lag. Every full node needs to process every transaction, even if it doesn’t affect them. That’s fine for money and smart contracts, but it doesn’t scale well for real-time social.
Snapchain solves this by making each user totally independent (when you register on Farcaster you will get an ID number which is a show-off status if you got the lowest). Your posts don’t affect my account.
So Snapchain splits users across multiple shards (inspired by Near model, btw). Each shard processes only its users. That means more users = more shards = more throughput.
To keep it all in sync, there’s one final layer: a main chain that bundles up the shards and publishes a global block.
Ethereum can’t do this easily. Its transactions depend on shared state—smart contracts, tokens, balances. That makes account-level sharding is difficult.
Snapchain works because social actions are simple. They only affect the sender.
There’s more to it and you can read it here but I’m bullish on Farcaster and Snapchain as it’s building use case first and then adding a blockchain to it.
It worked well for Hyperliquid, and even with 50k DAU and 900k total users, Farcaster is one of the top consumer apps.
Launch Date & Token
TLDR: Genesis block already live with mainnet scheduled for April 15, 2025. So very soon.
I believe after Snapchain is live and Farcaster is ready to scale, Coinbase x Farcaster announced integration into Coinbase Wallet will start.
This is a HUGE F***ING DEAL. Social media feed on Coinbase Wallet? I mean seriously.
I’m not sure when token goes live though, the team has been silent on it but some rumour and funding announcement probably mean it’s coming.
Fundraising
Snapchain itself is a technical component, not a separate entity raising funds. The development of Snapchain is funded by Merkle Manufactory, the company building the Farcaster protocol.
Most notably, in May 2024, they announced a $150M funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from other major investors like a16z crypto, Haun Ventures, USV, Variant, and Standard Crypto.
If you join Farcaster, follow me @ Ignas, too!
Bonus Round: Eclipse, and Atlas
I was initially planning to write top 7 TGEs and protocols but this post got too long. I always get carried away (and often delete 30% of my content before posting!)
Eclipse and Atlas are two other SVM (Solana VM) chains on top of Fogo.
Eclipse is an Ethereum L2 but instead of EVM it uses SVM, and Celestia for DA. It is already live but only accrued $57M in TVL. It shows how hard is to differentiate from other general purpose chains as Kyle (above tweet) claims.
SVM alone is not enough to differentiate from other L2s.
Token seemingly confirmed as with the ticker ES:
E - Ethereum
S - Solana
Atlas
Atlas is another L2 SVM that settles on Ethereum but purposefully built for onchain orderbooks, margin systems, high frequency trading. So it needs SPEEED! Testnet is already live.
Since I know that you want to move back to scrolling on X here is more info by Blockworks on Eclipse and Atlas.
But before you do, please click on ❤️ and subscribe if you haven’t do so. Happy scrolling on X, my fellow degens.
