Crypto News to Watch in June

This article covers some of the major crypto events/catalysts in June as well as a few DeFi/airdrop strategies worth watching.

List of crypto events / catalysts for June

L1/L2

• Peercoin Hard Fork – June 3

• Sagaxyz “Vault 2” Airdrop Snapshot

• LayerZero airdrop rumored to be in June

• zkSync airdrop will take place on June 13th

• Blast L2 airdrop will take place on June 26th

• Lisk L2 blockchain launch and token migration

• zkEVM L2 Taiko airdrop (5% of supply) will take place sometime in June

• Fluent announces Blend - L2 combining WASM, EVM and SVM

DeFi

• Fractal (Frax finance) hackathon stimulates the ecosystem

• Ether.fi S2 airdrop scheduled to end on June 30 (5% of supply)

• Maker begins Phase 1 of “Endgame” (subDAO launch possible?)

• Platypus Finance has been acquired by Stable Jack - Token Conversion

• Stake RabbitX’s native RBX token to get new BFX tokens - June 1st snapshot

• Swell TGE will happen in a few weeks in conjunction with the “Voyage” airdrop (8% of supply)

• “Ether.fi Cash” is coming soon, offering native savings accounts and Visa credit cards

Crypto x AI/DePIN

• Apple Worldwide Developers Conference – June 10

• Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting - June 13

• NVIDIA Annual Shareholder Meeting – June 26

• Aethir TGE is rumored to take place in June

• Ionet TGE is rumored to be held in June

GameFi/SocialFi

• DeGameFi Conference

• FOMO Network launch date – June 1st

• BeeCasinoGames airdrop event lasts until June 30th

Important token unlocking

• June 1st $SUI 7.29% of total supply enters circulation

• June 1st 3.63% of total $ENA supply entered circulation

• June 1st $DYDX 11.9% of total supply enters circulation

• On June 1, 8.5% of the total supply of $1INCH entered circulation

• June 12th $APT 2.6% of total supply enters circulation

• June 14th $IMX 1.72% of total supply entered circulation

• June 15th $STRK 5.61% of total supply enters circulation

• On June 16th, 3.49% of the total $ARB supply entered circulation

• June 25th $ALT 6.9% of total supply enters circulation

Macroeconomics

• June 7: Unemployment rate = Anything above 4% is likely to be seen as a huge risk-off signal.

• June 12: Core CPI

• June 12: Fed Funds Rate and Press Conference

• June 13: PPI

• June 18: Retail sales

• June 21: Services and manufacturing PMI preview

• June 27: Final GDP quarterly rate

• EU MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) legislation will partially come into force on June 30

Cryptocurrency project financing in May 2024

• NodeOps raises $5 million

• StripChain raises $10 million

• Zeta Markets raises $5 million

• Farcaster raises $150 million in Series A funding

• Blockless raises $8 million in seed funding

• Babylon raises $70 million led by Paradigm

• Gamefi project Paramlabs raises $7 million

• Orbiter Finance fork Owlto Finance raises $8 million

• Ecosystem-owned liquidity pioneer Mitosis raises $7 million

• Blockchain services platform Lagrange raises $13.2 million in seed round

• Gamic, a social gaming project based on Linea, received $1.8 million in funding led by Binance Labs

• Cosmos-based data service platform Lava Network raised $11 million, with participation from Coingecko, Gate.io and Animoca

• Web3 publishing platforms Paragraph and Mirror merge into Paragraph, raise $5 million

• Fantom Foundation raises $10 million and announces Sonic Foundation $S and Sonic Labs, as well as upcoming blockchain

DeFi strategies worth watching

1. Blackwing

Blackwing is a modular rollup DEX layer built on Initia. Blackwing is unique in its "infinite pool" design - abstracting the bridge to allow liquidation-free leveraged trading of long-tail assets. Blackwing has received $4.5 million in strategic financing led by Hashed and Gumi Cryptos.

Blackwing is currently running its Tomcat-1 testnet, where users can deposit liquidity to earn "BXP" (Blackwing native points). Supported deposit assets include:

ETH, USDC, PEPE, SHIB

· LRT (eETH, ezETH, rsETH, rswETH, etc.)

Pendle PT tokens (PT-ENA, PT-sUSDe, PT-rsETH, etc.)

I have already deposited some Pendle PT-sUSDe and have earned 46% APY. Therefore, Blackwing is a very good DeFi strategy for me, which can make me earn more income. Let's take a look at the potential return rate in the figure below.

I created a calculator that allows you to input points and the percentage of your expected airdrop/total supply. Based on this, along with the FDV of the Blackwing token and the total BXP supply, you can see how much your expected airdrop will be. How much BXP will be distributed in total? This depends on the TVL and when the campaign ends. I speculated that the campaign end time may be in September, which brings me to the following:

At 100% growth, there are about 40 million BXP. Note that this number can easily deviate up or down. As for how many points you can earn, it depends on how long you deposit. The APR will decrease over time as more liquidity comes in. In my case, I deposited $160,000 a few days ago and have about 3,200 BXP (if you don't count the referral points).

In conclusion, putting aside the smart contract risks, if you are earning a fixed income of ETH or stablecoins by depositing them in Pendle, then depositing them in Blackwing seems to be a wise choice, and it seems that you can earn two to three times the current amount. But remember, risks are everywhere!

2. Ethena S2

So far, the Ethena S2 "sats airdrop event" has been going on for almost 2 months and will end in September. There are still 3 months left, which is enough time to participate. The beauty of the Ethena <> Pendle strategy is that the leverage increases over time. Therefore, there is no obvious difference between 4 months and 3 months of yield farming.

Points Leverage ( YT-sUSDe )

If you are bullish on ENA and want to maximize your S2 airdrop, the Pendle sUSDe market is by far the best strategy, not only can you gain leverage through the points you earn, but you can also earn the high yield paid to sUSDe holders (currently 36% APY). Please note that the sUSDe market on Pendle has limits on the amount that can be deposited, so you may have to act quickly.

The chart below shows the estimated return you would get if you purchased $20,000 worth of YT-sUSDe tokens today.

Based on previous analysis, I estimate that approximately 10 trillion sats will be distributed in total. However, given recent growth, the 12 trillion figure seems more realistic. Based on some additional assumptions above, buying $20,000 worth of YT-sUSDe will net:

$22,643 in ENA airdrop

If the average sUSDe yield from now to September 2nd is 25%, the sUSDe yield would be $13,393.

Note that the $20,000 spent on YT-sUSDe will become 0 at maturity, so the actual return is $16,037, which is equivalent to an 80% ROI (not too bad). As you can see, about 40% of the return comes from sUSDe earnings. If you assume that funding rates will be high in the coming months and sUSDe yields will remain around 35% instead of the estimated 25%, then sUSDe earnings will bring you $21,394 instead of $13,393. But if Ethena earnings decrease due to low funding rates, the return rate of this strategy will be lower.

What is a more risk-averse approach? You can also lock in a fixed rate of return of 36% per year for the next 3 months by purchasing PT-sUSDe tokens. This is an amazing rate of return, and it is a fixed rate of return. If you are looking for passive income related to stablecoins, it is difficult for you to fail. You can also deposit PT-sUSDe tokens into Blackwing, in addition to passive income, you can also reap airdrop income.

3. Ether.fi S2

Ether.fi is the largest liquidity re-staking protocol with a TVL of over $6 billion. Ether.fi's second season points program will end with a 5% airdrop at the end of June. So you actually have very little time to get involved. However, due to the high leverage of the Pendle YT-eETH Arbitrum market, it still seems to be a profitable strategy when the EIGEN airdrop returns are taken into account. The pool currently offers 135x leverage on Ether.fi points and 68x leverage on EIGEN points. If your Ether.fi StakRank has reached the highest level L8, then the expected return brought to you by Ether.fi and EIGEN is 55%. If you have not yet reached L8, the expected return is 28.58%, as shown in the figure below.

Please note that while there is a lot of information about Ether.fi’s S2 airdrop that has been confirmed by its team, it is still unclear how EigenLayer will allocate points for the S2 airdrop. So, please take these estimates with a pinch of salt.

4. Karak

Karak is a competitor to EigenLayer with nearly $800 million in TVL. There are several interesting strategies for Karak, including depositing LRT that has earned LRT points and EIGEN points, and now also earning Karak XP.

Additionally, Pendle recently launched three Karak markets for Karak USDe, Karak sUSDe, and Karak eETH. This allows users to either lock in fixed returns on these assets or gain leveraged exposure to all credits. Pendle Intern was able to obtain information from the Pendle team about the total supply of XP and published details on the expected returns of this strategy:

In summary, there are several great strategies to expand your portfolio in June. I personally use all of these strategies, but remember that many of the returns are based on speculative assumptions.