Emperor Osmo
DeFi Research, Blockchain Metrics, Ex-Osmosis/Artemis
If Aave TVL keeps migrating to Spark after the rsETH hack, SKY is the better buy than SPK, because most of Spark's revenue goes to SKY holders. 99% of SKY's supply is unlocked versus 25% of SPK's, and Spark's volume is highly speculative while Sky has seen organic demand all year. Sky earned about $403M in fees last year versus Spark's $75M, funding $75M of SKY buybacks while SPK's have just begun. Sky trades at 10.9x sales versus Spark's 15.7x, or 61.1x on fully diluted value. x.comÂ
Sky Ecosystem's financial growth through a difficult year for crypto makes SKY stand out against other DeFi protocols, including Uniswap and Aave. Gross protocol revenue rose about 50% year over year in September, and surplus remitted to reserves swung from a $17m shortfall to $7m. Sky reports its first Stage 2 burn of 2.86m SKY; a crypto bull market could bring more growth. SKY trades around its price last September. x.comÂ
Sky Protocol's SKY is undervalued because the market still has not caught up with its rebrand from Maker. It ranks 9th in revenue across all protocols, yet is not worth far more than Aave or Morpho. It buys back over 300K a day, 3x Aave, while Morpho returns nothing to holders. It will take time for people to realize how big and important it is. A vote just cut buybacks 10x for three months to focus on the protocol, a good decision. x.com x.comÂ
Spark could become one of the stablecoin industry's giants if it builds a shared liquidity layer for all stablecoins, yet SPK sits at only a $50M market cap. Per Spark, its new Stablecoin FX Layer on Uniswap v4 lets stablecoins tap shared liquidity instead of isolated pools, starting with about $150M across USDS/PYUSD and USDS/USDT pools, and issuers can benefit from Spark's capital allocation. Success won't be easy, but if anyone can do it, it is Spark. x.comÂ
Sky deserves more credit as a DeFi lender that survives crashes without socializing losses onto depositors. It has had zero lifetime bad debt since 2019, through Terra, 3AC, FTX and every ETH crash. Its Dutch auction liquidations find true market prices rather than paying a flat bonus and rebuild after failure, with SKY minting as a never-triggered last-resort backstop. RWA integration keeps revenue from vanishing when crypto dumps, a structurally different model from pool-based protocols. x.comÂ
Lending tokens fall short of the sector's strong economics because team conduct and uneven holder returns undermine them. Lending capital is sticky and protocols have pricing power, but Aave rugged its DAO and Compound rugged. Morpho signaled no interest in buybacks; Kamino is silent. Maple's buybacks are small, about a tenth of revenue, and inconsistent. Spark buys back about half its revenue, but revenue is very inconsistent. The sector is great; these projects are not. x.comÂ
Sky, formerly MakerDAO, is ready to break out of a W pattern that ranged for years, helped by improving fundamentals, buybacks on the way and a bullish DeFi season. A break above 0.1 would send it flying without a ceiling. Its redenomination also makes the coins mentally easier to buy. x.comÂ
Sky is still badly overlooked given about $90M of annual revenue and USDS supply on a fast track to $20B outstanding. Investors who like Hyperliquid should like Sky too. x.comÂ
Tokens that fund buybacks from revenue gained another reason to catch a bid after SEC staff said buybacks alone don't make an otherwise non-security token a security once its protocol is live. More usage can mean more fees for buybacks: Hyperliquid fees buy HYPE, Raydium swap fees buy RAY, and Pump, Jupiter, PancakeSwap, Aster, NEAR, Pendle, Maple and Sky do similar. Uniswap burns UNI from pool fees; Lido's DAO buys LDO by accumulation. Buybacks must be big relative to market cap and new supply. … Show more
Aave's protocol fees do not reach token holders because Labs controls DAO governance and votes itself grants. Labs voted itself $25 million for operations and $17.5 million in performance incentives, including $5 million for launching an app. Buybacks were paused after the rsETH bridge exploit and have not resumed. Despite the protocol's quality, the Aave token is uninvestable and will keep grinding lower; unlike buyback-funded peers, holders get no direct value. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com … Show more
Bear-market conditions make category-leading tokens with cash flow, real usage and macro relevance worth accumulating in stages. Bitcoin has flushed to $58-61k near its 200-week average, fear sits at 17, and stress at treasury firms like Strategy signals late-downtrend selling, though a Fed without 2026 cuts rules out a V-shaped recovery. Favored: buyback or burn tokens HYPE, ASTER, JUP, SKY, UNI and PUMP; fee-sharing AAVE, MET and PENDLE; ETH as the core; TAO and VIRTUAL for AI; ONDO for RWAs. … Show more
