Welcome to the Crypto.com Monthly Research Roundup Newsletter!
1. Market Index
In October, the price and volume indices increased by +7.73% and +15.93%, respectively, while the volatility index was negative at -11.76%.
2. Charts of the Month
Bitcoin dominance reached 58.85% on 31 October, the highest level since April 2021. Bitcoin’s dominance has sustained its upward trend so far in November. Higher Bitcoin dominance often indicates that investors are favouring Bitcoin over altcoins. This coincided with ETH’s lacklustre performance against tokens like BTC and SOL.
The ETH/BTC price ratio reached 0.036 at the end of October, the lowest since April 2021, while SOL/ETH hit a record high of around 0.07 at the same time.
Election-betting markets have risen in popularity during the US presidential election cycle. Polymarket, a blockchain-based prediction platform, saw its monthly trading volume exceed US$1.5 billion in the US Presidential Election Winner betting in October, with a cumulative trading volume of $2.6 billion from August to 6 November 2024.
Kalshi, another prediction marketplace, started accepting USDC deposits on 28 October, enabling US traders to bet on the presidential election and congressional races. This move has led to over $20 million in USDC being deposited by 21,000 users within 36 hours of its launch.
After six consecutive months of decline, the NFT market witnessed its first positive growth since March 2024, with its sales volume increasing 17.5% month-over-month. Top blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana all saw double-digit growth in sales volume, led by their blue chip NFT collections.
Following its sharp decline in September, the in-game items and collectibles marketplace DMarket on Mythos resurged, resulting in a triple increase in Mythos’s overall sales volume. Flow, a platform primarily supporting sports NFTs, maintained its momentum with 18% growth, thanks to ‘NBA Top Shot’.
3. Monthly Feature Articles
Monthly Feature Report | Intent-Based Protocols
In the cryptocurrency space, an ‘intent’ refers to the specific goal or objective that a user aims to accomplish within the blockchain ecosystem. Intent-based protocols are designed to simplify user experiences and reduce barriers to entry into crypto.
They can generally be classified into two categories: infrastructure players building an architectural layer for a wide range of intent use cases, and specific applications that focus on particular use cases.
This report provides an overview of the intent-based infrastructure protocols.
Key Takeaways:
In the cryptocurrency space, an ‘intent’ refers to the specific goal or objective that a user aims to accomplish within the blockchain ecosystem. It is an expression of the individual’s desired end state(s). Generally, a transaction explicitly refers to ‘how’ an action should be performed, while an intent refers to ‘what’ the desired outcome of that action should be.
Intent-based protocols aim to simplify user experience and reduce barriers to entry into crypto. The landscape can be generally classified into:
Infrastructure: Architectural layer built to cater to a wide range of intent use cases.
Specific Applications: Dapps or protocols that focus on a particular use case (e.g., trading, smart accounts, bridging).
One of the first movers in the intent-centric Web3 space, dappOS has developed a series of intent task frameworks for different use cases:
Intent assets allow users to earn yield while utilising them like native tokens on-chain.
Intent EX helps users achieve optimal transaction costs in spot trading through both on-chain and off-chain strategies.
The intent-centric dapp interaction fosters a network of dapps currently supported on dappOS.
Intent-based protocols are significant, as they improve user experience and also unify the fragmented crypto landscape, where the user does not have to spend time navigating across the multiple available wallets and protocols to achieve their target. In addition, there’s potential to integrate with AI agents (like Crypto.com AI Agent) to process natural language and automatically execute transactions based on user inputs.
Challenges appear, however, due to the opaque intermediate processes (i.e., how the outcome is achieved), and service providers may act in their own self interests or be centralised, which could jeopardise users’ interests.
We see the potential for intent-based protocols to be the large-scale aggregators and agents for Web3, as they are also the key drivers for Web3 massive adoption. We envision a future where users input their intents and receive optimised solutions from a diverse service ecosystem, bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3.
In Solana staking, 67% of the total SOL supply is staked, and liquid staking accounts for 7% of all tokens staked. For comparison, Ethereum has a staking ratio of 29%, with liquid staking being the most popular method, accounting for approximately 31% of the share.
The Solana liquid staking ratio has doubled from around 3% in October 2022 to around 7% in October 2024, and the market capitalisation of liquid staking tokens surged 14 times from around US$360 million in October 2022 to $5.3 billion at the end of October 2024. The top three liquid staking players share around 73% of the market.
This report explores the major liquid and native staking players on Solana.
Key Takeaways:
Staking on Solana, similar to Ethereum staking, can be generally divided into the following types: Staking-as-a-Service (STaaS), liquid staking, staking with centralised exchanges, and solo staking.
Of the total SOL supply, 67% is staked, and liquid staking takes up 7% of the share (the rest in native staking). Because of the difference in network infrastructure, Ethereum has a staking ratio of 29%, with liquid staking the most popular way at around 31% share.
Market capitalisation of liquid staking tokens on Solana surged 14 times from approximately US$360 million in October 2022 to $5.3 billion at the end of October 2024. The liquid staking ratio doubled its share from around 3% in October 2022 to around 7% in October 2024.
The top three liquid staking players take up 73% of the market share. Jito is the largest player (44%), followed by Marinade Finance (17%), and Jupiter (12%).
Marinade was the first liquid staking protocol on Solana, having a dominant market position from August 2021 to November 2023. It provides both liquid staking and native staking options.
Jito overtook Marinade as the largest liquid staking protocol on Solana in November 2023. It leveraged Jito-Solana, the first third-party, maximum extractable value (MEV)-boosted validator client for Solana to share and optimise MEV rewards for users.
Sanctum Infinity is a unified liquidity layer for Solana liquid staking tokens (LSTs). Its Infinity multi-LST liquidity pool currently supports 75 LSTs (including jitoSOL, mSOL, and jupSOL), and enables swaps across the various trading pairs. Effectively, Sanctum lowers the barrier to entry to create new LSTs.
Solana is considered more centralised than Ethereum in terms of the number of validators to secure the networks. Currently, Solana has 1,387 validators active on the mainnet, and 18 of them together make up 33.33% of the total SOL staked (called a ‘superminority’, which could together halt the Solana network). Although Ethereum has more than 1 million validators with around 29% staking ratio, most of the staking power is concentrated in the top players like Lido (28%), which also raises centralisation concerns.
Monthly Feature Report | Crypto Derivatives Trading – Technical Analysis in Perpetuals and CFDs
Perpetual futures contracts (Perpetuals) and Contracts for Differences (CFDs) serve as popular derivative instruments, sharing several similarities that appeal to traders looking for flexible, leveraged trading options in the cryptocurrency market. However, they differ in terms of contract structure, fees, and trading mechanisms, making them different for traders when controlling risk.
In this report, we demonstrate how to use popular technical indicators to build trading strategies, with the consideration of margin and trading fees, within the Crypto.com ecosystem.
Key Takeaways:
Perpetual futures contracts (Perpetuals) and Contracts for Differences (CFDs) serve as popular derivative instruments, sharing several similarities that make them appealing to traders looking for flexible, leveraged trading options in the cryptocurrency market. However, they differ in terms of contract structure, fees, and trading mechanisms, amongst others, making them different for traders to control risks.
In this report, we demonstrate how to use popular technical indicators — Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) and Relative Strength Index (RSI) — to build trading strategies, with the consideration of margin and trading fees, within the Crypto.com ecosystem. The trading strategy is evaluated based on data from October 2020 to October 2024.
The strategy in the report combines the MACD crossover strategy and the RSI. According to historical data, the strategy could generate positive gains with certain risk control, which can be amplified along with the increase of leverage.
While the strategy provides a structured approach to trading using technical indicators, it is essential to recognise its limitations and consider additional factors like market conditions, risk management, and trader psychology. To improve its effectiveness, traders may want to incorporate more sophisticated techniques, diversify their strategies, and continuously adapt their approach based on real-time market analysis and feedback.
This institutional-focused report dives into macro trends, market-neutral pairs, style-factor screens, and events. Read the full Alpha Navigator report here.
Crypto and Equities had mixed performances in October; Fixed Income was down; BTC led the rise.
BTC’s performance correlations with Equities dropped in October and was weak with Fixed Income.
5. Crypto Conference & Economic Calendar from Market Pulse
We present to you our latest issue of Research Roundup, featuring our deep dives into Intent-Based Protocols, Solana Staking and Crypto Derivatives Trading – Technical Analysis in Perpetuals and CFDs.
