Top 5 Crypto Projects Whales Don’t Want You to Know About!
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: Top 5 Crypto Projects Whales Don’t Want You to Know About!
This 20-minute podcast episode, hosted by Guy from Coin Bureau, shifts focus from speculative hype to fundamentally strong, high-revenue generating projects in the crypto space. The central narrative is that the industry is maturing, evidenced by leading protocols consistently earning millions monthly. The episode details five specific protocols that are currently leading in revenue generation across various sectors, explaining their mechanics, revenue streams, and the implications for their native tokens.
1. Focus Area
The discussion is squarely focused on Web3/DeFi infrastructure and high-revenue decentralized applications (dApps), specifically analyzing protocols driving significant transaction volume in the current market cycle, particularly those capitalizing on the meme coin and perpetual futures trading trends.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Bonding Curves for Instant Liquidity: pump.fun utilizes a bonding curve mechanism to provide instant liquidity for newly created meme coins, streamlining the launch process and capturing fees immediately upon creation.
- Delta-Neutral Basis Trading: Athena maintains its synthetic dollar (USDE) peg by employing a classic finance strategy: holding long spot positions against crypto collateral while simultaneously holding matching short perpetual futures positions to skim yield from funding rates.
- On-Chain Order Book DEX: Hyperliquid operates as its own Layer 1 (L1) blockchain specifically designed to host a full on-chain order book for perpetuals and spot trading, achieving CEX-like speed while maintaining self-custody.
3. Market/Investment Angle
- Revenue as a Bullish Narrative: The consistent, high revenue generation across these five projects (often exceeding centralized competitors) is presented as a strong, quantifiable bull case, especially when protocols implement token buyback mechanisms funded by this revenue (e.g., pump, hype, Ena).
- Token Reflexivity Potential: Protocols like Axiom, which currently lack a token, present a significant future upside if they implement token value accrual mechanisms, as their existing high cash flow would create immediate, mechanical demand for the asset.
- Cycle Dependency Risk: A major recurring risk highlighted is that the high revenue for meme-centric platforms (pump, Axiom) and yield-generating protocols (Athena) is highly dependent on high market volatility and sustained speculative activity; a “risk-off” period would severely compress their earnings.
4. Notable Companies/People
- pump.fun: Founders include Alan Cohen, Noah Tweedale, and Dylan Curler. Noted for its massive revenue ($46M in August) driven by meme coin creation.
- Axiom: Founded by Henry Zhang and Preston Ellis (Y Combinator alumni). A fast-growing on-chain trading terminal focusing on Solana meme coins and perps. Notably, it currently has no token.
- Hyperliquid: Kickstarted by Jeff Yann. Operates its own L1 and is dominating on-chain perpetuals trading, with $110M revenue in August. Its token is hype.
- Athena: Founded by Guy Young. Creator of the synthetic dollar USDE, which generates revenue via delta-neutral basis trades. Its token is Ena.
- Aave: Founded by Stani Kulechov. A blue-chip DeFi money market with $40B TVL, demonstrating sustainable revenue generation through lending interest spreads.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
The discussion touched minimally on policy, primarily through the lens of internal governance and decentralization critiques. For Hyperliquid, there were mentions of critiques regarding the protocol’s decentralization level. For Athena, the listing of USDE on Binance was noted as satisfying a key requirement for activating its token revenue-sharing mechanism, indicating the importance of major centralized exchange adoption for protocol milestones.
6. Future Implications
The conversation suggests the future of crypto finance involves a bifurcation:
- Sophisticated Infrastructure: L1s and DEXs like Hyperliquid providing CEX-like performance for advanced trading (perps).
- Yield-Bearing Stable Assets: Protocols like Athena offering transparent, cash-flow-backed alternatives to traditional stablecoins.
- Maturity in Meme Economy: Even speculative sectors like meme coins are evolving into structured businesses capable of generating massive, measurable revenue streams that can be channeled back to token holders.
7. Target Audience
This episode is most valuable for experienced crypto investors, DeFi analysts, and Web3 professionals who are looking beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum fundamentals to identify specific, high-performing decentralized applications based on quantifiable metrics like retained protocol revenue.
🏢 Companies Mentioned
💬 Key Insights
"With USDE now listed on Binance, Athena says it has satisfied the last requirement to route a slice of protocol revenue to staked Ena, the protocol's native token."
"Athena's synthetic dollar, USDE, is minted against crypto collateral like BTC and ETH, and then hedged with matching short positions. That creates a so-called delta-neutral basis trade that skims yield from funding rates on futures contracts."
"99% of Hyperliquid fees are routed to an on-chain assistance fund that market buys hype. Now, the fund is a form of treasury or backstop... But day-to-day, those buybacks act as constant bid pressure: more trading, more fees, more buybacks, less circulating hype."
"Hyperliquid is not an app built on another chain. It's actually its own L1. Hyperliquid's core dApp is its DEX that runs a full on-chain order book for perps and spot."
"Axiom doesn't have a token. But if they ever do launch a token and route a share of revenue into buybacks or some other mechanism for token value accrual, the setup is textbook reflexivity."
"use platform revenue to buy back its native pump token... And that structural bid has helped lift the token to new all-time highs, even as the rest of the market chopped sideways."