The Development Prospects of OP and ARB | Q&A

1. Is the upgraded DAI still my first choice (USDS)?

Regarding the MakerDAO upgrade, I remember sharing in a previous article that my focus was mainly on its less favorable aspects:

The project has added a censorship feature, allowing the project team to blacklist addresses like USDT and USDC.

Although the project team has been very cautious in their description of this feature, I still feel that it contradicts the spirit of anti-censorship in the crypto world.

Specifically regarding DAI, I don't know how this blacklist feature will ultimately be implemented, but overall, I believe it is still stronger in terms of decentralization compared to USDT and USDC, so I will still choose it first.

Additionally, after recently reading an article about MakerDAO on Messari, my previously negative perspective has slightly changed. This article specifically analyzed the potential of MakerDAO and Ethena purely from the perspective of their future potential returns.

From the project team's plans for future upgrades, MakerDAO will enhance functionalities similar to AAVE, invest assets in the RWA sector, and may even cover investments in the gaming sector…

Through expansion into various fields, the article estimates that after the MakerDAO upgrade, the APY for token holders could reach around 15%.

Although this return is "small potatoes" compared to the returns brought by the price fluctuations of crypto assets, it is probably quite impressive among current DeFi projects.

On a side note: Some readers have asked for the links to the Messari articles I read. I'm sorry, but I can't share those links because the articles I read are paid versions.

2. Has there been any analysis of how much the shutdown price of Bitcoin is at each bull market peak? Can we speculate on the next bull market peak?

I haven't done this analysis.

However, I recently read an article that mentioned the current shutdown price of Bitcoin is around $55,000 to $60,000.

The shutdown price is a rather interesting topic. Its relationship with bull market peaks doesn't seem to be widely discussed in many articles, but many believe it has a significant correlation with Bitcoin's bottom.

3. Is there still hope for OP and ARB?

The token prices of these two projects may be relatively sluggish, but I think their development momentum is quite good among the many second-layer expansions on Ethereum.

ARB goes without saying, as its TVL has long dominated the Ethereum second-layer expansion rankings. Additionally, some emerging projects are building their own ecosystems based on its technical architecture (like ApeChain mentioned in yesterday's article).

It's also worth noting that the project team is heavily funding various promising projects within the ecosystem.

All of these are rare initiatives for project development.

OP is no less impressive.

I used to have a rather average view of OP, but later its progress exceeded my expectations.

Especially recently, OP's technology stack, OP Stack, has been quite remarkable—several prominent projects have emerged in the Ethereum second-layer expansion built on this technology stack, such as the upcoming Unichain from Uniswap and the established Base, both of which are typical examples.

Base's recent TVL even surpassed the long-dominant Arb, jumping to the first position. As of the time of writing, Base's TVL has reached $2.5 billion.

At this rate, more and more second-layer expansions may be built on the OP Stack. Since they are all based on the same technology stack, the liquidity among these second-layer expansions can be relatively easily unified, which will further strengthen the OP ecosystem's strength.

Therefore, I am very confident in these two projects.