Understanding the pulse of the bull market! Conceptual sectors are rising rapidly, with Ethereum emerging as the center of the multi-chain universe.

In the circle of a bull market, there is a focus on "sector rotation." For example, last year, DeFi took the lead, initiating the bull market. This year, the pace of sector rotation has become more apparent.

(This article is authorized and reprinted from "Plain Blockchain". The original title is "When you are still undecided about whether the bull market is over, cross-chain and NFT strike again!" Original article here.)

First, the rise of NFTs, with established players like Enj and Mana showing astonishing momentum, and newcomers like Flow, AXIE, and Chz following suit, each with several-fold increases. Cryptocurrency art and collectibles are entering the sight of more people, with Opensea reaching over a hundred million in trading volume in March and nearly 100,000 users. Beeple's artwork fetched nearly $70 million at Christie's.

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This high-priced auction in March can also be seen as the climax of the first phase of the NFT sector, after which, the NFT sector as a whole enters a period of "lull."

Following that, the old mainstream projects began to rise, many so-called "mainstream projects" that hadn't seen much increase before started to catch up. Although you know that the vast majority of them may not survive the next bull market cycle and will be swept into the dustbin of history, the bull market is fundamentally irrational. Some domestic public chains, under the concept of being an "Ethereum killer" that has long faded, with almost "zero ecology" on their own chains, can still rise to market values of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars. All I can do is exclaim - this is the taste of a bull market!

Entering April, you can clearly feel the overflow effect of DeFi projects on top of ETH becoming stronger, with more and more DeFi projects appearing on BSC, HECO, and Sol. Recently, FTM, Avax, and Matic have also joined the war for "capturing the overflow value of ETH," and it is foreseeable that Near, Okexchain, Cosmos, and Dot will also join the battle in the very near future, creating a prosperous scene of a "multi-chain universe" (or chaos?).

With the announcement at the end of April that "Binance will launch an NFT platform for global users in June," the NFT sector clearly begins its "second rise," with NFT projects like Bake, Dego, Alice, AXIE, and TLM collectively soaring.

So in this article, we mainly discuss the differences between this round of cross-chain and NFT market trends and the previous ones.

1. Cross-chain – ETH Becomes the Center of Multichain Universe

Interestingly, in the current environment, ETH has become the "unexpected" focal point of what Cosmos and Polkadot originally aimed to achieve.

As we all know, in the Cosmos concept, the entire network has many hubs, with Cosmos undoubtedly being one of the largest and most important hubs. Not to mention Polkadot, where the relay chain serves as the hub connecting all parallel chains, positioned at the core of the network.

When we played DeFi last year, whether through yield farming, trading, or liquidity mining, it was all dominated by ETH alone. However, now multiple high-speed chains are each building relatively complete DeFi ecosystems. Typically, there are at least the following three components:

1. DEX
2. Lending
3. Yield aggregators (vaults)

Ecosystems like BSC and Solana are even more enriched, often featuring projects such as synthetic assets, insurance, 1DO, and more. The mentioned tracks often have more than one project competing.

Therefore, it is not difficult to notice that smart funds are shuttling between various chains, constantly seeking higher yields in different "farms." However, how do funds move across different chains?

1. BSC - through Binance
2. Heco - through Huobi
3. Solana - through FTX
4. FTM - through Multichain.xyz (essentially via Anyswap bridge);
5. Matic - through Matic's own bridge.

For example, if you have AAVE on BSC and want to go to FTM for liquidity mining, how would you do it?

You would first transfer your AAVE from BSC to Binance, then withdraw it to your ETH wallet on Binance, and finally, use Multichain.xyz to transfer USDT from your ETH address to your FTM address.

It can be said that for most assets to cross between any two chains, they usually have to go through ETH as the "overpass" to get across.

So, this round of cross-chain has several characteristics:

1. Similar to DeFi, the earliest batch of "Ethereum killers" domestically and internationally, such as AE, NXT, NEO, Quantum, have no role in this round of cross-chain. After all, the essence of asset cross-chain currently is to find higher yields on various DeFi projects on different chains. These projects without their own DeFi ecosystems have no significance for funds to flow into. The three earliest DPoS chains, Trx, EOS, IOST, have basically lost their buzz on Twitter and WeChat groups. It seems that only TRX has a huge advantage in terms of transfers to U, while in other aspects, it has been completely overshadowed by BSC and Solana.

2. Binance once used Cosmos to build the Binance Chain, but it received little attention, while the Fork ETH BSC gained immense popularity. This situation illustrates the importance of EVM compatibility and user habits. Having a Metamask with a set of private keys and addresses that work for all chains is essential. It would be a nightmare to download a wallet or browser extension and generate a set of mnemonics for each chain—Solana being the only exception currently, as it has successfully built its own DeFi empire without EVM compatibility and Metamask usage, boasting a high number of users and market value. This just shows how outstanding SBF is.

The Dynamics of the Traditional Cross-chain Leaders Cosmos and DOT

Cosmos: Rune, originally built on Cosmos, was highly anticipated. Whether it's the threshold signature-based exchange technology or the model of using Rune as a liquidity exchange and staking asset token, it has amazed many. However, the current cross-chain situation seems different from what people initially thought. Everyone seems to be "manually cross-chain" using Cex+ETH+ other chains and enjoying it...

Iris: Recently, they released their own Coinswap, which I experienced and found average. Cosmos's own Gravity DEX will start internal testing in a few days. It remains to be seen if it will bring a new atmosphere to the Cosmos ecosystem.

Dot: Well, the slot auction keeps getting delayed. When founder Gavin makes progress, everyone reveres him as Dr. Gavin. When there are delays, he is jokingly called the "Pigeon King." Dr. Gavin also expressed that it's quite difficult...

According to unconfirmed reports, Polkadot's auction is highly likely to take place in May, after being delayed for several months, as progress is nearly complete. Polkadot already has a relatively complete DeFi ecosystem. The previous hundreds of projects were not just talk. Once the parallel chain auction starts, it can officially "open for business." Another major public chain will join this multichain universe.

It's actually quite tiring to think about. In the past, when playing DeFi, it was about looking at projects and using Uniswap for trading. Now, on every chain, there are multiple lending platforms and DEXs. When you add it all up, the multichain universe has dozens of DEXs and lending platforms. Even on Ethereum, which has the most complete ecosystem, just in the "fixed-rate lending" subsector, I know of seven or eight platforms. The blockchain world has reached a point where even if you are a full-time participant, it's impossible to keep up with or understand all the projects, let alone the influx of new projects daily...

All I can say is, embrace the bubble, and then exit before it bursts – that's the way to go.

2. NFT – New Scenarios, New Ideas, New Gameplay

This new wave of NFTs cannot just stop at the previous Beeple crypto art craze. This round of NFTs introduces many new gameplay styles, scenarios, and expands on existing ones.

1. Going Beyond: Represented by Flow, Chz

In the first wave of NFT trends, NBA Top Shot based on Flow was a huge success. If DeFi is a competition within the industry, then NBA Top Shot is the true breakout winner. During the same period, Chiliz established partnerships with several football clubs.

This kind of breakout NFT trend boils down to who can secure more IP collaborations, their own technology, capital backing, and marketing methods.

In this round, you will definitely see more IP collaborations with Flow and Chz.

2. More Fun – TLM, Alice, AXIE

The new NFT games are much more enjoyable than those in the EOS and TRX eras. Games like TLM and Alice based on BSC, leveraging the high performance of BSC, offer a much better experience compared to traditional NFT games on ETH, like the leading MANA. The recent surge of SLP reaffirmed AXIE's top position in NFT gaming. It's worth noting that in this round, NFT games have innovated technologically – TLM and Alice are based on BSC, while AXIE, originally on Ethereum, developed its Robin high-speed sidechain and is currently migrating to the sidechain. These games have closer ties to DeFi in gameplay, such as land auctions in Alice and the dual-token system in AXIE, internal weapon equipment trading platforms, and pet lending.

I strongly recommend readers interested in investing in the NFT gaming sector to experience a few NFT games to guide their investment decisions. Just like you need to have used Uniswap to confidently turn $2 into $40. Often, a significant part of belief comes from user experience.

3. More Mainstream – Binance, Bake

In the current blockchain world, CEX and DEX complement each other and cannot survive without one another.

BSC is a prime example. Although it cannot escape Binance's shadow, from a technical perspective, it is a DEX. With Binance's resources, both XVS's locked volume and CAKE's user numbers and trading volume have surpassed their counterparts on ETH – something that was unimaginable before. Everyone had already tacitly accepted Uniswap as the top player, but no one expected Cake to catch up and even surpass it. Of course, in terms of market value and industry status, Uniswap remains the undisputed leader.

The recent public announcement of an NFT platform by Binance aims to provide the best, fastest, and most cost-effective solution, creating the world's largest NFT trading platform and a top-tier minting, buying, and trading experience. This NFT platform integrates with the current Binance account system, and it is believed that many artists and creators will connect and collaborate on the Binance NFT platform. In the crypto world, whether in terms of reputation or user numbers, Binance is undoubtedly the leader. As a creator, do you have a reason to refuse Binance?

After failing to challenge Cake, Bake promptly shifted its focus to the NFT trading market. As a swap platform invested by Binance, Bake's relationship with Binance NFT is akin to that of Binance and Cake. This is why, after Binance's official announcement of an NFT platform, BAKE has skyrocketed. In the industry, these are all considered "clear" bullish news.

4. More Innovative – Visor, Mist

Uniswap V3 is about to be released, and many users say that V3's improvements are not substantial, and they don't have high expectations. From a user's perspective, this evaluation is understandable. However, the most significant improvement of Uni V3 is actually focused on LP (liquidity providers). In other words, Uni V3's major enhancement lies in capital efficiency, rather than user experience.

Uni V3 has directly led to a significant change in LP strategies, transforming homogeneous LPs into non-fungible NFT LPs. It has turned conventional general liquidity into irreplaceable liquidity, leading to structural changes in various DeFi projects based on Uniswap LPs for liquidity mining.

Projects like Visor, built around V3, fully embrace NFT LPs and have developed NFT smart vaults, providing many new gameplay options based on NFT LPs. Due to space constraints, I won't delve into it, but interested friends can search for information about this project.

Rumor has it that Visor's innovative idea was actually inspired by Mist (Alchemist). Mist is a more mysterious project with no official website, only a Github page. There isn't much information about them online, but the founder, thegostep, is well-known. He recently lowered gas fees significantly with the famous Flashbot.

It is foreseeable that with the launch of Uni V3, integrating NFTs into LPs will undoubtedly further promote the fusion of NFTs and DeFi, giving rise to new gameplay, projects, and even new tracks. It's truly something to look forward to!

Have you caught on to the latest trends in cross-chain and NFTs?