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Looking forward, people often feel that the front is full of hazy or chaotic feeling, and they can't see the direction clearly. What we can do is follow theAs the main line of 2021 continues to extend forward, add some logical reasoning and imagination, and try to find out the bright lines, dark lines, and branch lines of the next year...

For the convenience of understanding the following, here is still a brief explanation of Alpha and Beta:

Alpha (Alpha income): It means that the asset investment strategy mainly relies on the active management ability of the manager. For example, the advantage of many private equity funds or hedge funds lies in the ability of fund managers to obtain absolute returns through active management, and the returns do not fluctuate with the market.

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01 

The current state of the circle: Basic Beta

In 2022, the basic Beta harvest may change from BTC itself to BTC + ETH + DeFi, which is related to the current environment and pattern in the circle.

From 2020 to 2021, ETH can be regarded as advanced Beta, and DeFi is Alpha, because for the circle,The only thing that can really be used is DeFi, and DeFi is only available on ETH.It’s different now, the era of ETH’s dominance is completely over, and the era of multi-chain universe is officially coming.

The major high-speed chains in this wave are completely different from those in 2017-2018. Back then, these chains came for ETH killers, represented by EOS. In the end, ETH was alive and well, and several killers died. . this wave,Several major high-speed chains are technically more advanced, but their posture is completely lowered.

Ultimately, ETH took its rightful place.

Among them, EVM-compatible chains such as Avalanche, Fantom, and Near have a higher "closeness" to ETH, and they form more "competitive" relationships with Layer 2 such as Polygon (formerly Matic), Optimism, Arbitrum, and ZK-Sync.

Cosmos and Polkadot mainly focus on issuing chains and cross-chains,Form a "competition + cooperation" relationship with ETH, Solana and Dfinity have completely different technical architectures, forming a differentiated track model with ETH.

In this multi-chain universe, ETH will gradually become closer to BTC,Holding can only get Beta harvest.

After the rise of DeFi in NFT and GameFi, it can be clearly felt thatThe market is not buying much of DeFi's small innovations, It is no longer the state of going straight up in the midsummer of DeFi last year.

For example, the market performance of the recent fixed-rate loan agreement YieldFarming and fixed-rate agreement Mainframe has been a mess.

Uniswap, AAVE, and Compound have grown into unicorns. Although the market recognition is high, the value of Token has been discovered, and the market value is high enough.Basically began to follow the rise and fall of BTC and ETH. No matter from which aspect, it is difficult to see the continuation of Alpha.

Of course, DeFi is the track with the fastest innovation speed. It is hard to say whether there will be any projects that will come out suddenly. The big innovations at the level of AMM back then will directly rank among the Alpha income (noteJust the possibility of individual projects, not the overall DeFi sector）。

At present, it can be seen that the only thing that can drive DeFi to a higher level is the virgin land that connects with the real world.

What is currently in the bud is the world's first DeFi-based real asset loan issued by MakerDao using the Centrifuge protocol this year. Currently, only Polymath, NAOS Finance, and Centrifuge are mining this part of the project.It feels like the future is bright but the road is tortuous, especially at the point of time is very difficult to judge.

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02  

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Layer2, high-speed public chain, application chain infrastructure

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1. Layer2

The launch of Arbitrum in September can be regarded as a landmark event. At that time, in just a few days, TVL (total locked volume)Has surpassed the previous leader Polygon, but it is now ranked behind Polygon, but the performance at that time was enough to show that the funds recognized the "real Layer 2".

Layer 2 may be in the same situation as the high-speed chain in 2021 in the next year, each vying for land and ecology. However, because too many people are optimistic about it, the starting point is very high, so I feel that there is a high probability that it can only be an advanced Beta and cannot enter the ranks of Alpha.

After all, Alpha was originallyAlpha is something that most people can't see. Next, let’s talk about the respective situations of Layer 2.

• Arbitrum：Currently the hottest Layer2, TVL ranks first, and it is used in both native and migration projects.

• Optimism：Originally, this was the most "rooted and popular" Optimistic Rollup, but it turned out to be cut off by Arbitrum. The current popularity, TVL and other indicators are all behind Arbitrum.

• OmiseGo：The earliest Plasma took the lead, but it was completely forgotten later. Recently, it has been catching up, changing its name to Boba, preparing to do Rollup, andComes with a quick withdrawal bridge, to help overcome the 7-day withdrawal period issue.

The problem facing the entire OP family is that the ZK system should be fully launched in about half a year, leaving only half a year for Optimism to "grab the beach" to make an ecological layout. After all, God V himself said that the short-term depends on OP, and the long-term depends on ZK. After ZK came out,Positioning and Survival Issues for the OP SeriesIt's a very worthwhile point.

But I have a hunch that the OP series and the ZK series will coexist for a long time, even if the ZK series is a better solution...

Next, let's take a look at the teams of the ZK series:

• ZK-Sync ：The ZK series, which was the most promising before, was supposed to release 2.0 in August, that is,The prototype of general-purpose ZK-Rollup, but the technical difficulty is relatively large, so it takes longer than expected. Fortunately, it is not far away, and the next few weeks should see the first phase of the test network "North Star" go online.

• Starkware：Currently the hottest ZK system is due to Dydx's popularity and Immutable X's ready-to-go. The competition between Starkware and ZK-Sync should be similar to the competition between Optimism and Arbitrum.

• Hermez：It is nicknamed "Hermes" in the circle. It previously gave up the most difficult universal ZK-Rollup and specialized in transfers. It was later acquired by Polygon, which can be regarded as complementing its lack of "true Layer 2". However, because it is not universal Layer2, it feelsIt is still not enough to look at ZK-Sync and Starkware.

• Aztec ：Rollup, which focuses on privacy, is similar to ZK-Sync but not exactly ZK-Sync.The advantage is that it comes with privacy, and the disadvantage is that privacy increases the cost. Rollup, which is more expensive and more difficult to achieve a universal compatible EVM, is more difficult than ZK-Sync and Starkware.

There are two problems faced by the entire ZK family:

• The Optimism series was launched earlier, with the advantage of early layout,Long withdrawal periods are also greatly eased by various bridges；

• The Ethereum Foundation is building a ZKEVM itself, which is extremely difficult. Theoretically, it wants the app to go directly to the second layer of ZK-Rollup without any changes or translations. It may be directly compatible with ZK-Sync's Zinc language and Starkware's The Cairo language forms a competitive relationship,It's just that this "ultimate ZKEVM" may take 1-2 years before we can see it.

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2. High-speed chain

Looking at the high-speed chains, their biggest competitor is no longer ETH, but the Rollups just mentioned. However, compared with the direct descendants of Rollups, the current high-speed chains also have their own characteristics.

• Near：The shards temporarily abandoned by ETH2.0 continue on Near, but currently there is only one shard, and multi-shards and cross-shards are still under development.

• Solana：As the most beautiful boy in the high-speed chain this year, Solana took advantage of its speed and started to take a differentiated route from ETH. From the DEX on it, it can be seen that the order book is often the main one, and AMM is supplemented.

  The game masterpiece StarAtlas will be launched next year,I feel that Solana will follow the style of "professional trading + game chain".It is also worth mentioning that Solana currently accounts for the largest part of the NFT data stored on Arweave.

• Cardano：It exists like a mystery. It is a miracle to maintain the current market value and ranking without smart contracts. Fortunately, smart contracts are finally launched.The battle of the new public chain, Cardano can finally enter the game.

• Fantom：It is currently popularized by AC's Rarity Game, and its DAG (Direct Acyclic Graph, Directed Acyclic Graph) data structure is also very powerful, butThe overall DeFi and NFT ecology is still weak, I wonder if it will evolve into an exclusive game chain similar to Ronin.

• Avalanche: Recently, it has been injected and supported by several large capitals, and the price has risen accordingly. The biggest reliance is the unique avalanche protocol.The ecology is relatively rich, but lack of real explosions and faucets,still need time to prove myself。

• Celo: A chain that is easily overlooked, but in fact the capital behind it is extremely strong, and the main focus isMoblie APP and various stable tokenssecondary title

3. Application chain infrastructure

The rise of Axie Infinity's Ronin sidechain and Terra will allow people to see another blockchain implementation in 2021 - AppChain (application chain).

At least one project has an additional option in development. Is it to find a pleasing public chain and deploy it in the form of a contract? Or make a chain by yourself? The cost of building a chain alone is higher and the technology is more difficult, butAlso run the chain by yourself, the flexibility is bound to be much higher, look at the daily activities of Axie Infinity that exploded instantly after Ronin went live, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

So if you want to build an application chain, what are your options? As it stands, there are basically five:

1. Learning from Ronin and building an ETH side chain should be the most costly solution, which requires a star team + capital support.

2. Build an ETH sidechain on SKALE (a Dapp that runs Ethereum at 1000 times faster).

3. Develop a chain with the Cosmos SDK.

4. Napoca's Substrate develops a chain and connects to Polkadot (Polkadot is built using Substrate).

5. Napoca's Substrate develops a chain and connects to the Octopus Network on Near

Ronin and Terra have made a good start for the application chain, and we will definitely see it in the next 1-2 yearsMore and more application chains appear before our eyessummary

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summary

Due to space reasons, we will write here first. In the 2022 outlook (below), we will write about Alpha and possible super Alpha benefits, including derivatives, cross-chain bridges (this is the dark line), Web3, multi-chain wallets, and ZK-Snark Wait, everyone can pay attention at that time.