Chainfeeds Summary:
2025 proved only one thing: everything is about trading. With extremely short exit windows, almost no tokens are worth holding long-term.
Article source:
https://www.ignasdefi.com/p/crypto-truths-and-lies-lessons-from
Article Author:
Ignas | DeFi Research
Opinion:
Ignas | DeFi Research: Airdrops Aren't Dead. In 2025 alone, there were nearly $4.5 billion in airdrops (at peak valuations): Story Protocol (IP): ~$1.4 billion; Berachain (BERA): ~$1.17 billion; Jupiter (JUP): ~$791 million ("Jupuary"); Animecoin (ANIME): ~$711 million; Linea (LINEA): ~$437 million. The changes are threefold: token fatigue, stronger Sybil identification (which also explains the negative sentiment surrounding airdrops on X), and declining valuations. You also need to sell all airdrops to maximize your returns. An obvious but overlooked truth from 2025 is that many projects were actually better before TGE. Looking ahead to 2026, it will be a big year for airdrops, with many heavyweight projects about to TGE: Polymarket, Kalshi (maybe), MetaMask, MetaETH, Tempo, Base (?), and several perpetual DEXs, etc. This isn't a year to stop clicking buttons, but a year to stop blindly betting and start focusing our firepower. My initial, less obvious, assessment was that a fee switch wouldn't automatically drive up the price. In reality, the revenue of most protocols is simply insufficient to support a significant market capitalization revaluation. The revenue/market capitalization ratio in crypto is inherently distorted. I wrote at the time: "A fee switch doesn't determine how high a token can rise, but how low it can fall." Looking at DeFiLlama's "holder revenue" data, almost all high-revenue-sharing tokens outperformed ETH, except for $HYPE. The performance of $UNI was particularly intriguing: Uniswap finally turned on the switch, even buying back and burning $100 million worth of UNI. The result: UNI initially rose by about 75%, then gave it all back, ending the year flat along with other DeFi tokens. Three conclusions: Buybacks are the price floor, not the ceiling; everything in this cycle is trading; and the selling pressure from continuous unlocking must be considered (most tokens are still in low circulation). Although USDT's market share has dropped from 67% to 60%, its market capitalization is still growing. Citi predicts that by 2030, the stablecoin market capitalization will increase from $280 billion to $1.9 trillion (base case scenario), or even $4 trillion (bull market scenario). In 2025, the narrative shifts from transactions to payment infrastructure. Projects like Tempo, Stable (a scam), and Plasma have entered the fray. But the transactional stablecoin narrative is not easy. Circle's IPO opened high but closed low, almost erasing all gains. The reality is: in 2025, everything is still just about transactions. You rarely actually pay directly with stablecoins unless you're using a crypto card. The crypto card boom is partly due to their ability to bypass banks' strict AML, offering "tax convenience." But the result is: this is extremely beneficial for the blockchain space. I still dream of the day when a P2P crypto payment card that bypasses Visa/Mastercard will emerge. This, in my view, represents a 10,000x opportunity. Payy, Kast, and Holyheld are all working towards this to varying degrees, and their TGE might surprise us in 2026.
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