RAYDIUM IS FOR EVERYONE price

Original author: Saurabh Deshpande Original compilation: Felix, PANews If you see firsthand what is happening on-chain, you may feel like the "end of the world" is coming. It can even be said that artificial intelligence has replaced cryptocurrencies as a hotbed for future technological development. There is some truth to all of this, but it's best to look at the bigger picture. This article explains how the innovation cycle evolves incrementally to reach the point where technology finds market fit. Today's story will delve into the commonalities between Uber, Pendle, and EigenLayer. Hopefully, it will help you dispel the pessimistic rhetoric on Twitter and find a new perspective. For thousands of years, it was thought that humans were incapable of flying. In the 112 years since the first human flight, a way has now been found on how to capture rockets returning from space. Innovation seems to be a gradual change across the ages. The true magic of technology is rarely seen in the original inventions; It's about the ecosystem that surrounds it. Think of it as compound growth, where innovation is not money. While the first movers who create something new grab the headlines and get VC funding, it's often the second-wave builders who will be able to tap into the most value – those who find untapped potential in the existing foundation. They see possibilities that are imperceptible to others. History is full of such innovators who never predicted how their inventions would reshape the world. They are just trying to solve the problem at hand. In the process, they opened up possibilities that went far beyond their original vision. The best innovation isn't the end, it's the launching pad for a new ecosystem to take off. Today's article will explore how this phenomenon is presented in Web3. Starting with the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is used every day, and then going back to the cryptocurrency space through re-staking and points mechanisms. A weekend that changed the internet Since its inception in 1973, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been dedicated to pinpointing the Earth's position. But Google Maps is much more than that, making this raw data accessible to billions of people. Google Maps began with three strategic acquisitions at the end of 2004. The first is Where 2 Technologies, a small Australian startup based in a one-bedroom in Sydney. They developed Expedition, a C++ desktop app that uses pre-rendered map tiles for smooth navigation. Compared to MapQuest's clunky experience, its user experience is superior. At the same time, Google acquired Keyhole (satellite imagery technology) and ZipDash (real-time traffic analytics), integrating core parts of its mapping vision. Together, these acquisitions form the foundation of Google Maps: an application that blends interactive navigation, rich visual data, and dynamic information. Expedition was a desktop app, but Larry Page insisted on a web-based solution. The initial attempts were slow and uninspiring. Stanford graduate Bret Taylor, a former associate product manager at Google, set out to fix the problem. Bret Taylor rewrote the entire frontend with asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). AJAX is an emerging technology that allows websites to update content without reloading the entire page. Before AJAX, web applications were static and clunky. But with AJAX, the responsiveness is comparable to desktop software. Maps became draggable, and new tiles loaded without having to refresh the page – a revolutionary user experience in 2005. The real genius comes in Google's release of the Maps API later that year, transforming it from a product to a platform. Developers can now embed Google Maps and build on top of it, resulting in thousands of "mashups" that eventually grew into full-fledged businesses. Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash all exist thanks to Bret Taylor's ability to make maps programmable during a fateful weekend. Bret Taylor's intuition is a recurring phenomenon in the world of technology: the most profound value often comes not from the foundation, but from what others build on it. These "second-order effects" represent the true compounding magic of innovation – a breakthrough that can empower an entire ecosystem and lead to unexpected applications. After Google Maps became programmable, a chain reaction was triggered. Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, and Zomato were the first to join, bringing GPS to the core of their services. Pokémon Go takes it a step further by overlaying augmented reality on top of location data, blurring the line between the real and the virtual. What's behind all this? Payment, of course. Because what's the use of on-demand services if you can't pay seamlessly? The GPS technology they rely on is nothing new. But GPS alone doesn't work wonders. It's the culmination of decades of technological evolution, such as satellite positioning, mobile hardware, AJAX, APIs, and payment channels, all of which are quietly taking shape. That's why the second-order effect is so powerful. They receive little attention at the moment. But one day, you look up and find that your day-to-day affairs are being coordinated by a network of invisible innovations that have quietly accumulated over the years. How re-staking gives rise to products In June 2023, EigenLayer introduced the "restaking" feature to the Ethereum mainnet, revolutionizing Ethereum's security landscape. The concept is novel yet simple enough for anyone interested in crypto to understand: "What if you could stake your ETH twice?" In traditional staking, you can earn a stable but modest yield of 3.5% - 7% on your ETH. Restaking essentially allows the same batch of ETH to do a dual role, securing both the Ethereum network and the EigenLayer protocol network at the same time – the same funds, multiple revenue streams, and increased funding efficiency. By April 2024, EigenLayer has gone from a theoretical innovation to a fully operational system with significant adoption. The numbers speak for themselves: 70% of new Ethereum validators choose to join the protocol immediately. By the end of 2024, more than 6.25 million ETH (about $19.3 billion) will be locked in restaking. If ranked by the countries with the highest GDP, it should rank around 120. It's not just EigenLayer that's interesting to make restaking a reality. Rather, others followed suit. EtherFi is a liquid staking provider that quietly went live in early 2023. Ether. I expect that EigenLayer's stake will be one of the most supposing opportunities in DeFi. You stake ETH, get ETH tokens, and then automatically re-stake on the feature layer. And, as a bonus, you can use ETH and play in other DeFi sandboxes. Pandel is one such sandbox. It's like getting paid multiple times for doing the same thing – crypto finance, guys. Ether.fi expects EigenLayer's re-staking to be one of the most sought-after opportunities in the DeFi space. You stake ETH, earn eETH tokens, and then automatically re-stake them on EigenLayer. And, as a reward, you can take your eETH to other DeFi sandboxes to experience it. Pendle is one such sandbox. It's like everyone gets paid multiple times for doing essentially the same thing. The result? Quite impressive. By May 2024, Ether.fi's TVL soared to about $6 billion. Their "Liquid Vault" offered an annual interest rate of around 10%, and regular staking wasn't that exciting at the time. Ether.fi does the same work with re-staked ETH as Lido did with staked ETH before. Make restaking practical, mainstream, and profitable by creating liquidity, accessibility, and availability for repledged ETH. In addition to chasing income, there is also "point mining", where people not only pursue instant income, but also accumulate "points" that may become valuable tokens in the future. Call it a speculative flywheel, if you will. As more users restake through Ether.fi, more eETH tokens are circulating and deeply integrated with other DeFi projects like Pendle, where you can trade future yields and even the points themselves, creating entirely new financial instruments out of thin air. What happened to the points - after all, cryptocurrencies are a playground for efficient capital mercenaries. When the protocol started offering points as rewards, a large number of users sprung up trying to maximize the points and manipulate the system in the process. The original intention behind the points is to achieve a fairer and broader distribution of tokens. But as soon as it turned into a race, the results were skewed. The most active "miners" are not always the most consistent users. While many projects are still using points to distribute tokens, this strategy is no longer as appealing as it once was. So, as always, the lesson isn't just about innovation that matters. What's more, the biggest winners are often not the ones who created something that people buzzed about in the first place. They are the ones who come after them, who see what's going on and create just the right thing at the right time. Of course, EigenLayer laid the groundwork, but Ether.fi and other companies that saw the second-order effect also got a piece of the pie, eventually capturing more than 20% of the Ethereum staking market by mid-2024. In the crypto space, being the first person is far less important than knowing what everyone else is doing. Points vs. Pendle After the huge success of the Jito airdrop, points became mainstream in December 2023. The Solana-based protocol debuted with over $1 billion in FDV, setting off a "gold rush". Suddenly, the protocol of the entire ecosystem shifted from direct token distribution to a points system. They began rewarding users who participated in the protocol with points, which could then be redeemed for governance tokens. This initial new allocation mechanism quickly evolved into a dominant strategy. Pendle went live in June 2021 and focuses on tokenization and future yield trading. Pendle's core innovation is ingenious because it divides yield tokens into two parts: principal tokens (PTs), which represent the underlying assets, and yield tokens (YT), which capture future yields. This separation allows users to trade these components separately, giving them more control over their earning strategies than ever before. When the points race officially began, Pendle found himself in a strong position with a feature built for a completely different reason. The platform's YT token creates a mechanism equivalent to leveraged points mining. Users can earn floating income on the asset and any associated points at the same time, expanding their points accumulation without the need for additional funds. Here's how it actually works. Let's say Sid wants to earn points from a protocol like EigenLayer that rewards liquidity providers. Traditionally, he would need to deposit ETH into EigenLayer's staking contract and lock up the funds for weeks or months. With the combination of Liquidity Repledge Token (LRT) and Pendle, Sid can purchase yield tokens (YT) that represent future earnings and points without having to deposit ETH directly into EigenLayer. For example, let's say the price of eETH is $2000 and you can earn 24 EigenLayer points per day. pteETH stands for Fixed Income Token and yteETH stands for Floating Income Token and sells for $200. pteETH holders forfeit points in exchange for a fixed income. yteETH holders receive floating rewards and credits. Now, for just $2,000, Sid can earn 240 (worth 10 ETH) credits per day instead of just 24. TN Lee, founder of Pendle, has analyzed this in detail on a podcast. The team didn't build a metastructure for integrals. They couldn't have predicted that. But they have built the perfect infrastructure for this emerging behavior and have access to a lot of capital. Even if this trend eventually cools down and TVL drops to about $2.5 billion, their market cap is still 10-15 times higher than it was before the points appeared. Memecoins, Pump.fun, and Raydium Sometimes, second-order effects emerge from the most unexpected places, revitalizing entire ecosystems in the process. The resurgence of Solana in 2023-2024 is a wonderful case in which the rapid changes in cryptocurrencies and how those who position themselves at a critical crossroads can gain value. After the collapse of FTX in late 2022, many industry insiders wrote "obituaries" for Solana. This logic seems reasonable. SBF and his company have tremendous influence over the ecosystem, providing funding, liquidity, and market support. Without them, Solana would be struggling. The technology was plagued by reliability issues, and the news of "Solana down" became a laughing stock. Blockchain, which once positioned itself as the "Ethereum killer", seems to be dying. But a remarkable revolution is taking place. Throughout 2023, Solana's technology has steadily improved. Downtime is becoming less and less. Transaction finality and user experience are significantly smoother. Developers who were attracted to Solana's technical fundamentals, such as high throughput, low cost, and sub-second finality, began to return, albeit cautiously. By the beginning of 2024, the situation has taken a decisive turn. With the frustration with traditional DeFi governance tokens, and the general shift towards so-called "financial nihilism," users' attention and funds are starting to flock to memecoin. These tokens, which often have few uses other than community ownership and cultural signals, capture the imagination of the market. With its lightning-fast transaction speeds and extremely low fees, Solana provides the perfect setting for this new wave. PumpFun goes live in January 2024. This "memecoin factory" simplifies the token creation process, which was once the specialty of developers with programming skills, to just a few minutes. PumpFun democratizes token creation in a way that perfectly aligns with the spirit of cryptocurrency financial experimentation. Almost overnight, thousands of new tokens called "BONK", "Dogwifhat", and "POPCAT" poured into the Solana ecosystem. The seemingly frivolous cryptocurrency is quickly showing its potential as a catalyst for complex value chains. These new tokens need something crucial: liquidity. Without a trading platform, even the most ingenious memecoin concept would be worthless. Raydium, the decentralized exchange of the Solana ecosystem, is in an enviable position. Raydium has been committed to becoming Solana's leading trading platform since its inception, with a focus on improving capital efficiency and reducing slippage. This protocol is not designed specifically for memecoin. But its technical architecture has proven to be similar to Uniswap's centralized liquidity pools and permissionless token listing process, making it well-suited to deal with the sudden influx of new assets. The timing was just right. Years of infrastructure development have created the solid foundation needed for this unexpected use case. The listing on Raydium marks a significant milestone for these emerging tokens, increasing credibility and visibility in an increasingly crowded market. By early 2025, this symbiotic relationship became crucial, with more than 40% of Raydium's Swap revenue coming from tokens generated by PumpFun. The relationship is mutually beneficial: PumpFun needed Raydium's existing liquidity pool to elevate its tokens from a niche product to a tradable asset, and Raydium thrived with the explosive trading volume brought about by these tokens. The economics of the PumpFun team are also impressive: tokens traded exclusively on the PumpFun platform charge a 1% fee per transaction, while Raydium has a fee structure of 0.25%. This means that Raydium needs to create four times the trading volume to match PumpFun's revenue per token. Due to its deeper liquidity and wider user base, Raydium has consistently managed to cross this threshold between August 2024 and February 2025. Raydium is not the original creator of memecoin, nor was it the originator of the token factory concept. However, by providing a robust infrastructure for the trading of these assets and responding quickly to competitive threats, much of the value in the ecosystem has been captured. The saga of Solana memecoin illustrates a key aspect of the second-order effect: value is often attributed not to those who create new behaviors, but to those who promote them on a large scale. PumpFun simplifies token creation, while Raydium enables efficient price discovery and trading. Each innovation triggers further adaptation. PumpFun's vertical integration initiative led Raydium to create LaunchLab, which has had a series of secondary effects that have reshaped the entire ecosystem. This focus has not only reinvigorated the ecosystem, but has also been actively exploited. As the memecoin craze intensifies, it's likely that tokens like Trump and Libra are being launched just for the heat. Their strategy relies on narrative, timing, and virality. Trump leans into the energy of political memes, while Libra leans toward the broader culture of the internet. Both tokens initially gained huge traction and reached ridiculous valuations shortly after their launch. But the energy didn't last long. Attention comes and goes quickly. The secondary market has cooled. The trader diverted his attention. The community is gradually decreasing. The success of these tokens is that it shows how to capture attention at the right time and turn it into speculative gold. What they have failed to do, however, is to maintain market capitalization. They don't really have practicality, they don't have a roadmap for sustainable development, they're just a flash in the pan. However, they prove one thing: innovation attracts attention. And in the crypto space, attention is one of the most powerful raw materials. If used correctly, it can spark a new craze; If not used properly, it will die out quickly. For observers of crypto innovation, the lessons are obvious. When new primitives emerge, it's important to look not only at the direct impact, but also at who is best suited to promote, optimize, and extend the behaviors they support. This is often where the real realization of excess returns. Now what? Reading this, you might be wondering what the next second-order outbreak will look like. Maybe you call it compound innovation, or maybe it's technology convergence, but the point is the same. This article is about multiple technologies colliding at the same time, causing a ripple effect greater than the sum of its parts. We've seen this happen: re-staking has reshaped DeFi incentives, memecoin infrastructure has reinvigorated the entire ecosystem, and yield protocols have unexpectedly airdropped leverage. So, what's the next domino to fall? Maybe it's the EVM experience. Maybe. It's really being rewritten, redesigned, and refined to make it feel like real software – at least that's the promise. It remains to be seen whether it will become the next great compound interest layer or just another incremental upgrade. But if these links are connected, it could trigger an unprecedented ripple effect. Behind the debate over L2 and the clamor of the scaling wars, a race is brewing – not only to scale Ethereum, but also to increase its utility by increasing its usability. True usability, which is the ability for others to build on top of it without being bothered by issues such as wallets, fees, or failed transactions. Because when friction disappears, innovation thrives. And when innovation thrives, compounding returns appear in the most unexpected places. Over the past few months, we have hosted some of the brightest people who are leading this change: Andre Cronje from Sonic, Keone Hon from Monad, and Shuyao Kong from MegaETH. Although their approaches vary, the goal is clear: eliminate delays. Eliminate friction. Even eliminate wallets. Replace it with something faster, smoother, and more intangible. Create a true software experience, not a cumbersome point-and-click process. Both MegaETH and Monad claim to be able to process 10,000 transactions per second. That's the same speed as Solana, but with the semantics of Ethereum. Considering that the crypto space has always had a tendency to overdo it, if it does, it will be the first EVM-based chain to put Solana in a passive position when it comes to user experience. (This is a bit funny considering that EVM blockchains have long been plagued by slow confirmations and hellish wallet pop-ups.) ） Andre's advocacy focuses not on sheer speed, but on eliminating complexity. He said that Ethereum's performance ceiling is far from being reached. According to him, it is currently operating at only about 2% of its total capacity. This is not due to hardware limitations, but rather to the way the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) accesses and writes data. With its new database structure, Sonic has reduced data storage requirements by 98%. His Sonic roadmap bets on abstraction – abstract fees, abstract accounts, abstract wallets. If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, users won't even be aware they're in the blockchain, while still maintaining a decent degree of decentralization. And that's the key. So, who will win in this new world? It may not be the infrastructure teams that are busy refreshing the TPS benchmark, but the applications built on top of that infrastructure, like Pumpfun, which leveraged Solana's infrastructure and made a profit of $500 million in less than a year. Social protocols, in particular, could make a breakthrough. Projects like Farcaster have demonstrated the potential to combine the permanence of cryptocurrencies with the convenience of being native to the web. No more paid postings, no more MetaMask pop-ups. Only content is shared. Then there's DeFi. The next generation of financial applications requires better input. Andre bluntly says, "We don't have on-chain volatility, implied volatility, or actual volatility." When this data does appear, expect a real options market, coherent derivatives, and well-structured perpetual contracts – the financial layer that cryptocurrencies have been pretending to already have. Perhaps the most exciting are those applications that have not yet been imagined. Because that's how things always go. In 2005, no one looked at Google Maps and said, "Do you know what it entails? Ride-sharing services." But as soon as the foundation changes, everything on it changes with it. So, individuals are skeptical. Individuals have been in the crypto space long enough to know that the tenfold improvements promised each time will usually only get you a slightly better dashboard and more Discord notifications, but also excited. Because this time, the underlying technology feels real. And behind them, a new generation of builders is quietly working on second-order magic that might reshape everything. Because for every breakthrough underlying technology we see today, there are dozens of builders who are already working on second-order applications that can bring out the true value of that underlying technology.

Original title: When Innovation Compounds: The Second-Order Effects of Crypto Primitives Original author: Saurabh Deshpande Original compilation: Felix, PANews   If you see firsthand what is happening on-chain, it may feel like the "end of the world" is coming. It can even be said that artificial intelligence has replaced cryptocurrencies as a hotbed for future technological development. There is some truth to all of this, but it's best to look at the bigger picture. This article explains how the innovation cycle evolves incrementally to reach the point where technology finds market fit. Today's story will delve into the commonalities between Uber, Pendle, and EigenLayer. Hopefully, it will help you dispel the pessimistic rhetoric on Twitter and find a new perspective. For thousands of years, it was thought that humans were incapable of flying. In the 112 years since the first human flight, a way has now been found on how to capture rockets returning from space. Innovation seems to be a gradual change across the ages. The true magic of technology is rarely seen in the original inventions; It's about the ecosystem that surrounds it. Think of it as compound growth, where innovation is not money. While the first movers who create something new grab the headlines and get VC funding, it's often the second-wave builders who will be able to tap into the most value – those who find untapped potential in the existing foundation. They see possibilities that are imperceptible to others. History is full of such innovators who never predicted how their inventions would reshape the world. They are just trying to solve the problem at hand. In the process, they opened up possibilities that went far beyond their original vision. The best innovation isn't the end, it's the launching pad for a new ecosystem to take off. Today's article will explore how this phenomenon is presented in Web3. Starting with the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is used every day, and then going back to the cryptocurrency space through re-staking and points mechanisms. A weekend that changed the internet Since its inception in 1973, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been dedicated to pinpointing the Earth's position. But Google Maps is much more than that, making this raw data accessible to billions of people. Google Maps began with three strategic acquisitions at the end of 2004. The first is Where 2 Technologies, a small Australian startup based in a one-bedroom in Sydney. They developed "Expedition," a C++ desktop app that uses pre-rendered map tiles for smooth navigation. Compared to MapQuest's clunky experience, its user experience is superior. At the same time, Google acquired Keyhole (satellite imagery technology) and ZipDash (real-time traffic analytics), integrating core parts of its mapping vision. Together, these acquisitions form the foundation of Google Maps: an application that blends interactive navigation, rich visual data, and dynamic information. Expedition was a desktop app, but Larry Page insisted on a web-based solution. The initial attempts were slow and uninspiring. Stanford graduate Bret Taylor, a former associate product manager at Google, set out to fix the problem. Bret Taylor rewrote the entire frontend with asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). AJAX is an emerging technology that allows websites to update content without reloading the entire page. Before AJAX, web applications were static and clunky. But with AJAX, the responsiveness is comparable to desktop software. Maps became draggable, and new tiles loaded without having to refresh the page – a revolutionary user experience in 2005. The real genius comes in Google's release of the Maps API later that year, transforming it from a product to a platform. Developers can now embed Google Maps and build on top of it, spawning thousands of "mashups" that eventually grew into full-fledged businesses. Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash all exist thanks to Bret Taylor's ability to make maps programmable during a fateful weekend. Bret Taylor's intuition is a recurring phenomenon in the world of technology: the most profound value often comes not from the foundation, but from what others build on it. These "second-order effects" represent the true compounding magic of innovation – a breakthrough that can empower an entire ecosystem and lead to unexpected applications. After Google Maps became programmable, a chain reaction was triggered. Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, and Zomato were the first to join, bringing GPS to the core of their services. Pokémon Go takes it a step further by overlaying augmented reality on top of location data, blurring the line between the real and the virtual. What's behind all this? Payment, of course. Because what's the use of on-demand services if you can't pay seamlessly? The GPS technology they rely on is nothing new. But GPS alone doesn't work wonders. It's the culmination of decades of technological evolution, such as satellite positioning, mobile hardware, AJAX, APIs, and payment channels, all of which are quietly taking shape. That's why the second-order effect is so powerful. They receive little attention at the moment. But one day, you look up and find that your day-to-day affairs are being coordinated by a network of invisible innovations that have quietly accumulated over the years. How re-staking gives rise to products In June 2023, EigenLayer revolutionized the security landscape of Ethereum by introducing the "restaking" feature to the Ethereum mainnet. The concept is novel yet simple enough for anyone interested in crypto to understand: "What if you could stake your ETH twice?" ” In traditional staking, you can earn a stable but modest yield of 3.5% - 7% on your ETH. Restaking essentially allows the same batch of ETH to do a dual role, securing both the Ethereum network and the EigenLayer protocol network at the same time – the same funds, multiple revenue streams, and increased funding efficiency. By April 2024, EigenLayer has gone from a theoretical innovation to a fully operational system with significant adoption. The numbers speak for themselves: 70% of new Ethereum validators choose to join the protocol immediately. By the end of 2024, more than 6.25 million ETH (about $19.3 billion) will be locked in restaking. If ranked by the countries with the highest GDP, it should rank around 120. It's not just EigenLayer that's interesting to make restaking a reality. Rather, others followed suit. EtherFi is a liquid staking provider that quietly went live in early 2023. Ether. I expect that EigenLayer's stake will be one of the most supposing opportunities in DeFi. You stake ETH, get ETH tokens, and then automatically re-stake on the feature layer. And, as a bonus, you can use ETH and play in other DeFi sandboxes. Pandel is one such sandbox. It's like getting paid multiple times for doing the same thing – crypto finance, guys. Ether.fi expects EigenLayer's re-staking to be one of the most sought-after opportunities in the DeFi space. You stake ETH, earn eETH tokens, and then automatically re-stake them on EigenLayer. And, as a reward, you can take your eETH to other DeFi sandboxes to experience it. Pendle is one such sandbox. It's like everyone gets paid multiple times for doing essentially the same thing. The result? Quite impressive. By May 2024, Ether.fi's TVL soared to about $6 billion. Their "Liquid Vault" offered an annual interest rate of around 10%, and regular staking wasn't as exciting at the time. Ether.fi does the same work with re-staked ETH as Lido did with staked ETH before. Make restaking practical, mainstream, and profitable by creating liquidity, accessibility, and availability for repledged ETH. In addition to chasing earnings, there is also "point mining", where people not only pursue instant gains, but also accumulate "points" that may become valuable tokens in the future. Call it a speculative flywheel, if you will. As more users restake through Ether.fi, more eETH tokens are circulating and deeply integrated with other DeFi projects like Pendle, where you can trade future yields and even the points themselves, creating entirely new financial instruments out of thin air. What happened to the points - after all, cryptocurrencies are a playground for efficient capital mercenaries. When the protocol started offering points as rewards, a large number of users sprung up trying to maximize the points and manipulate the system in the process. The original intention behind the points is to achieve a fairer and broader distribution of tokens. But as soon as it turned into a race, the results were skewed. The most active "miners" are not always the most consistent users. While many projects are still using points to distribute tokens, this strategy is no longer as appealing as it once was. So, as always, the lesson isn't just about innovation that matters. What's more, the biggest winners are often not the ones who created something that people buzzed about in the first place. They are the ones who come after them, who see what's going on and create just the right thing at the right time. Of course, EigenLayer laid the groundwork, but Ether.fi and other companies that saw the second-order effect also got a piece of the pie, eventually capturing more than 20% of the Ethereum staking market by mid-2024. In the crypto space, being the first person is far less important than knowing what everyone else is doing. Points vs. Pendle After the huge success of the Jito airdrop, points became mainstream in December 2023. The Solana-based protocol debuted with over $1 billion in FDV, setting off a "gold rush". Suddenly, the protocol of the entire ecosystem shifted from direct token distribution to a points system. They began rewarding users who participated in the protocol with points, which could then be redeemed for governance tokens. This initial new allocation mechanism quickly evolved into a dominant strategy. Pendle went live in June 2021 and focuses on tokenization and future yield trading. Pendle's core innovation is ingenious because it divides yield tokens into two parts: principal tokens (PTs), which represent the underlying assets, and yield tokens (YT), which capture future yields. This separation allows users to trade these components separately, giving them more control over their earning strategies than ever before. When the points race officially began, Pendle found himself in a strong position with a feature built for a completely different reason. The platform's YT token creates a mechanism equivalent to leveraged points mining. Users can earn floating income on the asset and any associated points at the same time, expanding their points accumulation without the need for additional funds. Here's how it actually works. Let's say Sid wants to earn points from a protocol like EigenLayer that rewards liquidity providers. Traditionally, he would need to deposit ETH into EigenLayer's staking contract and lock up the funds for weeks or months. With the combination of Liquidity Repledge Token (LRT) and Pendle, Sid can purchase yield tokens (YT) that represent future earnings and points without having to deposit ETH directly into EigenLayer. For example, let's say the price of eETH is $2000 and you can earn 24 EigenLayer points per day. pteETH stands for Fixed Income Token and yteETH stands for Floating Income Token and sells for $200. pteETH holders forfeit points in exchange for a fixed income. yteETH holders receive floating rewards and credits. Now, for just $2,000, Sid can earn 240 (worth 10 ETH) credits per day instead of just 24. TN Lee, founder of Pendle, has analyzed this in detail on a podcast. The team didn't build a metastructure for integrals. They couldn't have predicted that. But they have built the perfect infrastructure for this emerging behavior and have access to a lot of capital. Even if this trend eventually cools down and TVL drops to about $2.5 billion, their market cap is still 10-15 times higher than it was before the points appeared. Memecoins, Pump.fun, and Raydium Sometimes, second-order effects emerge from the most unexpected places, revitalizing entire ecosystems in the process. The resurgence of Solana in 2023-2024 is a wonderful case in which the rapid changes in cryptocurrencies and how those who position themselves at a critical crossroads can gain value. After the collapse of FTX in late 2022, many industry figures wrote "obituaries" for Solana. This logic seems reasonable. SBF and his company have tremendous influence over the ecosystem, providing funding, liquidity, and market support. Without them, Solana would be struggling. The technology was plagued by reliability issues, and the news of "Solana down" became a laughing stock. Blockchain, which once positioned itself as the "Ethereum killer," seems to be dying. But a remarkable revolution is taking place. Throughout 2023, Solana's technology has steadily improved. Downtime is becoming less and less. Transaction finality and user experience are significantly smoother. Developers who were attracted to Solana's technical fundamentals, such as high throughput, low cost, and sub-second finality, began to return, albeit cautiously. By the beginning of 2024, the situation has taken a decisive turn. With the frustration with traditional DeFi governance tokens, and the general shift towards so-called "financial nihilism," users' attention and funds are starting to flock to memecoin. These tokens, which often have few uses other than community ownership and cultural signals, capture the imagination of the market. With its lightning-fast transaction speeds and extremely low fees, Solana provides the perfect setting for this new wave. PumpFun goes live in January 2024. This "memecoin factory" simplifies the token creation process, which was once the specialty of developers with programming skills, to just a few minutes. PumpFun democratizes token creation in a way that perfectly aligns with the spirit of cryptocurrency financial experimentation. Almost overnight, thousands of new tokens called "BONK", "Dogwifhat", and "POPCAT" poured into the Solana ecosystem. The seemingly frivolous cryptocurrency is quickly showing its potential as a catalyst for complex value chains. These new tokens need something crucial: liquidity. Without a trading platform, even the most ingenious memecoin concept would be worthless. Raydium, the decentralized exchange of the Solana ecosystem, is in an enviable position. Raydium has been committed to becoming Solana's leading trading platform since its inception, with a focus on improving capital efficiency and reducing slippage. This protocol is not designed specifically for memecoin. But its technical architecture has proven to be similar to Uniswap's centralized liquidity pools and permissionless token listing process, making it well-suited to deal with the sudden influx of new assets. The timing was just right. Years of infrastructure development have created the solid foundation needed for this unexpected use case. The listing on Raydium marks a significant milestone for these emerging tokens, increasing credibility and visibility in an increasingly crowded market. By early 2025, this symbiotic relationship became crucial, with more than 40% of Raydium's Swap revenue coming from tokens generated by PumpFun. The relationship is mutually beneficial: PumpFun needed Raydium's existing liquidity pool to elevate its tokens from a niche product to a tradable asset, and Raydium thrived with the explosive trading volume brought about by these tokens. The economics of the PumpFun team are also impressive: tokens traded exclusively on the PumpFun platform charge a 1% fee per transaction, while Raydium has a fee structure of 0.25%. This means that Raydium needs to create four times the trading volume to match PumpFun's revenue per token. Due to its deeper liquidity and wider user base, Raydium has consistently managed to cross this threshold between August 2024 and February 2025. Raydium is not the original creator of memecoin, nor was it the originator of the token factory concept. However, by providing a robust infrastructure for the trading of these assets and responding quickly to competitive threats, much of the value in the ecosystem has been captured. The saga of Solana memecoin illustrates a key aspect of the second-order effect: value is often attributed not to those who create new behaviors, but to those who promote them on a large scale. PumpFun simplifies token creation, while Raydium enables efficient price discovery and trading. Each innovation triggers further adaptation. PumpFun's vertical integration initiative led Raydium to create LaunchLab, which has had a series of secondary effects that have reshaped the entire ecosystem. This focus has not only reinvigorated the ecosystem, but has also been actively exploited. As the memecoin craze intensifies, it's likely that tokens like Trump and Libra are being launched just for the heat. Their strategy relies on narrative, timing, and virality. Trump leans into the energy of political memes, while Libra leans toward the broader culture of the internet. Both tokens initially gained huge traction and reached ridiculous valuations shortly after their launch. But the energy didn't last long. Attention comes and goes quickly. The secondary market has cooled. The trader diverted his attention. The community is gradually decreasing. The success of these tokens is that it shows how to capture attention at the right time and turn it into speculative gold. What they have failed to do, however, is to maintain market capitalization. They don't really have practicality, they don't have a roadmap for sustainable development, they're just a flash in the pan. However, they prove one thing: innovation attracts attention. And in the crypto space, attention is one of the most powerful raw materials. If used correctly, it can spark a new craze; If not used properly, it will die out quickly. For observers of crypto innovation, the lessons are obvious. When new primitives emerge, it's important to look not only at the direct impact, but also at who is best suited to promote, optimize, and extend the behaviors they support. This is often where the real realization of excess returns. Now what? Reading this, you might be wondering what the next second-order outbreak will look like. Maybe you call it compound innovation, or maybe it's technology convergence, but the point is the same. This article is about multiple technologies colliding at the same time, causing a ripple effect greater than the sum of its parts. We've seen this happen: re-staking has reshaped DeFi incentives, memecoin infrastructure has reinvigorated the entire ecosystem, and yield protocols have unexpectedly airdropped leverage. So, what's the next domino to fall? Maybe it's the EVM experience. Maybe. It's really being rewritten, redesigned, and refined to make it feel like real software – at least that's the promise. It remains to be seen whether it will become the next great compound interest layer or just another incremental upgrade. But if these links are connected, it could trigger an unprecedented ripple effect. Behind the debate over L2 and the clamor of the scaling wars, a race is brewing – not only to scale Ethereum, but also to increase its utility by increasing its usability. True usability, which is the ability for others to build on top of it without being bothered by issues such as wallets, fees, or failed transactions. Because when friction disappears, innovation thrives. And when innovation thrives, compounding returns appear in the most unexpected places. Over the past few months, we have hosted some of the brightest people who are leading this change: Andre Cronje from Sonic, Keone Hon from Monad, and Shuyao Kong from MegaETH. Although their approaches vary, the goal is clear: eliminate delays. Eliminate friction. Even eliminate wallets. Replace it with something faster, smoother, and more intangible. Create a true software experience, not a cumbersome point-and-click process. Both MegaETH and Monad claim to be able to process 10,000 transactions per second. That's the same speed as Solana, but with the semantics of Ethereum. Considering that the crypto space has always had a tendency to overdo it, if it does, it will be the first EVM-based chain to put Solana in a passive position when it comes to user experience. (This is a bit funny considering that EVM blockchains have long been plagued by slow confirmations and hellish wallet pop-ups.) ） Andre's advocacy focuses not on sheer speed, but on eliminating complexity. He said that Ethereum's performance ceiling is far from being reached. According to him, it is currently operating at only about 2% of its total capacity. This is not due to hardware limitations, but rather to the way the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) accesses and writes data. With its new database structure, Sonic has reduced its data storage requirements by 98 percent. His Sonic roadmap bets on abstraction – abstract fees, abstract accounts, abstract wallets. If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, users won't even be aware they're in the blockchain, while still maintaining a decent degree of decentralization. And that's the key. So, who will win in this new world? It may not be the infrastructure teams that are busy refreshing the TPS benchmark, but the applications built on top of that infrastructure, like Pumpfun, which leveraged Solana's infrastructure and made a profit of $500 million in less than a year. Social protocols, in particular, could make a breakthrough. Projects like Farcaster have demonstrated the potential to combine the permanence of cryptocurrencies with the convenience of being native to the web. No more paid postings, no more MetaMask pop-ups. Only content is shared. Then there's DeFi. The next generation of financial applications requires better input. Andre bluntly said, "We don't have on-chain volatility, implied volatility, or actual volatility". When this data does appear, expect a real options market, coherent derivatives, and well-structured perpetual contracts – the financial layer that cryptocurrencies have been pretending to already have. Perhaps the most exciting are those applications that have not yet been imagined. Because that's how things always go. In 2005, no one would look at Google Maps and say, "Do you know what it entails?" Ridesharing services. "But as soon as the foundation changes, everything on it changes. So, individuals are skeptical. Individuals have been in the crypto space long enough to know that the tenfold improvements promised each time will usually only get you a slightly better dashboard and more Discord notifications, but also excited. Because this time, the underlying technology feels real. And behind them, a new generation of builders is quietly working on second-order magic that might reshape everything. Because for every breakthrough underlying technology we see today, there are dozens of builders who are already working on second-order applications that can bring out the true value of that underlying technology.