This summer in the blockchain world has seen a surge in new chains, from Mantle, Linea, and Base launching in July to Sei, opBNB, and Shibarium in early August. Starknet, a heavyweight blockchain, also underwent a "Quantum Leap" upgrade. This summer has been bustling with activity, presenting new opportunities, projects, and, most importantly, new tokens for many blockchain enthusiasts.
Let's explore how to bridge tokens to these new blockchains and the current infrastructure and opportunities available on each of them:
Starknet
Starknet, previously criticized for its slow transaction confirmation speed, has greatly improved its user experience after the "Quantum Leap" upgrade. This upgrade also contributed to a significant increase in TVL, reaching a peak of 200 million TVL, although it has now retraced to around 100 million, ranking sixth among all Layer 2 solutions.
You can bridge assets to Starknet by following the official tutorial. Currently, Starknet has a relatively limited number of on-chain projects. Apart from DEXs like JediSwap, mySwap, and 10KSwap, there are interesting blockchain games like Realms (for Adventurers). The $LORDS token is associated with this project, making it one of the few tokens in the Starknet ecosystem. For a more detailed introduction to Realms, you can refer to the article by SaulDataman titled Realms X Bibliotheca Research.
Given Starknet's strong backing and funding, it is expected to be the next potential airdrop opportunity. Therefore, paying attention to Starknet and actively participating in on-chain projects could yield unexpected surprises.
Mantle
Mantle, incubated by BitDAO, is an Ethereum L2 solution closely connected with the Bybit exchange. In mid-July, it announced the alpha launch of its mainnet during the EthCC conference. Unlike other L2 chains, Mantle uses its token $MNT as the on-chain GAS instead of $ETH. $MNT tokens are swapped 1:1 from the previous BitDAO token $BIT. Currently, Mantle has around 86 million TVL.
Due to its close relationship with Bybit, users can easily deposit funds from Bybit to Mantle. It is one of the few new chains that received exchange support right after its launch. For cross-chain bridging, you can use the official bridge, which supports various mainnet tokens such as $MNT and $ETH, or third-party bridges like orbiter.finance and Symbiosis.
In terms of ecosystem projects, Mantle has not yet attracted major DeFi protocols. There are no well-established projects deployed on Mantle at the moment. Among the native projects, Agni Finance and FusionX Finance are the top TVL DEX projects.
It's worth noting that, unlike many L2 chains without native tokens, Mantle had protocol tokens from the start, reducing its appeal to airdrop hunters. Given these conditions, maintaining a decent TVL performance is commendable. The next thing to watch is Bybit's level of support, as no ecosystem protocol tokens have been listed on Bybit yet.
Linea
Linea is a L2 network built on ZK Rollup technology developed by the ConsenSys team. It announced the opening of Linea Mainnet Alpha access to the entire community during the EthCC conference. However, after almost a month, its performance is not as expected, with a TVL of only 34 million, ranking 13th among all L2 chains.
Because it is backed by the ConsenSys team, Linea's mainnet is built into MetaMask by default. Users can easily switch to the Linea network without the need to manually add a network. You can bridge assets to Linea using the official bridge or third-party bridges like orbiter.finance, rhino.fi, and Symbiosis.
Most of the ecosystem projects on Linea are DEXs or lending platforms. Due to the lack of oracle integration, lending projects support only a limited range of assets. There are no major DeFi protocols deployed on Linea yet. The majority of users appear to be airdrop hunters, and even meme coins are scarce.
Base
Base, launched by Coinbase, is arguably the standout among these new chains. In less than a month since its launch, its TVL has surpassed 200 million, currently around 250 million, ranking fifth among all L2 chains. Base's use of the OP Stack technology has made it easy for numerous projects to migrate to its platform. Major DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Compound, and AAVE have already deployed or are in the process of deploying on Base.
To bridge assets to Base, you can use either the official bridge or third-party bridges. While Coinbase has not yet enabled ETH deposits and withdrawals for Base, it is expected to do so soon. The official bridge has a seven-day verification period due to the Optimistic Rollup technology, while third-party bridges like orbiter.finance, synapse, or the aggregation bridge bungee.exchange offer cross-chain services.
In addition to established DeFi protocols, Base has its own native projects. The recently popular friend.tech is one of them. It's anticipated that more derivatives and projects related to friend.tech will emerge in the future. Another project to watch for in terms of native infrastructure is Aerodrome, created by the team behind Velodrome, the top TVL project on the OP chain. Aerodrome has partnered with several cross-chain deployed projects, including Thales, Liquity, and QiDAO, among others.
Sei
Unlike the recent surge of Layer 2 chains, Sei is a high TPS parallel Layer 1 chain built on Cosmos. It's also the latest Lauchpool project by Binance. On its first day, it was listed on numerous exchanges, and TVL has surged due to an ongoing airdrop campaign. Currently, it has around 3 million USD TVL.
Sei is currently conducting an airdrop campaign for active users on Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Osmosis networks. Users with eligible addresses who bridge their assets to Sei have a chance to receive varying amounts of $Sei tokens. Supported cross-chain bridges include Cosmos's interchain communication ibc, Wormhole, and Axelar.
Sei's mainnet has only been live for a week, and its ecosystem is still in its early stages. Many Terra projects have migrated to Sei, such as Astroport and Levana. The native project Seaswap currently has the highest TVL.
opBNB
opBNB is part of Binance's BNBCHAIN roadmap, launched for user access on August 17, 2023. It's an L2 upgrade using the OP Stack technology on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Thanks to Binance's strong support, opBNB gained significant attention. Currently, it has a total TVL of 840,000 USD, which is relatively modest.
opBNB does not yet support the deposit and withdrawal of tokens from the Binance exchange; users can only bridge assets through cross-chain bridges. Due to its use of Optimistic Rollup technology, asset transfers from opBNB back to the BSC mainnet through the official bridge require a seven-day verification period. Third-party bridges like rhino.fi and Polyhedra Network are also supported.
Most of the projects in the opBNB ecosystem are DEXs, with Binary Swap being one of the notable ones. There have been no major projects migrating from the BSC yet. Although many meme coins were listed on the first day, most have performed poorly as market sentiment has cooled.
It will be interesting to observe how Binance positions opBNB and whether incentive mechanisms like ecosystem funds will be implemented.
Shibarium
Shib Inu's team has been preparing and hyping Shibarium, an Ethereum Layer 2 chain, for almost a year. It was announced to go live on August 17, but issues arose immediately after launch. Due to unexpectedly high traffic, the network entered "fail-safe mode," causing issues with the cross-chain bridge and locking over 1.7 million USD worth of user assets. The chain is currently not operational to ensure the safety of user funds.
Cross-chain assets are currently inaccessible to users. The Shib development team stated that the network is "almost ready to reopen to the public" and has implemented mechanisms to prevent future interruptions. However, a specific timeline for recovery has not been announced.
Author's Perspective
While the chains may be new, the players in the ecosystem remain largely the same, as do the project teams. They are simply continuing their journey on different blockchains. New blockchains represent a shift in the same group of players with the same funds to a new battleground. The start of each new blockchain follows a similar standard procedure: first DEXs, then memecoins, lending protocols, Launchpad IDO, and so on. These trends rotate among different chains.
However, launching multiple new chains at almost the same time has dispersed liquidity from projects competing for TVL to chains competing for TVL. The winner in this competition is usually the chain with the best background and the most support for infrastructure. This chain can attract more whales, and, consequently, more developers, leading to a virtuous cycle. When a breakout project appears that doesn't follow the SOP (these projects have weak moats, as mainnet projects like Uniswap and AAVE can quickly replicate them), it can trigger a positive loop of derivative projects based on that breakout project. At this stage, it appears that BASE, with Coinbase support and the emergence of the breakout project friend.tech, is the winner.