The Castle Chronicle: Oracle and CEX coins are ripping! Are Solana's Mobile Devices still a thing?
PLUS: How Liminal is improving Delta-Neutral Strategies
Welcome to Edition 134 of The Castle Chronicle!
How’s your summer going? Buy a granita or an ice cream and sit back: enjoy some Castle alpha from the past week!
Here’s what we have for you today:
🔍 Market Watch - Oracle and CEX coins are ripping!
📱 Mobile Devices powered by Solana, are they still a thing?
🪙 How Liminal is making Delta-Neutral Strategies Composable
💙🧡 ARB Corner - USD.AI, Stronger Together
🏰 Castle Reads - All of Castle’s research you might have missed
📖 Recommended Reads - The best reads from the best researchers on CT
🔍 Market Watch
Gm frens! It’s another boring sideways week for BTC, but there are some crazy moves in the markets nonetheless. Let’s check them out!
Price Action
BTC has been moving sideways for a while now, but the trend is still very much alive. All EMAs are rising, and the price is consolidating above them; therefore, any sideways price action is expected to result in re-accumulation and continuation.
Top Performers
We’re seeing an interesting shift in the TOP 5 recently. In the past, it used to be mostly meme coins, but these days we’re seeing a lot of L1 and DeFi - a refreshing change. This week’s winner is without a doubt OKB with a crazy +180% pump.
Taking a look at the $OKB chart, it’s in a really good spot all the way from the weekly. It just broke out of a long-lasting sideways price action with undeniable momentum. Following this on LTFs makes a lot of sense.
Narrative Performance
Oracles have seen a big move this week that is mostly carried by API3 pumping around 80% and a smaller move by LINK. The same goes for CEX coins with the aforementioned OKB pump. Other narratives are neutral this week, with +/- 10% moves.
While some of these moves look crazy and make you think “How could I have capitalized on them?”, from a strictly technical price action standpoint, there was no way to catch this. Both OKB and API3 pumped out of nowhere in a very inconsistent way. Unless you’re an investor, you don’t get to enjoy these gains.
Don’t FOMO, risk responsibly, and I’ll see y’all next time!
Courtesy of 0x_Vlad - trend-based trader and MentFX student
Not following what I’m talking about? Check out my quick cheatsheet to understand how I approach a chart.
📱 Mobile Devices powered by Solana, are they still a thing?
Seeker Solana Phone
I recently saw this post about the first batch of Seeker Solana Phone (second generation) being delivered in early August.
Coming with some innovative features, such as a Seed vault wallet, built in the hardware separately from the software, and the Seeker ID, which aims to be the digital passport for Solana users in the ecosystem.
There is a complete store of over 100 crypto apps, such as Helium, Stepn and Storj, built around a mobile-focused architecture that the new Seeker phone can tap into. I need to dig a bit more into those apps, to be honest.
The other interesting aspect of this device is that a mysterious SKR token will be central to the economics around the Seeker phone.
If every buyer of the Saga Solana phone, which was the first generation of crypto phone built by the Solana Labs team, was profitable because of the BONK airdrop associated with the Saga soulbound NFT, we could expect the same for the Seeker phone, with a possible $SKR airdrop and some unique perks associated with the Seeker ID.
If you want a nice intro on the WHY behind this phone, watch this video.
I ordered mine, by the way.
Playsolana
Another interesting mobile experience is Playsolana.
Nothing has been disclosed yet about this upcoming product, but it aims to be the main gateway for the Gaming Solana ecosystem with a hardware product that should meet the needs of Gamefi protocols and users.
The best alpha I got on this device was from a Twitter Space with one of the founders, where he clearly signals that a token would shortly follow the full release of the Solana Gameboy to the public.
There is PlayDex, which will be the central hub for the Playsolana ecosystem. You can’t do much yet, except order and track your Solana Gameboy and accumulate some points with different tasks.
Last thing about this “Crypto Gameboy”:
There is a dedicated NFT collection.
Each of these characters will have roles in some games to be released on the device, and they will have their own token allocation (according to the founders’ words). You can also stake those NFTs on PlayDex to receive extra XP points.
ANYWAY, have a good week,
From CL with LOVE
🪙 How Liminal is making Delta-Neutral Strategies Composable
With the launch of their tokenized delta-neutral strategies, announced a few days ago, Liminal is once again changing DeFi on HyperEVM, providing users with composable primitives that can be used across the ecosystem.
But before diving into them, let’s take a closer look at Liminal.
What is Liminal
Liminal is a decentralized protocol on the HyperEVM chain that enables users to deposit USDC and create delta-neutral strategies on various tokens, from HYPE to FARTCOIN.
By depositing USDC into Liminal, users gain exposure to automated delta-neutral strategies. These strategies combine:
A spot long position (e.g., BTC, HYPE, PUMP).
A short position in perpetual futures of equal size with up to 2x leverage.
This pairing neutralizes market exposure while capturing funding payments directly from Hyperliquid’s perp markets.
Users can freely customize their strategy by adding multiple tokens and diversify the yield source. Liminal’s business model is to retain 10% of the yield generated by the strategy.
Liminal now has $93M in TVL, a PnL of $1.2M, a total volume of over $617M, and 10.7k depositors. These are impressive numbers for a protocol that only launched in May.
xTokens
Liminal recently announced xTokens: tokenized delta-neutral strategies that leverage not only spot tokens but also LSTs like kHYPE, while rebalancing them through short positions on Hyperliquid to earn funding fees and, eventually, liquid staking yield.
xTokens are basically ERC-20s that can be lent on Felix and Hyperlend, traded on DEXes like HyperSwap, or split into Pendle’s YTs and PTs.
This is big news not only for every DeFi degen looking for looping or other exotic strategies to maximize their points and yield, but also for institutions, which can gain easier access to Liminal in a new and simpler way.
The first ones to be launched soon, thanks to the partnership with HyperUnit, the tokenization layer on HyperEVM, will be xHYPE, xBTC, xETH and xSOL.
xHYPE pre-deposits will open in the coming weeks, so pay attention to Liminal’s X account.
Food for Thought
One of the most underrated features of DeFi is “composability,” which means being able to use your assets across many platforms at once to achieve better returns and maximize capital efficiency.
Liminal is shaping its products in that direction, so I can’t be anything but bullish on xTokens. I’ve always wanted easy access to delta-neutral strategies, and double-digit APYs are definitely appealing both for degens and for institutional players who want to diversify their capital with minimal accounting problems or headaches.
See you on the next one.
milady
Courtesy of Matt
💙 🧡 ARB Corner - USD.AI, Stronger Together
It’s ARB corner time!
For this warm August edition, we bring you some highlights from the ecosystem, including some interesting emerging opportunities.
For once, you should definitely check out our report on RWAs on Arbitrum (also in our Castle reads), one of the sectors with the most potential for growth in the upcoming month:
Currently, Arbitrum has only 1.4% of the total marketcap of onchain RWAs, with a lot of room to grow.
To have a solid ecosystem, there needs to be extensive stablecoin liquidity and options.
Among those, Arbitrum has recently welcomed a new player: USD AI.
USDai is a stablecoin which operates at the intersection between liquidity providers and AI companies. In fact, it can be staked into sUSDai, providing liquidity which can be borrowed by “emerging AI companies who have real collateral but aren't the size of OpenAI or have access to Blackstone”, thus giving above-market APYs.
Currently, the protocol has almost $50m in TVL, with an APY of 6.76%:
Here’s a graphic on how USD AI works behind the hood:
They’ve also recently announced a $13.4m series A round, so we can expect more coming from them, with the stablecoin narrative heating up:
As part of these, USD has launched AutoVaults , in collaboration with Euler, K3 Capital and Concrete:
If this is not enough and you want to learn more about USD AI, you should definitely listen to this recent podcast they did with Arbitrum:
Currently, Arbitrum has over $3.865b in Stablecoin TVL, with USDC above 57% dominance. Within this landscape, USD AI positions itself as an interesting alternative, offering a different risk profile exemplified in higher returns.
In the upcoming weeks, we’ll also make sure to bring increasing attention to Arbitrum’s gaming sector with our updates.
In the meantime here are some relevant updates from this week, from Arbitrum Play:
We foresee these three to be some of the most relevant trends and key growth pillars for Arbitrum in the upcoming year:
RWA
DefAI
Gaming
Of course, this will be in line with Arbitrum’s focus on Defi.
The recent launch of Morpho and Aave, reaching over $2b in deposits on Arbitrum, are only some of the most recent developments there.
We’re excited to see all of these narratives work together, leveraging a credible neutral tech stable, deep liquidity and a composable ecosystem to grow and help each other.
See you for the next ARB corner, with a deep dive into two Arbitrum protocols!
Courtesy of Francesco
🏰 Castle Reads
All you need to know about Real World Assets (RWAs) on Arbitrum:
@mattdotfi explains what is happening with LayerZero acquiring Stargate:
@chilla_ct is back with an interesting read about the future of humanity in the Robotics Era:
📖 Recommended Reads
Our frens at @blocmatesdotcom wrote an insightful thread on the reputation layer Ethos Network:
@IntelScout dove into the tokenomics of Flying Tulip, the upcoming DEX of Andre Cronje which is supposed to defeat Impermanent Loss:
Gigabrain sustainability analysis of Pendle and its vePENDLE model, by @rubiksweb3hub:
That’s it for today’s issue, we hope you enjoyed it.
You can check out our X for new research reports and weekly gigabrain content.
See you in the next issue,
The Castle Team
In our newsletter, we may discuss projects or tokens in which we hold positions. While we aim to provide informative content, our views are not financial advice. Please conduct your research and consult professionals before making investment decisions. Crypto markets are volatile, and past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Invest responsibly, and be aware of the risks. Your capital is at risk, and we do not accept liability for any losses.