Original author: Karen, Foresight News

God rewards hard work, hard work is not bullied, and the dust of Starknet airdrop has settled.

After receiving the airdrop, should I sell STRK? Today we will look for inspiration from the market making style of STRK market maker Wintermute. As a very active market maker in the cryptocurrency space, Wintermute creates liquid and efficient markets on CEX, DEX, and OTC trading platforms for Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Uniswap, dYdX, etc. Liquidity is provided on over 50 exchanges and trading platforms.

According to Wintermutes official website, as of the end of 2023, Wintermutes cumulative transaction volume reached nearly US$3.7 trillion. Wintermute is present among the market makers of blue-chip tokens in various fields such as OP, ARB, WLD, BLUR, DYDX, APE, etc. The community believes that Wintermutes market-making style is also characterized by high-price opening, selling, washing, attracting funds, and re-pulling. At the same time, during the market-making process, in addition to direct transactions in the secondary market, it is also accompanied by news, market trends, etc. Simultaneous efforts on multiple fronts.

After cross-checking the weekly and monthly charts of OP, ARB, WLD, BLUR, DYDX, APE and other non-Wintermute market-making tokens in similar sectors, the author found that Wintermutes market-making style will be affected by a variety of factors. It cannot be judged based on the performance of only a few of the tokens, such as the field in which the token is located, the market value of the token, the bull-bear cycle when the token is issued, the share of Wintermute market making, trading strategies and other factors. .

This article will look for patterns from the performance of OP and ARB tokens, which Wintermute participates in market making and are also on the Layer 2 track, to help users provide some reference when making STRK decisions.

OP

Wintermute encountered some challenges and controversies during OPs market making process. A few days after OP issued the currency, Wintermute disclosed a FUD news, that is, when Wintermute initially received 20 million OP loans (the total initial supply of OP was 2^32 (4, 294, 967, 296)), due to Wintermute An internal mistake within the team provided Optimism with a Gnosis Safe multi-signature wallet address deployed on the Ethereum mainnet instead of a pre-prepared Optimism address. Subsequently, Wintermute agreed to receive an additional 20 million OP, while providing 50 million USDC as collateral and exploring fund recovery options. Although Wintermute recovered most of the OP after this, some observers questioned Wintermutes true motivation and purpose of making markets on the OP.

Affected by the rush of scientists when the Optimism token was first launched, the serious delays in the main network and RPC after the airdrop application began, and the mistakes in Wintermute market making, the price of OP dropped from about $2 just after the opening to 20 days later. to around US$0.5, a drop of 70%. After several rounds of increases and shocks, the current price is around US$3.8. The duration of the three washes ranged from 1 month, 4 months to 6 months.

OP price trend, source: CoinGecko

ARB

Before the ARB airdrop was opened for claim, that is, on March 23, 2023, the address starting with 0x cce 30, marked as Wintermute by Arkham, received 40 million ARB from the Arbitrum Foundation (the total amount of ARB is 10 billion).

A few days after the airdrop, the Arbitrum Foundation launched the AIP-1 proposal, proposing the introduction of the decentralized autonomous organizational structure ArbitrumDAO, and applying for a funding allocation of 750 million ARB tokens. However, the Arbitrum Foundation transferred 750 million ARB tokens as early as the early morning of March 17, and the transfer address was Arbitrums administrative budget wallet in the AIP-1 proposal at the end of March.

The opening price of ARB was around $1.5, but due to this governance chaos, lack of trust and transparency, late response, and FUD sentiment caused by token selling, the FUD sentiment continued to ferment, and the price of ARB has been floating at $1.2 in the following two weeks. , and then continued to fall again in line with the markets rise to above US$160 million. After that, it fluctuated between US$1.3 and US$0.75 for seven or eight months, and then began to rise steadily from December last year, and the current price is around US$1.8.

ARB price trend, source: CoinGecko

STRK

Wintermute received 2 million market-making tokens before the STRK airdrop (the total amount of STRK is 10 billion), and Flow Traders and Amber Group are also STRK market makers. After the token was launched, the highest price of STRK was US$7.71 at the beginning of Binances launch and US$3.5 on OKX, and then gradually fell, fluctuating between US$1.6 and US$2.

Today StarkWare announced an update to the lock-in schedule for early contributors and investors. Specifically, the 134 million tokens originally planned to be unlocked on April 15 will be adjusted to only 64 million tokens. Thereafter, 64 million tokens will be unlocked every month until March 15, 2025, and 127 million tokens will be unlocked every month for the next 24 months until March 15, 2027. The 580 million tokens held by early contributors and investors will be unlocked before the end of 2024, up from the original plan of 2 billion. 1.4 billion additional tokens will be gradually unlocked by the end of 2025, another 1.5 billion by the end of 2026, and 380 million by March 15, 2027. Affected by this, STRK broke through $2.1.

Considering that nearly 74% of STRK airdrops have been claimed so far, it can be understood that the selling pressure should have been relieved to a great extent. In addition, since the number of tokens Wintermute makes in STRK is smaller than in OP and ARB, it may have less impact on the market.

It is worth noting that Three Arrows Capital’s liquidator address “Teneo: 3AC Liquidation” also received 134 million STRK this month and is the ninth largest holder of STRK. This is also an event worthy of attention and may mean that Three Arrows Capitals assets are reallocated or disposed of during the liquidation process. As early as March and November 2021, Three Arrows Capital participated in StarkWares US$75 million Series B financing and US$50 million Series C financing respectively. In 2022, Three Arrows Capital liquidator Teneo took control of $35.6 million worth of assets including fiat currency and StarkWare tokens.

Overall, in terms of price performance, OP and ARB fell within 10 to 20 days after opening, then fluctuated up and down, and experienced multiple small peaks before rising sharply. Two other points that need to be reminded are that OP and ARB both experienced FUD crises after issuing coins; and they were in a period when the market was turning from bear to bull. This market condition had a certain positive impact on their overall price performance.

For the STRK token, if we refer to the performance of the two Layer 2 tokens that Wintermute participates in market making, there may be some short-term opportunities. If you have not sold airdrop tokens before, this may not be an ideal time to sell.

Of course, when making decisions, you also need to pay attention to market trends, understand the current market hot spots and capital flows, and formulate appropriate investment strategies based on your own risk tolerance and goals. At the same time, considering the volatility of the cryptocurrency market, it is recommended to adopt a long-term investment strategy to avoid being disturbed by short-term fluctuations.

If you missed the Starknet airdrop or want to explore other opportunities in the Starknet ecosystem, you can learn about the Starknet DeFi Spring plan launched by the Starknet Foundation. The plan will last for six to eight months and will issue 40 million STRK to participating DeFi protocols on Starknet. Participating users have the opportunity to receive airdrops of the platform’s own tokens, as well as STRK incentives, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone. If you are interested, please click on the article If you missed the Starknet airdrop, learn about the 40 million STRK brand incentive plan》Learn about the Starknet ecological projects participating in the plan.