Bankless: 8 Alpha Projects We're Still Bullish On During the Bear Market

Written by: DavidHoffman.eth 

Compiled by: TechFlow intern

I know we're all stressed about prices right now, but don't forget: cryptocurrency is still in the market-building phase. We are currently in one of the greatest eras in crypto history.

It all starts with these trends:

• Bear markets allow CEOs to think clearly and from first principles.

• A cash-rich private market enables builders to spend less time worrying about survival and more time building meaningful technology.

• There’s abundant room for development. In 2021, Web3 went from zero to one—the hardest part. Now, we need clear-headed, well-funded companies to grow based on these blueprints.

• There's a large base of participants and interested users. The 2018 bear market was a ghost town; the 2022 bear market is relatively vibrant. Crypto has retained its users this time, and its culture has matured.

Today, I’ll introduce you to eight cutting-edge companies dedicated to building the future of crypto.

1. Obol Network

Obol pioneered Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). Think of Obol as multisig for validators—individual nodes can group together to form a “virtual node,” minimizing downtime and maximizing security. This is great for ETH staking: suppose you and your friends don’t each have enough ETH individually, but collectively you can pool your ETH to launch a shared validator node.

Website: https://obol.tech/

2. LI.FI

LI.FI is a cross-chain bridge and DEX aggregator building a mesh network of liquidity across every asset on every EVM chain. In the future, as DeFi grows long-term, the number of assets and blockchains will grow exponentially. Managing and using assets across chains will become increasingly complex for users.

LI.FI automates this complexity, automatically finding the optimal route—the one with the deepest liquidity and lowest fees—to get you and your money where you want to go at minimal cost. It also functions as a DEX aggregator, simplifying complex trades.

Website: https://li.fi/

3. Voltz

Voltz is an AMM for interest rate swaps. Using Uniswap V3’s liquidity engine, Voltz has built a marketplace for trading interest rates with leverage. With Voltz, you can trade "variable rate for fixed rate" or "fixed rate for variable rate."

Voltz is a fork of Uniswap V3, making liquidity central to its system. However, instead of providing liquidity within a price range, Voltz LPs provide liquidity within an interest rate range.

Voltz markets trade interest rates, not assets. Voltz LPs only need to deposit one asset into a pool, meaning they face no impermanent loss risk since only a single asset is deposited.

Website: https://www.voltz.xyz/

4. Tracer

Tracer is a derivatives infrastructure protocol. I consider Tracer the "Uniswap of derivatives." Just as Uniswap enables market-making around any token, Tracer enables derivative creation around any asset. Each TracerDAO product comes with a factory protocol. Using Tracer’s factory, any price feed or data stream can be turned into options, swaps, or futures products. Permissionless market creation provides new tools for DeFi without requiring centralized providers to list new markets. If there’s demand, it can exist on Tracer.

Website: https://tracer.finance/

5. Blocknative

Blocknative is infrastructure for real-time monitoring of the pre-chain layer. Etherscan is a block explorer—it lets you view blocks after they’ve been added to the chain. Blocknative is a mempool explorer, allowing users to parse the more complex and opaque pre-chain world and use that data to anticipate what happens next.

Website: https://www.blocknative.com/

6. Euler

Euler is a minimally governed money market. Euler combines the asset availability of Rari Fuse pools with the single shared liquidity model of Aave or Compound, resulting in higher capital efficiency.

Website: https://www.euler.finance/

7. Aztec Network

Aztec is a privacy-focused L2 rollup with native L1 DeFi capabilities. Simply put, it’s like Zcash, but as an Ethereum L2. Aztec acts as a privacy shield for ERC-20 transfers and other DeFi interactions. You deposit tokens into Aztec similarly to how you’d deposit into any other L2, but once confirmed in the rollup, users mint a set of notes representing the amount deposited. Once inside Aztec, all subsequent transfers are confidential and anonymous. Sender and receiver identities are hidden, transaction amounts are encrypted, and on-chain observers cannot even tell which asset or service the transaction relates to.

Website: https://aztec.network/

8. Disco.xyz

Disco is unlike any other project. It will open up a completely new dimension in Web3—one that people aren’t even aware of yet. Disco is your data backpack for the metaverse, where you can store credentials from participating in DAOs, completing DeFi app activities, or finishing educational courses. Anything verifiable can go into your Disco. Your Disco is where you store your social capital—all achievements, awards, certifications, proofs, and other identifiable data bits—turning them into interactive objects within the metaverse.

Website: https://www.disco.xyz/

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