Smokey The Bera 🐻⛓@SmokeyTheBera
Apps aren’t helping chains anymore.
Now that I've got the clickbait out of the way, a bit more nuance -
We've been spending a fair bit of time internally discussing what matters for a chain in the short / medium / long term, especially as value drivers for a token have transitioned from "narratives" and "community" to revenue and cashflows.
It's all reflexive right - PA determines if a project is "good" or "bad" in the eyes of the masses. "Good" projects aka good price attract more strong builders and retail distribution, and strong builders beget strong builders. So even with the most egalitarian of intentions, it's EV+ to try to create a desirable token (I know I'm stating the obvious, please don't kill me).
In the Gensler era, generating revenue or sharing it with tokenholders was bad, esp as a chain - in a best case, it was a legal liability, in a worst case, it was a valuation ceiling (ie. this protocol makes $3m in rev, therefore it is worth 30m assuming a 10x P/E). Right now, Bera doesn't capture revenue directly from PoL, though it has shared $30m+ in PoL incentives with tokenholders.
Now, we're actually seeing more chains take "App-First" approaches to control their own financial outcomes, whether its Plasma One (Soon Tm), Hyperliquid, or Near Intents among others. Funnily enough, this was the original Bera vision, which was ultimately held back by our ability to technically execute, along with concerns on the legal side + pushback from the community around potentially eliminating a competitive market.
There's lots of nuanced reasons for this broader shift, beyond a maturing market and regulatory environment. One of them is the “bid dilution” as more alt tokens have been launched. Previously, one might bid Sol to get exposure to Pump, or Meteora, etc - but now you can just buy the dApp token itself. Sure, maybe you buy it with Sol, but maybe you buy it with USDC - and what does that do for Sol PA?
Historically, eco dapps have served as the major B2B2C nodes for onboarding to a chain (and long before that, validators served as a chain's BD/demand engine) and an adjacent thesis was that these dApps' gas consumption would drive value for the chain's token. Or the goal was to cause an airdrop fueled “wealth creation effect” which would enrich a given chain’s ecosystem participants, who might recycle it back into the rest of the eco.
Most people now agree that *maybe* with a couple exceptions (Sol and Eth), gas burn is no longer a value driver, and a lot of the “community” which used to recycle airdrops into an ecosystem has been replaced with industrial farmers or folks who are happy to cash out right after the drop. HYPE might be an exception here, but my understanding is that even with the strength of their native token, it’s been tough for eco alts to really take off.
The other angle beyond this is perhaps the mercenary nature that many app builders have to take in order to survive. Either they must possess the ability to build their own independent audience from CT, so their chain choice doesn't matter (a very rare skill) - or they have to go to where the users are, and flock to the hottest chain at the moment. You can throw grants and incentives at people, but at the end of the day they're just bandaid solutions. Therefore, potential for "vendor lock in" is reduced; sure you can say that X app requires Y TPS or Z tech solution, but that set of requirements is becoming increasingly commoditized and pvp.
The real blackpill is that many apps that have gained massive adoption and see tons of usage have had negligible effects on their home chain's PA - I think the Polygon ecosystem is a case study of that. That isn't meant as a slight against Polygon in any way, I think they're OGs and well intentioned builders in the space who don't always get the credit they deserve (despite some narrative chasing in the past).
But some of crypto's most-used apps are Polymarket and Courtyard, with the former arguably being one of the most important companies in the world right now. It's impossible to determine what the Polygon token would look like in the absence of these apps, but its also fair to make the case that their impact has not been meaningfully reflected in its price action.
The question that's been a bit trickier to model out is "Which apps matter and where should we spend our time?" It becomes especially relevant in the context of PoL, where the chain is helping to subsidize or enhance yields for its dApps. How do we avoid the Polygon / Polymarket scenario, where an app can take off massively, but the chain’s token itself might not see that same upside? How do you go from being a loss leader with dependency on players with different incentives to owning your own outcomes, without killing network effects?
I don't think there's a perfect answer, unsurprisingly. Some chains have taken the approach of venture investing in their app layer (we've done some of this / incubation with Build-A-Bera). There's certainly some merit to this, but imo its a messy legal pathway towards returning value to tokenholders. Others have erred towards building a lot of their own strongest apps (a la Mysten), which has definitely gotten community pushback, but has generally seemed productive. And some, like the ones I mentioned at the top of this stream of consciousness, have built their own revenue drivers (which seems like a very good baseplate idea to me, and is actively being incorporated into the Bera future )
I've been trying to distill a framework for what I believe can make an app *truly accretive* to a chain and potentially to the token over a long enough time frame.
IMO apps need to fit into one or more of these categories to move the needle:
1) Native token demand driver. Relatively self explanatory. LSTs, dexes, money markets often end up in this category.
2) Fee printer. Launchpads, perp dexes, some stablecoins all fall into this category. This doesn't necessarily impact the token directly, but it serves as a form of marketing for the eco as its often downstream of a good product.
3) Majors/stables token sink. Similar to 1), but having major liquidity or unique uses for BTC, ETH etc can drive arb volumes, fee generation, and generally provide a home for "default" assets that people might borrow against in order to play in your chain's ecosystem. Still not a direct impact, beyond majors paired with the asset in LPs.
4) Brand arbitrage. Also a form of adjacent marketing - eg. BlackRock / Nvidia / OpenAI is doing something with this team therefore they must be credible, and this may extend to the ecosystem as well.
5) God tier founder. Few and far in between, but the right aligned S-Tier founder(s) can bring massive strategic value and upside to a token / ecosystem. But they've gotta be a real champion of it. This is exceedingly tough to find amongst crypto natives but quite interesting when it comes to onboarding web2 founders to crypto, esp as they bring their own networks and capital to the table.
6) Already got distribution. Also a form of marketing, but this is also pretty rare. Examples of this often look like some of the private credit or payments type applications which really don't need crypto native adoption, but do need a chain's rails.
The list above is by no means exhaustive, and my perspective could totally be wrong. I felt like it is probably a contentious but interesting viewpoint to share in public, esp in a space with lots of app builders / chain contributors who might have differing perspectives. I'd be curious to hear people's views for sure.
My tl;dr is kind of:
- Opinionated enshrinement / owning your own outcomes and rev streams will become increasingly key for chains
- Time + token emissions are precious resources and are rarely spent well across most ecos (including us)
- Target audience for most of crypto is changing and that's going to cause a "Come to God" moment for many including us.
- We’re gonna need to double down even harder on the apps that matter, and clearly divide fundamental revenue drivers and token sinks versus spicy forms of marketing.
Anyway, Berachain builds businesses, more soon.
