Current Workflows and Upcoming Launches to Watch

Free post this morning on upcoming launches I am watching, and current workflows to find tokens that don’t just bleed down to zero.  With ETH falling ~14% from recent highs, most ETH alts have been down only, especially old favorites OLAS, MUBI and RLB.    But just simply charting some of the most popular coins today, you can see spots where there is strength (ORDS, wBAI, TAO, PEAS).   This is an exercise I like to do once per week, to visually get a sense of where the market strength is (and if there is a common narrative).  

One of the common narratives here is this mini “launchpad” or IDO/LBP season (that some folks have been calling for).  Driven by the crazy launch of SAVM, which netted a lot of PnL for folks (see good analysis on that from Rug Ai), folks will likely be looking for the next SAVM launchpad/IDO/LBP play. BAI came out around the same time as SAVM, though was a Fjord LBP, and has shown considerable strength in the current cooling off market.   The timeline is calling it the next OLAS (which is probably aggressive), but it still shows that if the narrative is strong enough, certain tokens can do well regardless of what the majors are doing. 

Some upcoming (and already launched) LBP/IDO plays that I think fit within this narrative and likely will do well include:

·         Inscribe, which is a cross chain marketplace for Inscriptions, which also includes a webapp and bot.   Have seen smart people talking about this one, and think it could do well if you ape at the right LBP entry (which starts today).

·         BeFi Labs, which is a BRC20 trading terminal with a decent amount of hype (will have to try and ape this one like SAVM given its not an LBP).   I think this launches in February.

·         LYVE – this is a recent LBP that is a little left for dead, trading below its LBP price.  It’s a stablecoin project on Linea (with support from Linea), that I think has been building for a long time.  Seems cheap to me at $8.3mm market cap (I own a bag of this, so DYOR folks).

·         BAI (already covered)

And today’s post is even sponsored by an ongoing LBP that is getting attention from some interesting wallets 👀

Eigenlayer is one of the most highly anticipated projects in 2024, accumulating over $1B TVL in 2023, and $1.7B in 2024. This lead to the rise of several Liquid Staked Tokens (LSTs) and Liquid Restaked Tokens (LRTs) such as rsETH.

Vector Reserve introduces vETH, DeFi’s first Liquidity Position Derivative (LPD), the next evolution of the LST/LRTs narrative. vETH is primed to capture the entire LST & LRT market in a low-risk, diversified way that can offer higher returns than the underlying assets.

vETH derives its value from LP positions held in the various ETH/LST and ETH/LRT pairs. The yields inherent to LSTs/LRTs are then boosted by Superfluid Staking. Vector Reserve is pioneering the next phase of the liquid staking revolution. Their public sale LBP on Fjord Foundry will take place on Monday 22nd January at 12pm EST - you can participate here.

***************************************************************************************************** Right now, the market is bifurcated between a select few utility projects on ETH that will see their price hold up / catch a bid, and then obviously the meme casino on Solana. There are 3 things I use to help see where I should be allocating across these segments: Dexscreener filters, chainEDGE and TG groups.  

For Solana:
If you are in the right groups that are early, obviously you can copy trade and likely do well.   But you can also use dexscreener filters to catch things early.   Below is what I have been using to observe interesting tokens (I’m not as active on Sol, but have had to submit to the memes).   I try to pair this with searching the contract addresses into a Sol contract scanner bot (something like Soul Scanner) while also searching the ca in my personal TG to see if any of the “callers” or other groups I like are talking about it.  Obviously it’s a casino, but if the meme is funny, the right people are calling/talking about the token, and the contract security is clean, that is a great place to start.   From a smart money perspective, we will be rolling out Sol data soon via chainEDGE 👀 , which will also help as another confluence indicator for aping the “right” meme.    

For ETH:
On ETH, I typically use Dexscreener filters and chainEDGE data in tandem, but even without chainEDGE, you can usually find quality targets using something like the below.   You don’t need to be early, so I use a 72hr min pair age (also removes most scams + sniper dumps that way).

Running it now, I get a list like this, with notable tokens SAVM, ONDO, TROLL, TRUMP, ORDS, BAI, GROK 1.5, TITANX, XPAY, MUBI, RSTK, bci/acc and PEAS.

I then will compare this list every few days compared to the current chainEDGE smart money holdings (based on number of $10k holders) to see where the smart $ conviction really lies. In this case, I see overlap with SAVM, ONDO, ORDS, BAI, MUBI, RSTK and PEAS.

From there I would do some analysis on where longer term smart holding trends looks like, which projects have catalysts or reasons more attention will be heading their way, etc.   But I also use this process to see where potentially dead bags I’m holding stack up, why are they not on any of these filters, and why do I think they will eventually hit them – which acts as a decent “portfolio audit” or gut check on current positions that aren’t doing much. Another way I do this is some simple swap filters in chainEDGE, to see what the top 50 smart traders are aping at least 1 ETH into today.   I pop in the filters ($300k PnL, min buy of $2,500), and just glance thru where the best of the best are bidding (today for example was mostly ONDO).

Shorter post today (so please hit up the comment section for Q&A), but it seems like with the GBTC outflows and ETH selling going on, we may be under pressure for a bit (and the Fed isn’t cutting rates until at least March.   I’m personally keeping trading efforts within these 3 buckets: ETH attention, early SOL attention and LBP/IDO/launchpad plays.

Things I am not doing:

·         Sniping or aping new launches on ETH.   The new launch market is in a rough spot on ETH, with most launches failing to break $400k (and very few of them make it there), which makes profitable sniping difficult after taxes, bribes, etc

·         DeFi presales / seed deals.  Feels like we are still in a bit of a DeFi bear market, where private valuations are higher than where tokens will launch, unless it falls into the right narrative. 

·         Anything on leverage.   No brainer, easiest way to take any bankroll to zero.

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