Tbh I only agree partially here. Agree that Hyperliquid set new standards regarding: - overall product/token launch execution - finding PMF and maintaining growth that generates real revenue - tokenomics and protocol mechanics designed value back to holders Yet, a few brief counter-takes on some of the projects you mentioned: @zama_fhe: Raised a total of $139m in funding to build a protocol that enables private smart contract on any L1/L2. Actually just announced its Series B led by @PanteraCapital yday, raising $57m at a valuation of >$1B. FHE is nascent tech and bringing it to production at scale is a tough task. Think well-funded research is very much needed here, and it’s great to see that Zama seems to be nearing that stage. The technology undoubtedly bears huge potential. - @RiscZero: Raised a total $54m and is much, much more than a zk co-processor. They have that too (Steel, powered by the R0 zkVM), but the main thing they built is exactly that RISC-V based, general-purpose zkVM (the most performant one in production) that actually powers a bunch of ZK rollups out there, as well as Kailua (zk fraud proofs for OP stack). With @boundless_xyz, they are also launching a fully decentralized ZK proving marketplace, that powers a full-stack ZK solutions that sill empower devs to leverage verifiable compute to scale any app they might build (a.k.a. Making them boundless, and breaking the block limits of contemporary chains. There is a shit ton of apps that are already being built using RiscZero/Boundless tech, including for example @hibachi_xyz, a Celestia-based CLOBS on BLOBS perp dex. - @Calderaxyz: Not just a RaaS provider but rather a composable ecosystem of >100+ (app)chains powered by the Metalayer. Allows anyone to launch rollups in literally a few clicks on testnet, and manages your entire infrastructure for a few k per month (incl explorers, indexers, etc). The Caldera eco counts $375m in TVL, and >759m txs / 27m wallets. Sure, many of the chains launched on Caldera currently lack major adoption, but there is some bigger ones like Manta or Apechain too, and as their business model is to launch as many chains (that pay them) as possible, I would say it’s not going too bad. Raised a toral of $24m, and main competitor is @conduitxyz which raised $44m, also not doing too bad given that there are 50+ mainnets live and with for example @katana also launching on top of their infra, also leveraging the G2 sequencer (designed for high performance). - @anoma: Raised a total of $57m and is building top tier tech, or more specifically, an intent-centric, universal operating system that unifies the application layer across any chain, opening up a new design space for builders and enabling everything from decentralized multichain CLOBs to generalized match-making protocols. In a few weeks this tech will go live, and we will be able to asses its success. The fact that they were supposedly looking to raise $40m at $1B FDV last year is also an interesting fact. With their Kait leaderboard now live too, I’m sure we’ll hear more about Anoma in the weeks to come. Now what I do agree with is that shared sequencing is probably an idea that sits in a tough spot today, as it looks like realistically speaking, most chains don’t want to outsource these critical network functions, and prefer to leverage other technologies/approaches to enable interoperability & composability with other ecosystems (e.g. @union_build ). Also agree that @eigenlayer copycats like @symbioticfi or @Karak_Network probs will have a hard time, given the restaking hype has died down. Also feels like @eigenlayer is once again lightyears ahead of them with the whole EigenCloud vision. Market is maturing fs, and that ppl start to care about revenue + buybacks is indeed a good sign. Yet it doesn’t mean that we should discount the value of disruptive technologies and crucial infra layers that enable the successful mass adoption applications on the app layer.

Also linking back to @ahboyash’s original post that ultimately inspired this take, and want to add: - @fluentxyz is building a zkWASM based, blended execution environment that will hit mainnet this year. Allows devs to seamlessly combine logic across VMs/languages (EVM,SVM,Wasm) on the same chain. Pretty bullish here myself. - @sovereign_labs: The SDK on top of which @bulletxyz_ is building Solana’s answer to Hyperliquid. There are a few other top tier teams building on their SDK too, but Bullet is def a main player in the CLOB wars and worth flagging here. - zkML also not dead and ensuring verifiability here is crucial imo. From @lagrangedev’s DeepProve to @omron_ai on Bittensor and many more, this kind of tech is just reaching adoption-level maturity. It’s still around tho.

Ahhhhh typo spotted: When summarizing HL points I mean: “tokenomics and protocol mechanics designed TO ACCRUE value back to holders” Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Found more typos, now know why I shouldn't write this stuff in the shower lol