The Old Structure of Web3 Marketing is Dead

Was thinking a lot about Web3 marketing recently and decided to drop a piece with my latest thoughts on what's going wrong.

Featuring the Starknet case as an illustration.

Enjoy reading & share with your builder frens

RWAs on BNB Chain hit another ATH.

Ondo’s tokenized stocks are doing most of the heavy lifting, already pulling 40K+ holders into the ecosystem.

Interesting shift on Solana DEXs lately.

Bitcoin-related tokens pulled $53M+ in spot volume in a single day, outperforming most non-native assets. ETH, Hyperliquid, and even Zcash are also seeing strong demand there.

Solana is becoming a liquidity venue for external assets, especially BTC beta.

Aave saw ~$27M in liquidations after a temporary glitch in the CAPO oracle for $wstETH.

Protocol itself wasn’t compromised and affected users are being reimbursed. Still, it’s another reminder: in DeFi, oracles are just as critical as liquidity.

Infrastructure risk never fully disappears.

Polymarket is deepening.

Users are up ~63% YoY, but volume exploded ~686%, jumping from $476M → $3.74B. That means the average trader is placing bigger and more frequent bets.

Prediction markets are moving from curiosity to real trading venue.

The tokenization thesis keeps expanding.

Dollars, euros, gold, treasuries, equities – all moving on-chain across different networks. The addressable market isn’t a sector… it’s basically the entire global balance sheet.

I dug into ZIGChain’s Wealth Generation Infrastructure thesis in the article below.

Short version:
They’re trying to make regulated, institutional-style strategies work onchain, with full lifecycle rails for issuance, compliance, settlement, and governance, backed by ZONIQXINC Z360 stack.

They also treat ethical finance as a core market, with Shariah-certified PoS and a Shariah lane via Zamanth.

They have serious institutional backing with Apex Group on the RWA framework side and BTCS SA already live as a validator with a stated $30M accumulation plan. Usage looks real already too, with 20M+ mainnet transactions and 370M+ $ZIG staked and bridged.

Full breakdown in the article

One chart that keeps surprising me: Ethereum wallet growth.

Over the last decade, non-empty ETH wallets went almost vertical, far outpacing other major assets.

Price cycles come and go. But user distribution keeps compounding.

Ecosystem stablecoins are turning into hidden revenue engines.

MegaETH’s USDm already hit $63M supply, quietly generating yield that can be recycled into incentives, liquidity, or buybacks. If it reaches the $500M TGE target, even modest T-Bill yields translate into $5M–$15M annual revenue.

USDe adoption is accelerating.

Holder count has nearly doubled since early last year, which tells us the synthetic dollar model is still finding product-market fit.

Prediction markets are hitting escape velocity.

Kalshi crossed $2.7B in weekly volume – twice in a few weeks, and now they’re expanding to Brazil. Between the 2026 World Cup and presidential election, the country is basically a perfect stress test for event markets.

Reality check: 83% of the top 100 coins are still down over the last 90 days.

Most of them won’t recover – сapital keeps concentrating into the few protocols that actually generate revenue and usage. That’s why names like $MORPHO, $SKY, and $HYPE keep outperforming.

The lending sector is showing massive dispersion right now.

Some protocols are up ~30% since October, while others are down ~50% over the same window.

In cycles like this, conviction matters more than beta.

Across ripping +75% after floating a token → equity conversion idea.

If it happens, it would be one of the first real attempts to turn a tokenized protocol into a privately owned company. Considering Across moved $20B+ in cross-chain volume, this could be the beginning of a bigger shift.

Solana now leads stablecoin volume across chains.

Adjusted February share:

• Solana 36%
• Ethereum 30%
• Tron 15%
• Base 11%

If stablecoins are the settlement layer of crypto, this means Solana is starting to capture the flow layer.

Crypto lending shrank hard.

Deposits dropped $125B → $79.6B (-36%) since October, and almost the entire decline came from a few giants like Aave, Spark, Euler, Fluid, and Compound.

Feels less like a collapse and more like capital rotating elsewhere.

Perp DEXs' daily volume went from $7.5B (2024) → $22.7B (2025) → $30.6B (2026).

The growth curve is getting steeper, not flatter.

Looks like capital is moving from passive yield → active trading infrastructure.

Interesting divergence in crypto equities.

Bitcoin proxy companies like MicroStrategy and Metaplanet look strong, while Circle appears stretched and miners still carry risk. ETF inflows and corporate accumulation continue reinforcing BTC’s digital safe haven narrative.

Another big shift: crypto and fintech were among the worst performing sectors over the last 6 months, while cloud infra, biotech, materials, and robotics led the market.

This is why pure crypto portfolios are becoming risky. The next wave might be on-chain exposure to real-world equities, especially through tokenized stocks.

If platforms like xStocks, Ondo, and others scale, the TAM for crypto could expand massively without leaving the blockchain rails.

Returning wallets tell a different story than narratives.

Tron (~3M), Near (~2.2M), BNB (~2.1M) are leading DAAs because they nailed distribution: Tron owns USDT rails, Near abstracts UX, BNB keeps fees near zero for retail.

Meanwhile ETH and L2s lag in raw users, but dominate capital. Users ≠ liquidity… yet, but chains that win both will define the next cycle.

It's been a busy week, time to catch up on what's been happening in the industry lately ↓

General
➖ Cointelegraph: Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins: What True Self-Custody Actually Requires
➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 03/13/26
➖ Galaxy: Crypto's Next Meta: Social Trading and Internet Finance

Market
➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund flows | March 16th, 2026
➖ CoinShares: Equities update | March 13th, 2026
➖ CoinShares: Market update | March 13th, 2026
➖ CoinShares: The Talk | March 13th, 2026
➖ Glassnode: BTC Market Pulse: Week 12
➖ Glassnode: Your Backtest Is Lying: Why You Must Use Point-in-Time Data

DeFi
➖ 4pillars: $MORPHO: The Apollo Pump Is Your Exit

Blockchains & networks
➖ The Defiant: Ethena's Deployed Capital Slumps as Demand for Leverage Dries Up
➖ Glassnode: Wisdom Tree + Glassnode: Reframing Blockchains as Economic Systems

Tokens & currencies
➖ 4pillars: Global Regulatory Framework for Tokenized Stocks
➖ 4pillars: Business Opportunities in Tokenized Stock
➖ DL Research: Tokenised commodities: Real assets, rebuilt onchain
➖ CoinGecko: Crude Oil and Gold Leading All Other Asset Classes in early-2026, as BTC is Worst Performing Asset Thus Far