LIVE: MegaETH, Pump, NYSE | 0xResearch

Cheap. Dick back. Danny, it was just me, man. I still don't have my timings right with the new intro. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Xerx Research. Today is an American holiday, but unlike the Americans, Europeans like to work very hard, so we will be still doing the live stream. How you doing, Danny?

Yeah, Europeans are known for working super hard compared to the rest of the world. Doing great here. This is, I'd say a holiday that some fortunate folks in the US get and many other unfortunate folks do not get and have to work anyway. So, yeah, to be honest, that's fair. I feel like we don't really have a lot of those holidays. All holidays are just statemandated here, but I guess for you guys, it's not always state.

Yeah, there's just a difference between fed versus private holiday calendars typically. Interesting. Okay. Anyway, just to start us off, I will say one thing to our listeners, crypto's kind of boring these days, guys. I'm gonna be completely honest with everybody. No, there isn't a lot going on, so we're doing our best.

But if anybody wants anything specific, if they have any questions specific, we also appreciate that going forward. You can just join the Zerx Research channel and say, "Hey Boach, can you discuss XY Z?" Or, "Hey Danny, can you guys discuss XY Z next time?" And we'd be more than happy to do it because right now it's mostly just me panicking an hour before given that there isn't anything.

Like historically, it's been like I've had stuff in my mind that I've been reading about or looking into and I'd be like, "Yeah, we have to talk about this." But now it's kind of a pain. I don't know if you feel the same way. I guess like because you do both light speeded and Zerx. So Zerx I guess not because we kind of split half half but I assume light speeded or is it because you're doing protocol based it's typically just no I feel I feel the same right now in the market just in the sense that I mean it's probably also because we're it's the beginning of a new year there were a bunch of like announcements in December and November December bunch of like announcements like end of year conferences and things like that and it's new year holiday people getting out of holidays and stuff.

So, I think it has been a little bit more quiet, but it'll probably pick up here like getting into mid Q1 as teams sort of like get back into the groove. I think that's just a typical kind of business cycle thing, though. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's also the same thing in August, right? I feel like July, August, end of summer. Yeah, end of summer as well.

All right. I guess like just to start us off, let's talk about this because I didn't read this. you shared it with me earlier today. So, do you want to talk about this a bit? I know you've been a longtime Axiom B, so I'm not surprised that you're talking about Axium, but I'm also like I haven't looked into it.

Yeah, it was less of an Axium bull post in this case and more of a talking about Pump's acquisition of Padre. So, I guess something I thought was interesting, and we talked about this a lot in terms of Pump, like how they need to find success, because I think one of the one of the notable problems that they had was that just being sort of like the source, you know, launch launchpad for tokens. And not really like the venue where people trade the coins. They ran into that issue when you know like Bonk for you know a month or so took over like all of the kind of token activity and basically everyone's using you know Axiom they're using whatever Bonbot they're using you know Trojan Photon all these other trading venues so you could see very quickly like all of the liquidity in the trading volume just like rotate to the new coins and there's not there wasn't really like any dependency on pump itself necessarily.

So I do think like what this data I'm trying to showcase is that their Pump's acquisition of Padre is pretty meaningful to them as a platform like sort of cementing some of that stickiness to like their users like connecting the actual creation of the tokens to the trading of the tokens. So like owning the this like more comprehensive trading platform and competing with those other frontends is pretty meaningful. That data doesn't really show the percentage, but I can I can pull something up and just show this here.

But basically what you can see if I pull yours off the screen is that Axim has been pretty dominant for a while. They've been kind of hovering in this like 50 60% market share of trading platform volume. We're maybe missing a few smaller trading bots and I I got pinged by the FOMO guys actually that they would we need to get FOMO data on here. I think they're probably top five or so in terms of trading trading volume.

But if we look at sorry that was revenue. Let's look at volume. If we look at trading volume here, you can see Padre was less than 5% a few months ago back when pre pump acquisition and they've grown to now anywhere from 10 to 15% here in the recent month. So there's been a a kind of steady increase for them in terms of trading volume market share which I think is you know probably explained a little bit by just this combination of like pumps branding them being the main token launchpad and just getting their weight behind a competitive trading front end.

I don't know that this is necess like, you know, Axium is a great team. They've been shipping like crazy. I'm sure they'll continue to do so, but I do think just like for Pump's business, this this is pretty meaningful to see that market share and that that volume growth up and to the right for now their their native trading platform. Yeah, definitely.

I'm I guess I have like two thoughts on this. First of all, again, you talked about Padre as a separate pitch back in the day, which I guess is like kind of crazy to think about now that it got acquired by Pump. Crazy in the sense that a token holders saw nothing in return from Pump or maybe they got a pump airdrop. They got a they got a pump airdrop after the fact. Yeah.

And the second thing here is these guys just won't launch tokens. Like Padre had a token. Yeah. But Axiom just still hasn't launched a token. I can't think of one trading bot that has had a token. Banana Gun. Just the early ones. Uni bot and Banana Gun. It's been a long time. I mean, Trojan, Padre. Yeah. Outside of Padre. Padre had a token, but yeah. Of course, they got acquired and then the whole But like functionally, it didn't have a token because everybody just ignored the token. it didn't work out and yeah so I don't know it's like it's one of the most revenue generating things in in crypto and then it just never had a token kind of like I guess one thought here is if maybe the token is used as a tool by companies that can't generate revenue and then if you are re generating like why should a company go public if it just makes a ton of money in private unless it like at some point you need it to scale or something.

But crypto companies don't need to scale. They just need to make the developers really good money for six months. Yeah. I mean, you can you can get into the like pessimistic argument that like the only the only teams that launch tokens are ones that uh don't see a path to revenue and therefore the token is the opportunity for them to make some money. I do think in in the case of trading bots, it's like been very much the case that like if you're the leading if you're a dominant trading platform, yeah, you there's like no need to even bother with the token because you're printing cash handover fist.

We saw all the past like who is it? Photon, Bullex, GMGN, like you know, pick your favorite ones that dominated like all of 2024 and then in the beginning of 2025, like made hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, like no, you know, no ideas of launching a token and like sharing revenue or anything like that. I think uh, you know, if you make a really successful private startup and you make hundreds of millions of dollars, it's like and maybe your prospects of like continuing that year-over-year are not very high. That might be the sort of the the disincentive there, right? It's like this is a very like competitive and pretty cyclical and like prone for disruption market such that like I don't know if you want to make nine figures then launch tokens say you're going to share all the revenue and then like lose market share for the next you know in for for infinity after that like it's just sort of like they agreeing to give all give up all the money you made.

So, um, yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's sort of the we'll have to see whether we kind of get past that. That said, I would say like as well compared to like a traditional, you know, web two equity startup. Um, you know, these all these teams are like super early stage relatively speaking. like Axiom is less than a year old or you know tech I guess technically they've been building for maybe a few years but the product in its current form is is only been out for less than a year maybe just maybe just around a year now so even though they've got a ton of revenue it's like still very early stage in terms of like the company life cycle yeah I guess that makes sense the main thing there is for example pump launched and then like they launched the token they did the ICO before they launched and then when they went live they there was like a few days there was there were a few days there where they they bought back using pre-revenue as like I think they shipped 11 weeks of revenue over a day or so that's just yeah it is difficult because you launch the token obviously people stop using your platform as much although with pump that hasn't really been the case based on their fees and revenues dashboard But you lose that and then you're almost some people get really upset and they're like, "Oh, you're like using all of the past revenue."

Like you're keeping all of the past revenue. So they expect you to put that into the into the chart, which doesn't always make a lot of sense because it's just cash that you could use for like more um I guess reasonable use cases. Like you could I don't know. I mean I mean PubM's been doing a pretty good job to be fair. I didn't love the K scan accusation. I still don't know why the hell they did that and I don't really get it. Um maybe I just like I'm so out of the loop that I just don't know and I just don't get it.

Padre is I think it makes sense and clearly it's been like at least semi working out because then now they're at 15%. I don't know how the routing system works there to be honest with you. I don't know how Padre is generating the revenue. Um but I mean I think I had doubts at how much money Pump was making throughout this like memecoin bear cycle. Um, but I think post like the moment that anything picks up a bit of steam, the fact that the pump revenues immediately go up. Um, and like all the tokens that I'm being shared in the group chats again is pump to me makes it seem like they still have this I don't know if I could call it pricing power and I don't know if I could call it like anything but like semi-sticky nature like it is still the most dominant way to launch token.

Yeah, Lighters had the same thing. They launched their token and then they bought back like they're buying back, at least from what I understand on the DeFi Llama dashboard, it shows like the revenue was 70K for the day, but they bought back 170K. I assume the other 100K comes from a different time. Although they're doing it discretionary, so that might be different. But um yeah, it's cool to see that Padre is working out.

Do you still use trading terminals when you're going to buy something? No, I don't. I feel like I just use Jupiter now to buy something. Yeah, I've just been a a Jupiter guy for a long time. Think they have a good product. I don't I don't know. There's not really much else to say there. And there isn't that much to buy. I feel like the Telegram bot was when you really had to buy a lot.

Yeah, I think that really like it that that niche like targets a very particular type of user who is like spending all day staring at deck screener or whatever page, you know, tracking new launches and and constantly buying and selling out of them. But if you're not doing that, then I I find the the product is like not really necessary to use if you're just like trying to buy and hold some coins. Yeah, it's a I think it's a completely different part of crypto for me to the point that I don't really know.

Talking about maybe something a bit more relevant to us, unless you had anything else you wanted to mention. I don't know why I said more relevant to us like it is. I don't know if it is, but we're going to find out. Um, NY New York Stock Exchange launches I'm going to read this out. 247 doesn't launch plans 24/7 blockchain platform for tokenized US stocks. They don't mention any specific blockchains. They said they're going to use multiple blockchains.

This is in my mind bad for certain things. I feel like the main growth avenue for purpose exchanges and sexualized exchanges was now equities. Like clearly HIPP3 is the next No, disagree. No, Ian says they'll use Hideera. Yeah. Um AK free lighter obviously has its own like stock lo stock list stock token listing process. um central like we saw Binance start offering equity purpose. I thought this was going to be like the clear way for them to scale their businesses. I think it's great for blockchains depending on what blockchain they pick and we're laughing at the Hideera thing, but I don't know what they'll pick. Like nobody really knows. I assume it won't be Ethereum given that it's relatively slow, but it might be like if they're just they might just want the Eve heads might be right and they might want something trustless and incredibly neutral and that is Ethereum.

I don't know how I don't know how you would post any meaningful number of trades to mainet though. They would have I would have to imagine they'd have to use a a rollup or something just for the pure like if any meaningful amount of volume of trading of trades were settled on this onchain environment like as a subset of sort of the total trading activity that happens today in the markets then like I think you would you'd end up overwhelming Ethereum mainet. Yeah.

And I mean they this like still needs to become based on what I'm reading it still needs SEC approval. Yeah. Um but it is like this has been I remember I think D in New York 2025 this was the big talk of town and I think it makes a lot of sense like this there's a lot of discussion here. I know NASDAQ has also announced plans to move to 247 trading at some point. I think the bigger question is like yeah obviously the regulatory approvals but then also the timeline like I just don't I don't know how quickly that's going to happen even in the best case scenario is this is this three years out is it two years out is it five years out like that's pretty unclear.

I will say a lot of platforms now, like there's 245 trading of a lot of assets. Not not every asset, but quite a few, like at least a lot of the larger assets now. Um, so we've kind been slowly getting there. Yeah. I um I guess that's a good question. And you said um you think this is like kind of there's sort of like a bearish lean here on platforms that are angled towards like equity purps and things like that. Do you think that's because they would just like there's a positive angle where maybe they mint these assets like to those platforms? Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. I mean like I guess specifically for equity purpose, let's do this like this way. If you could buy Bitcoin on Robin Hood versus Bitcoin on chain, which one would you do? On probably on Robin Hood. Yeah. So, and then like what settlement layer is that using? I assume like the Bitcoin stuff will just be on BTC and E will just be on ETH. But on the in terms of like stock tokens, I assume majority of it would be on the big boys. Like let's say if if they're doing batch batches and they're just posting data, which could be the case. No, I'm being serious. Why are you laughing? I'm being serious. Like that might that literally might be it. Like their whole Bitcoin stock. Sorry. Keep going. He's disrupting us. Ian.

No, but I'm just exploring this question. And then like let's say S&P, would you rather buy it on the blockchain or or like would you rather long whatever Tesla on the blockchain or on Robin Hood if you know you're going to get the same settlement time. Oh, you're going to get the You're assuming you're going to get the same everything that's what they're going for. They're going for 247 completely on chain. Yeah.

Here's the thing is I think it's like the wrong question in my view like in that I think the way that people operate is like they become a user of a platform and then they just use that platform. So in one sense like cuz you you're saying like would you rather buy it onchain or would you rather buy it on you know say Robin Hood or even like Coinbase or Kraken but that might technically be the same question in a few years right like you can buy stock tokens on Robin Hood if you're in the UK and that's technically onchain. Yeah, I guess I don't know.

My thought here is like these platforms are like we've said applications make a lot of money because they own the consumer in crypto and one of the ways that they're trying to grow that like consumer side is by charging for equity exposure on chain through per mainly because pers make a lot of money and then we're like all of the guys underneath are I guess I'm specifically talking about exchanges lighter hyperlid binance coinbase kraken Yeah, that feels like more of a it just feels like more of like a it will D5 platforms get bigger or will C5 platforms get bigger, right? It's like because they're going to adopt all the same products at some point.

I do think I mean this is something we talked about last year quite a bit. Like I do think we are in this window where you know take advantage of the reg and grow as much as possible. Like I feel like the goal for any of these platforms should be, you know, you look at the monthly active users on like Robin Hood and Coinbase and they're like millions, like tens of millions. And so I feel like the goal for a DeFi pers exchange with like 50k users should be, okay, how do we get to a million or two million before these other platforms are like legally allowed to just offer the product that we have to their 30 million customers? Yeah.

And if they're not completely focused on growth, then like I think they're just going to get trampled. Yeah. Well, I I guess what I was trying to say is right now it's very much like applications own the user and therefore they make a lot of money. But there's a in three four years down the line there's a chance that these trades are being settled on loans that are served through Robin Hood or Interactive Brokers or whatever your poison is. And then like the Dan Smith thesis of 31 billion transactions at 0.008 008 might work out as opposed to what like like cuz my thesis was always that if you can charge I don't know 14 pips on a trade that's a lot better than an L1 charging not based on volume and based on transaction amounts.

We'll see. That's I guess that's what I was trying to get at over there. It's a fouryear thing. It's not it's definitely it's minimum a two-year thing. It's definitely not like a this year thing. I would say the regulation maybe approves it this year. Maybe. were agreeing though, right? Like you're saying you're worried about an app getting taken over like beaten out by a platform then like the app just needs to evolve into a platform. It needs to go into a platform that's the way to win. Yeah.

Yeah. That is the optimistic happy case and we've I think we've had that view right like at least even in DeFi you know 2025 was kind of like the a key thesis that blocks research was multi-product defi is going to win and like you see that especially so on Salana where like basically every app is in competition with every other app because they're like the only way to make more money is basically like to just offer a broader platform and add more features and they're like the lending products are in competition with, you know, some of the swap products and the swap products are in competition with, you know, some of the frontends and some of those are in competition with some of the platforms and the wallets. Like they're all they're all fighting for uh to like lock in users.

Yeah. And they are doing this a lot of these platforms and these blockchains are also I don't know if this is the right word for this but they're like application applicationizing like a has the A labs app now not the A labs app the A app base has based app I think it's still called the based app I imagine we'll get more and more of these like it's been so dead in crypto this idea of like an all-encompassing app. Um, and it's just getting more and more and I think that's like I think teams are probably slowly lighter launched their own app. I don't I don't know if they've made enough um transactions on it yet to like be mentioned next to the other ones.

But um I don't know if Jupiter has an app, but like I imagine a lot of these teams are going to become more and more product focused. Jupiter wallet. Yeah. Um, Phantom, great app. Great app. Like I I imagine that's like the next step in the evol in the evolving. I don't know how like that's a great example, too, right? Like the wallets like Phantom and Rabby like they they've been turning into like basically mobile exchanges, right? Like they went from wallet to like it's basically Coinbase.

And Phantom is great as well. I just wish they didn't like kiss your forehead every time you wanted to make a transaction 40. Yeah, but it's like I think it's functionally the same as if you were a Coinbase, you know? It's like are you going to use would you use Coinbase or would you use Phantom? And like the take rates on Phantom are probably a little bit lower. Like they have to cater a little bit more to the onchain crowd, but still like they want to take a cut. Yeah, maybe a bit too much of a cut. They have some lock in.

So yeah, I um I don't know. I would I would love to I would love to switch further. I've been using this app called Pay P A Y. I've talked about this before. Doesn't work. Used to work, stopped working. I can't buy anything off it. So if there's like a good I talked to the to the plasma guys about it. I think they're supposed to come out at some point this year, but I'm looking for like a good all-encompassing. It's just like there's these segments, right? like I think there is chance for a regulatory AR orb um trading thing.

Um I don't know if it'll be lighter. I don't know if it'll be hyper. I don't know if it'll be Axiom Phantom maybe. Um and then there's like this one other app that's like lending savings and earn etc. That's a cash app also. Like these two to me are very clear that it can work for especially in like a crypto sense. Still hasn't launched. I don't know. There just isn't any like if we're talking about productizing, Phantom's done a decent job. But even that I would say is like a lot more cryptonative than it is for mass market. But maybe that's the good thing. Like maybe that's you just want to build around your core consumer base and try to grow with within them as opposed to try and reach like random pockets of the market that is probably not that interested in you.

I think they're trying to break into it. They just haven't seen the adoption. like Phantom has their cash stable coin, but it's got very low uh usage. Like I think the I'd have to check the market cap, but it was less than 100 million when I checked maybe a few weeks ago. Um which from zero to whatever it's at, like if it's 60 or 70 million um in market cap, like you know, maybe that's meaningful if they can kind of slowly grow that and then like take a cut on the some of those yields as It's like it's another revenue stream for them.

But um I do think one app that's like quite clean on sort of like the the stratified crypto or like the sort of bank to onchain connection is like squads. Oh, that's a good one. I need to check that out. Ryan Connor was actually posting about it today. There's a few apps like that where it's like they very specifically do like one thing really well and it's like you know cash bank account cash to like onchain stable coins like going between the two and then like very easily giving you like you know earn x% yield on your stable coins via we're just going to you know put it in a safe pool for you this you know yeah I'd really like just one that lets me access um a cash product as well as not onchain yields.

I want treasury or money market funds. I don't know if either of those can be done. I don't want smart contract risk. I want very limited smart contract risk. But also like in that case, I think you can just use I don't know Revolute or Robin Hood and probably get the same access and then eventually the same stable coin rails. So I don't know. I don't know how. Also, I'm the the payment thing is or like the the like bank to onchain like app is a tough one too because I think you get forced into a position where you have to take uh a fee.

Cuz I know even like Sphere Pay, if you're familiar with that one, that was like an I used that product for a while, like an incredible just like, you know, onchain stables to offchain bank account um conversions and like pretty quick, like very quick settlement. Um and they had, you know, they had sort of introductory zero fees for a long time and then they had to add a fee because obviously they're just going to burn money forever if they don't take a fee because it's it's like that's the only product. they don't they're not making revenue any other way. Um whereas like if you're an exchange or like a platform or something, it's like you're making revenue in a bunch of different ways. You could you could incentivize like you know cash to stable coin like swaps for free like with no spread.

Yeah. Um and withdrawals and deposits for free because you you're making money on you know the pers and the trading and the options and all that other stuff. I think that's what Robin Hood does. They they pay you for sitting US dollars, right? Yeah. a bunch of the I mean a lot of the like neo bank fintech platforms now give you you you get like just under the the you know the treasury risk-f free rate sort of on like idle cash via like a sweep program but they also have at least I know for Robin Hood specifically you can swap between dollars and USDC with no spread or fee that's pretty good and on and off board so it's pretty good maybe I gota it's hard to compete with that I feel like yeah it definitely is very hard to compete with that they have a good platform form. Um, okay.

Less um less bullishness, fintech. Let's try and find some bullishness into crypto. Yeah, Mega E. Um, a little bit of a hiatus. They are back now trying to regain some steam, some momentum. Uh, let me pull this up. They just dropped this Mega ETH global stress test. Uh, they want to do 11 billion transactions in seven days. So on the 22nd they're opening up mainet to users for some latency sensitive apps. So high throughput um while the chain is under some intense load basically like they want to do kind of like a mainet test.

Yeah. Like fog fishing. I don't know if you Yeah. May probably see some click farming or whatever different apps basically. But stress test the chain get get people on it for the first time. Um, and probably also try to generate some momentum on socials again because I feel like they, you know, they were very much in the spotlight and then post sale like they were going to do their whatever it was like liquidity campaign or or what have you and uh didn't didn't work out how they wanted it to and then they kind of like killed that and they've been quiet since. Yeah, they did they did raise at a good time. They raised when the market was doing well and I think Yeah.

No, but it's true. Like I mean from their perspective it's a great time for them to raise and they're still above the raise amount like the raise FTV so I think it's fine. Um let me show this. They're targeting they say they're targeting uh true TPS of 15 to 35,000. Um I don't know what the true TPS of Solana is to be honest with you. Yeah. So I guess they're comping it to 1.5K for Salana. So they're taking out vote transactions which is I think that we're correct to do. Although I'm sure there's somebody who will get upset with us for that. Yeah.

So, yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting assuming, you know, if we could see these numbers, that'd be really cool. Yeah. I um the hard part is the demand question, right? It's like you can do the fogo fish and then after the fog fish, like you you need demand on the chain to to do 10ktps. Yeah, it's tough. And I mean, you and I both know this. I feel like founders are already founders also al know this like it's not what it used to be where it feels like now you don't even see that many like day one v2 v3 amms launching on these deck on these new chains it it's it's the the developer interest has and this isn't like a world with claw code where you can very easily launch like a copy paste and I know this isn't what to in my mind the flow was like new chain launches, you get some form of an air drop and then you there was a time when you could buy the first bridge or the first decks and you would make like five to 10x, sometimes even more if the developer wasn't an idiot and would tweet good stuff.

Um, versus and then it changed very quickly to like there were still those dexes and bridges launching, but you didn't really make a lot of money on them. um and you didn't you stopped getting aird drops and now it's very much like you have to deposit or buy into the ICO. You get very little airdrop if you do. Um and also there's no dexes or amm like on on Fogo. I think there aren't that many Dexes and lending like V2 forks, V3 forks, which isn't a bad thing. I think like you don't actively want those products anyway. It's just like more of a commentary on how crypto has evolved over the past few years. like there's a lot of L1's and marginal L1 doesn't bring in a lot of new attention from either developers or users.

Um, so I think people I think founders realize that they need to focus on a lot of different stuff and like we've already we've already glazed Mega Heath quite a bit on this pod. They've done everything they can to ensure that there are new applications on their chain. So, I think it should do okay. But I also think they should probably shouldn't be too disheartened if like day one they launch and the market's in a place. Um, and there just isn't that much interest. Yeah.

I think part of it as well is that um the market is smartening up and the market includes these teams um because it used to be the case that it's like you launch a chain and then you're giving out millions of dollars in grants and incentives to like anybody who launches a Uni V2 fork. Um but obviously that was a waste of money in like almost every cases or probably like in 100% of cases it was a waste of money to do that. Um, so I don't know. I just think, not to say that all uses of capital in crypto right now are smart, but at least some of the very pointless like burns of cash, um, we've realized that like we don't need to do some of them every single time or like make the same mistake over and over again.

And certainly like just, you know, you can think of like the 2021 like, you know, Avac Rush or whatever, like we're just going to like throw $100 million into like DeFi teams and like it'll it'll pump the out of all the coins and then six months later like, you know, everyone a couple of people walk away with with boatloads of money and and like nothing else really changed. So, I think teams are realizing like you you can't just like waste your your raise funds just like giving away money because it it won't it won't give you any sort of competitive advantage. Yeah.

I What would you say is like a good Okay, so this is what I'm thinking of, right? Like Uber did a decent job. Uh I don't know if you remember 20 God, I'm ancient now. 2018 2019 Uber I don't know if you took a lot of Ubers in 2018 2019 Americans drive um as a young man I was taking a lot of Ubers and what probably now costs 10 bucks back then was four um because VCs subsidized it like that's the common take I don't know actually how it works I mean if you take Uber in NYC it's like $100. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine back then it was