Here are a few of my takeaways from Token2049 & the Digital Asset Summit Asia. - Fundamentals is an important return driver now In a panel discussion with @santiagoroel, @HadickM and @sethginns, they pointed to a "flight to quality": tokens with stronger revenue developments are seeing those developments accrue to the token itself. This means certain tokens start to look more like equities. Therefore, institutional analysts can now do fundamental analysis on these, which gives investors more clarity if they choose to put the tokens in their portfolio. - Tokens with better fundamentals are outperforming The same panel noted that, unlike the previous cycle where top performers tended to be newly issued tokens, legacy tokens with real revenue fundamentals are outperforming the rest this time. Research presented in a separate keynote backed this more rigorously: looking across a large panel of tokens, it found that those with higher distribution yield (mostly through buyback-and-burn) outperform Bitcoin this cycle. - What this could mean for cycles going forward Together, these observations suggest the old "four-year cycle" heuristic may be breaking down. Coming out of this cycle, we may see less synchronised movement across tokens generally, with the strength of underlying fundamentals mattering more than it has before. - App-Layer vs. L1: Not the same problem Some of the clearest examples of mature capture-and-distribution models - Aave, Hyperliquid - have been running theirs for a long time by crypto standards, and are arguably the closest comparison to equity-style valuation in this space today. General-purpose L1s like Avalanche aren't necessarily behind here, though, the capture and distribution question for us is more nuanced than it is for a single application, and how the market responds to that complexity is still something worth watching closely. - The gap nobody's solved yet The same question came up in a separate panel with @zeroxkyle, @Tradermayne, @dennis_qian and @andyyy. Their view: revenue remains the key driver this cycle, with Hyperliquid as the reference point - but only for app-layer tokens (Hyperliquid, Aave, Uniswap, Rollbit), not general-purpose L1s. They didn't explain how L1 tokens should be valued instead, beyond assuming higher app revenue should naturally demand higher L1 security, and therefore higher L1 value. Most L1 tokens aren't valued by revenue today because they don't capture much of it, and "should" doesn't happen automatically, it needs an explicit mechanism connecting app revenue to L1 value. That's exactly what our research agenda is working to build: a clear link analysts can actually examine, the same way they already do for app-layer tokens. - What this means for Avalanche This is exactly the gap our research agenda exists to bridge, strengthening Avalanche's fundamentals and improving the value accrual process. It matters because, as the panels this week suggested, markets may increasingly reward with a real, explicit link between the value their ecosystem creates and the value that flows back to the token. Measure, capture, distribute isn't just a framework we talk about, it's the kind of mechanism-building we believe this problem requires. That said, this is quickly becoming consensus across the industry, not just us: competition is intensifying, and we need to stay strategic about where we focus, balancing impact, effort, and timing. The work at the Foundation is well underway, and we look forward to sharing more as the work progresses 🔺

More than half of trading in tokenized equities takes place outside regular market hours. The demand for 24/7 access is real. The challenge is building markets that are also deep, liquid, and resilient. Learn more in our GFSR chapter on tokenization: imf.org/en/publications/gfsr…

Measuring an Onchain Economy 🔺 Matias A. (@frostLedger) explains the framework the Avalanche Foundation is using to measure value in the Avalanche economy. Gross Chain Product (GCP) works like GDP (Gross Domestic Product): instead of counting transactions, it sums the revenue each project generates because the chain exists, then traces how that revenue connects across projects - revealing why the economy runs the way it does, and what the chain's security currently depends on. Gross Chain Income (GCI) works like GNI (Gross National Income), going a step further to capture income revenue alone misses - yield backing stablecoins, returns generated inside lending protocols - the value participants actually earn, not just what gets reported as revenue. Together, GCP and GCI reveal the full value only the chain itself enables. Once that's measured, the next questions follow: how much can be captured without disrupting the activity that creates it, and how should it be distributed. This is what the Foundation’s research agenda is built upon.

Measure. Capture. Distribute 🔺 Matias A. (@frostLedger) took the stage at Avalanche Summit New York to detail the economic framework underpinning the Foundation's research agenda. He addressed three central questions: how value can be measured, how it can be captured without disrupting economic activity, and how distribution can be made more efficient. Drawing a direct parallel to the fiscal multiplier concept in macroeconomics, where a dollar spent should generate more than a dollar of impact. The Foundation is examining each aspect of the agenda thoroughly and with rigour, with the aim of making meaningful, long-term changes that strengthen Avalanche.