Can This Crypto Token Push a 100X return by 2025?

Sunday is upon us.

Welcome to another exciting edition of The Merge.

It's that time of the week when we bring you the freshest insights and the latest tools to equip you for the crypto world.

Summary of Contents

• It’s the best of both approaches for Ethereum & Solana.

• It provides interoperability between Ethereum Virtual Machine DAPPs and native Solana DAPPs so they can share liquidity rather than being fragmented (like traditional L2s).

• As the demand for Solana only grows it will benefit from the second-order effects (seeing where the puck will be not where it is).

• Low Market Cap → 50m → potential to reach multiple billions.

Read Time: 10 Minutes

1. Background

Important Factors → Reaching 100X

1. A new token that has never seen a bull run

2. Barely any talks discusses the project

3. Small market capitalisation compared to its sector

4. Strong & innovative use case solving real-world problems

5. It’s a token within a hot narrative (AI, Gaming, RWA’s)

6. The project development team should have a clean track record

7. Strong tokenomics

8. Established partnerships

9. Clear roadmap & future plans

10. *extra tip* Follow the Smart Money → DeFiLlama → Raises

Let’s begin!

The Problem

Ethereum → Too expensive and congested

Solana → Majority of People/Developers use Ethereum to build on

The Solution

Allow me to introduce you to → Neon EVM.

What is Neon?

Neon is not a separate L1, nor is it a Layer 2.

Neon is the Ethereum Virtual Machine built on Solana.

Therefore it benefits from:

• The scalability (2000+ tps)

• Fast finality of transactions

• Parallel execution

• Security ($16 billion of staked Solana)

• State management & decentralisation of Solana (2000 nodes

NEON provides interoperability between EVM DAPPs and native Solana DAPPs so they can share liquidity rather than being fragmented.

Analogy Time

→ It is like running your very old favourite games which the majority of people are playing and using (Ethereum DAPPs in this case)

→ On your brand new modern console / PC / Xbox / PS5 (Solana) via an emulator (allows the game to be played like it’s still on the old system

→ Taking advantage of the performance it brings with it

(credit to @cryptoseq)

Why Neon?

1. Seamless Migration from Ethereum → Solana

Ethereum Decentralised Applications (DAPP) developers who use Solidity, Vyper, Ethereum tooling such as Metamask/ Hardhat etc & pre-existing codebases can easily create DAPPs / port existing DAPPs to benefit from the Solana ecosystem and the scalability it provides.

2. No Fragmented Liquidity

Provides an easier & less costly alternative for developers who are launching their own chain /L2 to reach high degrees of scalability without the need to find and incentivise a validator set.

Which further fragments liquidity and the complexity of running the infrastructure involved with that.

3. First Mover Advantage → tap into a new ecosystem

Neon EVM provides a unique opportunity to developers who want to unlock access to the liquidity on Solana, enjoy a first-mover advantage and reach new customers on Solana, or want to scale with the low gas fees and high throughput that Solana provides.

4. No requirement to learn new tech stack

No need to learn a new language & use a completely different tech stack. This allows for saving on expenses like hiring additional Rust developers, maintaining multiple codebases & audits etc.

Neon EVM abstracts away the differences between Solana and Ethereum’s program, storage, and compute models so that Ethereum-native developers can simply deploy their dApp to an EVM that uses Solana as the settlement layer.

→ Without the requirement of any deep knowledge of Solana and how it works.

What makes up Neon?

Neon is made up of a number of significant parts:

• Neon Proxy - Offers an Ethereum RPC that takes Ethereum-like transactions and wraps them into a Solana transaction so they can operate on Solana.

• Neon EVM - Ethereum Virtual Machine operating as a smart contract on Solana

In order to maintain decentralisation, any client can change the proxy and opt to run their own library.

Neon Proxy instances will be accessible to everybody.

Potential?

It is warranted to compare to MATIC (Layer-2) in the last bull run → did a 226x from lows → this was just as BTC was hitting new ATH for reference.

→ NEON benefits from both SOL & ETH’s ecosystem.

It’s hard to say price targets → but our key take profit levels are positioned off market cap targets i.e. $2 billion (20%) / $4 billion (25%) etc.

Funding & Tokenomics

Funding

Neon at the time of writing is (5x) its ICO price of $0.10 & (2x) above its private sale price of $0.25.

Currently, it’s sitting around $0.49 → https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/neon/

Token Allocation

5% of the tokens are available on the market for public sale → however it is extremely difficult to get some (in the UK).

IF IN THE UK:

The only option as of right now is to utilise Jupiter (Decentralised Exchange).

More DEX liquidity is coming along with more CEXs in time but for now, Jupiter or Orca (US) DEXs are the way to go.

Set up/use Phantom Wallet to buy and store NEON on → your keys, your crypto!

Liquidity is extremely low so have some patience in trying to get some.

Vesting Schedule

This is key because when tokens are released/unlocked in the markets, you can get huge selling pressure from pre-seed investors, the teams etc.

All tokens, aside from those in the markets are locked until July 2024.

From July 2024 → schedule unlocks will be vested → not all at one go and will slowly be distributed to partners/founders/early purchasers.

No huge selling pressure on the token + no token inflation = good for holders.

Tokenomics

NEON is used for:

1) Fees (50% goes to Solana validators as SOL whilst the other 50% goes to Neon DAO) → adds utility/demand for SOL.

2) Governance → there are multiple projects already looking to integrate EVM themselves - this will lead to a fight for liquidity and a war for having voting power to determine upgrades.

Don’t be alarmed by the circulating supply → 55% of the supply is allocated for ecosystem growth and will be slowly added to the circulating supply gradually over decades.

No total supply inflation or need to incentivise validators through staking rewards removing additional sell pressure.

Potential for future governance proposals which can also implement buyback and burn of NEON with 50% of the fees that go to the DAO making NEON deflationary.

Summary

Neon is a micro-cap token (<50m), which of course comes with more risk → usually tokens like these have more chance of rug pulls, hacks etc and traditionally investments like these are higher risk = higher rewards.

However, the reasons below are why we’re happy to take the risk:

1. Great asymmetric bet → reward far outweighs the risk for us

2. Small % of our portfolio → risk-adjusted in case it doesn’t do well

3. Mainnet for NEON has just launched and the roadmap is just getting started.

4. A Very Big Moat: Unrivalled technology, next to no competition & huge competitive advantage

5. VC backing from giants such as Jump & Solana Ventures

6. Directly benefits from Solana’s & Ethereum's growth → beta play → more upside

   

Latest Tools to Use

📈 TradingView: The go-to platform for advanced chart analysis and market insights (link)

🦙 DefiLlama: Analytics dashboard which shows the Total Value Locked (TVL) across all of the major DeFI protocols (link)

🦎 CoinGecko: Keep up to date with prices, trading volumes, and crucial crypto data (link)

💰 Staking Calculator: Calculate current rewards and future run scenarios to estimate future returns of different tokens (link)

🪙 Token Terminal: A platform that aggregates financial and alternative data on blockchains and decentralised applications that run on blockchains (link)

🧾 CryptoTaxCalculator: Simplify tax reporting and stay compliant with this useful tool (link)

Keep your finger on the pulse of these developments and explore the latest tools to make your crypto journey more productive.

Key Indicators

MVRV

The MVRV Z-Score uses blockchain analysis to identify periods where bitcoin is significantly over or undervalued relative to its ‘fair value’.

It can be a good sign to an investor/trader of when to buy or sell. You can read more in detail about how it can be used here.

Current MVRV Score: 0.55

Fear and Greed

Investors need to be cautious of their own nature as their emotions could cloud their rational decision-making and judgement.

This Index is a collection of sources to track the general sentiment of the crypto market.

Current Fear & Greed Index: 

Extreme fear can be a sign that investors are too worried. That could be a buying opportunity.

When Investors are getting too greedy, that means the market is due for a correction.

Free Alpha

That’s all from us this week, before we let you go here are some of our favourite Twitter pages for great content and deep dives on specific Crypto projects.

Shout us out if you find them valuable (we’re sure you will):

Just remember if you’re reading this, we’re so early in this journey of technology.

Zoom out, stick to your intuition and have patience - all great things come with time.

Wrapping Up

As always, we'll be back next week with more insights and updates from the crypto universe.

If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover in future newsletters, feel free to reach out.

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Please conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.