Brought to you by:

Welcome back to 0xResearch.

Happy Monday! In today’s edition of 0xResearch, we’re looking at liquid restaking’s resurgence in the last month, together with Movement chain’s MOVE Token Generation Event.

Tap into the latest 0xResearch podcast for a discussion on Hyperliquid and Magic Eden’s upcoming TGE with Tolks and Kez.

Restaking making a comeback?

ETH ETFs are flowing net positive for their tenth consecutive day and EigenLayer is preparing to introduce programmatic EIGEN incentives. Against that bullish backdrop for ETH, total liquid restaking TVL has grown from $10.7 billion to about $16.7 billion today since the start of November.

Ether.fi continues to grow its leading market position with about 2.39 million ETH in TVL. Its liquid restaking token (LRT), weETH, also continues to see the highest trading volumes in the sector, making up about 50% of all LRT trading volumes since July.

Despite stagnant TVL numbers, the liquidity of Swell’s liquid restaking token, rswETH, saw the largest increase of 4.77% over November.

Aave is also a key beneficiary of the restaking comeback. The lending protocol dominates the usage of LRTs, with more than 50% of the top five LRTs being supplied to Aave.

— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)

Brought to you by:

Exposure to DeSci, DePIN and Berachain for 0.133 ETH?!

Puffpaw is thrilled to announce the 10K Puff Pass NFT presale, running from December 9–13. By bringing its physical Smart Vape on-chain with the Vape2Earn model, Puffpaw is on a mission to help 1.3 billion smokers transition to a healthier, nicotine-free lifestyle.

With a $6M seed round, 12 IRL showcases, and the recent sell-out of 30K Genesis E-liquid Pods, Puffpaw is transforming the space as the only presence intersecting four trending narratives: consumer applications, DePIN, DeSci and Berachain.

MOVE drops following Movement mainnet beta

One of the more hotly anticipated airdrops is happening today, with the MOVE Token Generation Event (TGE). Movement Labs’ Movement mainnet beta went live on Dec. 5 ahead of today’s “MoveDrop.”

The Movement chain’s big idea is to provide the MoveVM execution environment, but settle to Ethereum, with a focus on the scalability and security sides of the typical blockchain trilemma.

Movement’s approach parallels the Eclipse chain’s use of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) to extend Ethereum's capabilities. Just as Eclipse allows Solana developers to interact seamlessly with Ethereum without abandoning the SVM's advantages, Movement Labs enables Move developers to branch out from Sui and Aptos, while still taking advantage of Move’s safety-focus and a high-throughput environment, according to Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs.

“We are the first and only Move-based Ethereum scaling solution,” Manche, who comes from an Aptos background, told Blockworks. “So, if you think of it, all the benefits of Move combined with Ethereum’s liquidity.”

The TGE distributes up to 10% of the MOVE token supply, designed to reward community contributions and participation. On the first day of trading, MOVE is seeing an $8 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV) down from a high of about $9 billion. That puts it in the vicinity of Celestia (TIA) and Mantle Network (MNT) on an FDV basis.

Movement’s token plays a role in the network operations, as “attestants” must stake MOVE tokens to offer finality guarantees for transactions.

Movement Labs has undergone significant architectural changes during its development. Initially, the project was designed as a standard optimistic rollup on Ethereum. However, optimistic rollups typically have a seven-day period to fully settle on Ethereum.

Unlike rollups, Movement does not need to wait for Ethereum finality, thanks to its "post-confirmation" mechanism. This system, akin to a pre-confirmation, provides a better user experience given a one-second finality, though at the expense of some security guarantees. While Movement does not inherit Ethereum’s security, the economic collateral from stakers is subject to slashing — closer to the Polygon PoS sidechain than to a zk-rollup.

“We need to have an economic stake built up ahead of time, such that if someone’s malicious or transactions go wrong, we have something to slash,” Manche said, in justifying the launch of the token before the production version of the Movement mainnet.

Developers stand to benefit from Movement’s architecture. A high-throughput execution environment and improvements to smart contract security are at the core of the Move programming language, which is widely regarded as being safer than Solidity. Some examples of applications already building on the network include the Meridian DEX, lending market Echelon, and BRKT (pronounced “Bracket”), which offers innovative prediction market tools. 

Movement’s competitive strategy is focused on community and developer engagement.

“The moat is in each community, which is something that you can't fork,” Manche said, noting their approach avoids unsustainable practices like incentivized liquidity programs.

Manche says Movement is more closely-aligned with other Move-based chains than it is to Ethereum.

“Obviously, we’re an odd duck in the EVM and Ethereum community, given the fact that we're doing alternative VMs, we have an alternative rollup framework and the architecture of the token design as well,” Manche said.

But there’s room for the full-range of experimentation in the Ethereum design space to compete with high-throughput chains like Solana, he said.

— Macauley Peterson (X: @yeluacaM | Farcaster: @Macauley)

Crypto’s golden age:

There are lots of token launches on Solana, but Hyperliquid regulates ticker sales with a dutch auction mechanism. Recent tickers have cost upwards of $100k — is that good or bad?

Kez: I think it’s good. It gives a premium to the tokens that launch. When the Hyperliquid EVM launches, anyone can deploy or build anything, but I think the spot tokens on the L1 will hold a premium and potentially be reserved for real product token launches.

Is Magic Eden making a comeback?

Tolks: There could be a trade on Magic Eden’s token. It depends on the tokenomics, which comes out next week. Magic Eden makes good revenue, about $300k in the last seven days, according to NFT Pulse, and I assume there is still good volume for Runes and Ordinals. They have a great product and dominant market share of that segment of the NFT market. The timing is also great, with NFTs making a bit of a comeback in the last few weeks. Having said that, there’s far too many liquid opportunities to have serious capital tied up in NFTs. NFTs might continue to go up but the relative illiquidity is an opportunity cost of the liquid markets in Solana, Hyperliquid and Base.

Brought to you by:

Puff Pass holders unlock access to the cutting-edge Smart Vapes, $VAPE rewards, and exclusive perks. The $VAPE token model incentivizes reducing nicotine intake with higher returns, supports sustainability through e-liquid consumption, and enables users to monetize their health data securely. With the Puff Pass Phase 1 selling out in a day, Phase 2 WL Sale starts Dec. 9, and the Public Sale follows on Dec. 11.

Don’t miss your chance — secure your Puff Pass NFT and get positioned for Q1 2025.

• What should Ethereum’s “north star” be? According to =nil; Foundation’s Avi Zurlo, Ethereum should focus on optimizing for rollups as the best platform for data availability and settlement, ensuring long-term scalability through sharded architecture. However, immediate L1 scaling is crucial to maintain value until rollups mature.