📝 Editor’s Note

This week we co-hosted out first ever Onchain Data Hackathon with Artemis – a one-day chart building contest bringing together data analysts, builders and investors from across the industry to uncover stories that only the onchain data could tell.

📊 Today's issue includes a collection of sector-level coverage from the hackathon submissions.

🎉 Before we dive in we want to congratulate our two winners: Anthony Loya and Delleon McGlone.

🤝 Also a special thanks for Artemis for co-hosting with us, Solana for the office space, and Parallel Limited for the next-gen titanium keyboards for the winners.

Stablecoins: Ethena, MakerDAO, Curve | Layer 2s: Base, Arbitrum, Celo | Bridges: LiFi | Staking: Ethereum vs Solana

• Ethena consistently maintained the highest market cap at 3.1B, followed by MakerDAO (now Sky) at 2.16B, and Curve having the smallest but most stable market cap at 351.4M. All three protocols showed a general downward trend, with Ethena experiencing the most significant net dollar decline from $3.61B to $2.54B (-29.64%) this declining trend continued for MakerDAO $2.3B - $1.5B (-45%), while Curve grew slightly from $352M - $359M (+1.99%). Ethena's actions was primarily driven by a mix of regulatory uncertainty, reduced liquidity (-35.33), and Market Cap decline (-24.2%).

• Curve leads decentralized stablecoins in volume, capturing about 60% of the market among these protocols. MakerDAO ranks second with $100M daily volume (25% of total), while Ethena Labs averages $50M (15% of total) with occasional spikes.

• MakerDAO consistently dominates usage with about 90% of DAAs, averaging around 50k per day. A significant spike occurred on August 10th, with DAAs peaking at nearly 450,000, an 800% increase from its average. Curve & Ethena show much lower activity, each averaging less than 5k in daily active addresses

• The L2 races are showing no signs of slowing. Base has surged on the back of their Onchain Summer campaign, surpassing 1.5M daily active users in September. During this same 3 month period, Polygon DAAs fell 65% from 1.4M to 500k. Celo has picked up steam to gain the 3rd spot, despite averaging the lowest DEX volume of any L2, the chain has surged to 680k+ DAAs as their stablecoin usage continues to grow in Africa.

• A maturing DeFi ecosystem is a strong signal of network health and PMF for an L2. 
  
  DEX VOLUME: Base leads the category in DEX volume, crossing $4B 7D volume in September - driven by the growth of the chains leading DEX, Aerodrome.  Arbitrum was close behind with $3.5B 7D volume as a leading hub for derivatives trading. All other L2s combined had just $1.9B in volume over the same time. 
  
  TVL: Arbitrum leads the category in TVL with $2.5B to Base's $2.2B. Polygon, Scroll & Blast all sit between $750M - $990M TVL, further showing the dominance that Base and Arbitrum have right now in L2 DeFi.

• Stablecoins on L2s have seen $344.7B in transaction volume over the last 30 days from 5.2M wallets. Average transaction size over this period was $1936.46. $11.4B of stablecoin supply sits on L2s, up from $4.3B (+165%) at the start of the year. 68% sits collectively on Arbitrum ($4.4B) and Base ($3.4B), followed by Polygon ($1.8B), OP Mainnet ($1.4B), and Celo ($300M).

• LiFi is a cross-chain solution offering price execution for swaps and bridge transactions across major blockchains. Through an API, it integrates with DEX aggregators, bridges, and intent-based systems to optimize cross-chain operations. LiFi’s platform finds the most efficient routes across protocols, leading its V2 Jumper.exchange to 4.2M transactions, surpassing Metamask Bridge (529K), Layer3 (450K), Pocketfi (349K), and TransferTo.xyz (235K), enhancing interoperability.

• Activity of bridges saw significant peaks in late 2022 and early 2023, with high usage particularly for debridge, celerCircle, and omni. There was a notable decline, with generally low activity through most of 2023. Leading into Q4 2024, there's an uptick in usage across bridges led by Stargate v2.

• This chart highlights Across's dominance in bridges with 33.8% market share among other protocols. Its significant portion in the total transaction volume suggests Across's strong presence and utilization in cross-chain transactions compared to others.

• Staking is critical to the security of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. Ethereum, Solana, and Polkadot are among the largest PoS chains by the value of tokens staked. Ethereum leads this metric, with over $88 billion staked as of September 2024. Solana, however, has seen a surge, with its staked value soaring from $7.5 billion in September 2023 to over $58 billion by September 2024.

• Another key metric for PoS blockchains is the staking ratio—the share of tokens actively participating in staking. Solana and Polkadot consistently outperform Ethereum in this area. However, Ethereum’s staking ratio has been steadily rising, reaching around 28% as of September 2024.

• Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) represent staked assets on PoS blockchains, offering a simple way for users to gain exposure to staking rewards. While Ethereum leads with an LST market cap exceeding $30 billion, Solana’s LSTs are growing in popularity and will likely continue to capture market share.