Empire

Jason Yanowitz × Santiago Roel Santos

Memecoin–stock-token pools are forcing tokenized equities to confront real liquidity and infrastructure constraints.In the BONER/HIMS pool, roughly 60,000 HIMS tokens and limited weekend minting drove the wrapper to an implied $132, or three-to-four-times Friday’s close, without squeezing HIMS itself.The experiment could accelerate 24/7 markets, but custody, backing, redemption, and token-holder rights remain unresolved.

Jason Yanowitz × Matthew Prince

Automated traffic has already surpassed human traffic, and Prince says agentic traffic could reach 1,000 times human traffic in five years, challenging ad-funded models.Cloudflare is pursuing a micropayments rail targeting roughly 10 million transactions per second, but regulation, capacity and preserving free access remain unresolved.

Beezie × Andrea Miele × Tuomas (Tuom) Holmberg

On-chain collectibles are accelerating: Collector Crypt reached roughly $400M in June and $300M in July versus $20M the prior July, while Beezie surpassed $200M.Discounted sourcing, sub-10% take rates and roughly 55 turns for lower-tier assets support liquidity, while Beezie’s Web2 partnership and unresolved token-ownership and regulatory questions frame the opportunity and risk.

Jason Yanowitz × Hayden Adams

Uniswap is repositioning as a liquidity network, handling 60–70% of EVM stablecoin swaps while Robinhood Chain delivers its highest volumes anywhere.Hayden Adams argues AMMs can compete through lower capital costs, while correlated base pairs and V4 hooks could extend efficient liquidity to volatile and tokenized assets.That B2B flywheel now ties partner distribution and volume to roughly $100M annualized UNI burn, with payment-network adoption and execution still worth monitoring.

Jason Yanowitz × Paul Frambot

Morpho raised $175M in roughly two-to-three weeks by positioning its network, not code, against a global credit market.Connectivity, enterprise integration, and neutral rails used by Robinhood, Coinbase, and Kraken support the network thesis, while Morpho Midnight tests curator-driven rate control; zero protocol revenue and a deliberately inactive switch leave adoption and monetization timing as key watchpoints.

Crypto funds moving into robotics and hardware may be an adverse-selection trap as LPs question mandate creep and post-2021 returns converge with regular venture.Cloudflare’s guardrailed, chain-agnostic wallets could make identity and authorization a value layer, while Circle’s 7% revenue growth, falling USDC supply, 62% distribution share, and November’s Western Union bet leave monetization unresolved.

Jason Yanowitz × Johann Kerbrat

Three weeks after launch, Robinhood Chain reported $750M market cap, roughly half a billion in TVL, 105M+ transactions, 2M addresses, and over $560M in 24-hour DEX volume, with DAU comparisons dependent on measurement.Its Arbitrum stack atop Ethereum prioritizes adoption over chain-fee revenue, while Robinhood’s 27M funded accounts distribute crypto products; tokenized equities offer a global-access wedge whose catalyst remains regulatory clarity, not technology.

Jason Yanowitz × Paul × Se

FOMO is building a pseudonymous, self-custodied trading social graph, with roughly 700,000 lifetime users and 30% deposit conversion.Sponsored fees, USDC balances, 5-bps major-asset pricing, and creator distribution support adoption, while crypto-native users drive 30–50% of volume.Whether the graph compounds before Coinbase, Binance, and Robinhood move more trading onchain remains the key test.

OpenUSD targets Circle with Stripe, Visa and hundreds of partners, but Rob doubts a consortium this large will drive adoption.Robinhood’s Arbitrum-based L2 makes wallet placement scarce, while Cloudflare tests x402 stablecoin settlement across roughly one-fifth of web traffic.Circle’s bank exposure, Saylor’s Stretch overhang and October’s expected DTCC launch leave execution and regulation unresolved.

Jason Yanowitz × Ben Jones × Karl Floersch

Optimism’s L2 reset is “hype meets reality,” as chains without fundamentals struggled when real users and businesses evaluated their products.The company has become an enterprise SaaS business, with majority of revenue from enterprise sales, seven-figure annual “chain-in-a-box” deals, and predictable usage-based pricing chosen for institutional legibility.Exchanges are the proven beachhead, while TradFi interest offers a slower-growth pipeline; paid incentives are “on the way out,” making customer conversion and milestone-based economics key variables to monitor.