Back as the conference bro, Token will be a good one based on the current market so quite excited to meet teams and frens from the trenches Any event recommendations? (bonus point for alcohol free flow)

Okay guys it's time again. @token2049 is approaching rapidly and we need to connect as many high-signal ppl as possible for the sake of our industry. That's why I started a smol Telegram group with a few chads. Comment or DM to apply if you're going to Singapore. (sidenote: this chat will be capped and curated, so no guarantee that you'll get in)

5 tokens with gud tech/narrative alignment for the next few weeks and months that I'm eyeing rn: - $ARX (encrypted supercomputer powered by decentralized MPC network for private AI, and all sorts of encrypted compute use cases, incl their confidential token standard cSPL on Solana) → DYOR: @Arcium - $ZAMA (FHE protocol that enables confidential assets to be issued, traded, and managed on public blockchains with heavy focus on enabling institutions through private, verifiable, and programmable onchain computations) → DYOR: @zama - $NEAR (open infrastructure powering the agent economy, enabling confidential execution & inference, capable of >1 million TPS, and unifying liquidity across 30+ chains) → DYOR: @NEARProtocol - ethereum:0x1eef208926667594e5136e89d0e9dd6907959197 (the base layer for the machine economy, enabling robots to do business onchain, and empowering anyone to activate their machines, finance them, and build new multichain apps around them) → DYOR: @peaq - solana:69LjZUUzxj3Cb3Fxeo1X4QpYEQTboApkhXTysPpbpump (full robotics stack: simulate and train in SimArena, build on Codec’s framework (Fabric as compute layer, OPTR as runtime), get on a factory floor through the foundry (their accelerator program), and fund your idea on @machinedotfun) → DYOR: @codecopenflow

Today's branch license auctions sold out almost immediately, closing at roughly 12k $STANDARD. = 1.2M $STANDARD burned forever. Tomorrow's auction will hence open at almost 24k $STANDARD ($10k rn). = another 2.4M $STANDARD will be burned forever. The day after tmrw, the auction will open at 48k $STANDARD ($20k rn). = yet again burning up to 4.8M $STANDARD forever. And so on... That's definitely a very powerful supply sink. If the hype persists, it will likely remove 0.84% of supply from circulation permanently in just the first 3(!) days alone.

Added some $ARX over the past few weeks. Quick rundown on why: Privacy is a $ZEC-led narrative rn and $ARX hasn't rly caught that bid yet. Makes sense tho as C-SPL (Arcium's confidential token standard on Solana) isn't live on mainnet yet. Umbra is cool and runs on Arcium, but it's an app with its own SDK, not the native standard. Arcium's MPC network itself has been live since Feb with 2.5M+ encrypted computations. Once C-SPL hits, Arcium is the brand behind a generalisable, Solana-native private money system any SPL token and any program can plug into. More composable and accessible than a shielded pool. The bigger angle imho is private AI tho. @AskVenice ($VVV) owns that narrative rn at a $1.1B mcap, running E2EE inference in TEEs, so you trust the chip. Arcium's MPC swaps that for a non-collusion assumption, arguably the stronger trust model for this exact use case. And the product already has a name: Blackthorn, encrypted inference on standard Nvidia GPUs, announced in June, early access, nothing public yet. Infra in place tho, and the team is in place too (they acquired Inpher's MPC-for-ML team in 2024). Would almost be surprised if this doesn't ship straight into the narrative $VVV is being valued on soon. Valuation-wise $ARX sits at $33M mcap / $159M FDV. 33x below Venice on mcap, a rounding error vs $ZEC, and still 66% off its June TGE high. No token unlocks until June 2027 either. The current main questions are the timeline and value capture. C-SPL already been delayed for some time, and fees are paid in SOL iirc, not ARX. But at this base, with both narratives already validated by bigger names, I like the short to mid term setup here. But NFA, DYOR anon.

Solana Perp DEX Wars Line-Up @solana has held the crown for being the #1# token launch and onchain spot trading chain for years. Aside @base and most recently Robinhood, there was rarely any serious competition. However, perps on Solana have always struggled to gain the traction of Hyperliquid, or even Lighter/Variational. Yet, the price is big, so the landscape is getting more and more crowded. Meet the Solana perp DEX ecosystem: - @PhoenixTrade (Ellipsis Labs' fully on-chain, crankless CLOB, ~0.5s settlement, fees a third of Hyperliquid's. The engine everyone else plugs into: Solflare Perps, Aeonian, TradePilot and Imperial all route into it, 65+ markets incl 24/7 stocks, $1B all-time.) - @pacifica_fi (Off-chain matching, on-chain settlement, built by ex FTX COO Constance Wang, self-funded, no token. The CEX-grade product: 65+ perps incl RWAs, FX and pre-IPO, vaults, API, mobile, $220B+ cumulative and still farming points.) - @JupiterExchange (Trader vs JLP pool, oracle pricing, no orderbook slippage, up to 250x leverage, only SOL, ETH, wBTC. Wins on distribution and the JLP counterparty, largest cumulative venue at ~$510B but no longer the volume leader.) - @bulktrade (Own leaderless network running on Solana validator subset, BULKBFT 20ms blocks, 5 to 20ms execution, portfolio margining, BIP-1 lets anyone deploy a perp market. Solana's answer to a dedicated HL-style execution layer without an external sequencer, $8M from Robot capital and 6MV, $25.9M pre-deposits, mainnet live now.) - @gmtrade_xyz (GMX v2 pool model ported to Solana, rebranded from GMXSOL. The RWA venue: commodities, stocks, forex, indices, 86 pairs, #1# Solana perp DEX by volume since March, points-driven tho, so read the volume accordingly.) - @Bulletxyz (Zeta's rebirth as a Solana network extension: ZK-verified rollup built with Sovereign SDK and using Celestia DA, sub-ms matching, 30k orders/s, multi-asset margin. The L2 route to CEX latency, still a gated private mainnet with a $100k deposit cap.) - @buildonparasol (Neon Labs' ZK-powered perps engine that extends the Agave client at node level for CLOB-grade execution on app-specific blockspace, with changes meant to flow upstream to Solana. Pre-launch, research only so far.) - @VelocityDEX (Drift after the $285M April exploit: rebranded 1 Jul, rebuilt as perps-only and USDT-settled with a $127.5M Tether credit line. Private beta round 2 since 9 Sep, the comeback story of the war.) - @jtx_trade (Jito Labs' self-custodial terminal, live since 14 Jul with spot only, perps and prediction markets on the roadmap. 80% of fees to JTO buyback and burn, so the perps launch matters for JTO more than for traders yet.) - @ranger_finance (The original Solana perps aggregator: smart order routing across Solana venues plus Hyperliquid, $86M MetaDAO ICO in January. Terminal, not an engine.) - @derpetual (Thiel Fellow Antoni Kiszka's "market for any asset, with leverage" and looking to introduce the concept of "abstract futures", a.k.a. derivatives of any numeric value.) - @margin_trade (Solayer's cross-margin perps venue, mainnet since June, crypto plus gold, silver, oil and an MT500 equity index, only 3x at launch. Runs on Solayer's own stack, so Solana-adjacent rather than Solana-native.) - @arqentrade (Long-tail perps: 20 isolated-margin markets since early Sep, each backed by a project-funded maker pool, paste a CA and trade it. Self-reported numbers only so far.) - @PercolatorTrade (Third-party productization of Toly's open-source sharded perps design: router plus independent slabs, reserve-commit against MEV, a perp market for any Solana token. Devnet and waitlist for now.) - @ImperialPerps (Not a venue, a perps router: scores Phoenix and Jupiter on all-in cost and routes one order, GMTrade and Lighter next, runs its own liquidations. The aggregator play for the current cycle.) Who are you placing your bets on?