Introduction

Arbitrum is one of the most important Ethereum Layer2 solutions out there and one of the most interesting spaces in crypto right now.

I will not focus on any technical topics here but you can find all the relevant information here if you are interested.

What I will talk about here is an interesting bet on the growth of the Arbitrum ecosystem by 0xDegen. OxDegen put together a nice list of low market-cap projects on Arbitrum that might benefit from the growth of the Arbitrum ecosystem, especially once the highly anticipated Arbitrum airdrop has happened.

I see this as a high-risk gamble and do not recommend anyone to take this risk. Instead of risking your own money, join me on this journey and follow the regular updates I will post here or on Medium; I will provide a detailed overview of everything that´s happening on a monthly basis. If things go extremely well, I might do a giveaway or two.

Make sure you receive regular updates and giveaway opportunities by following me on Medium as well as here and getting a Medium membership so you have access to all of my content each day.

UPDATE: You can find a progress update here.

The Opportunity

This opportunity is a straightforward bet on the growth of the Arbeitrum ecosystem.

Arbitrum has already attracted a number of significant players from the Ethereum ecosystem but there are lots of interesting options that are pure plays on Arbitrum.

0xDegen listed a few small-cap projects in a Twitter thread that might be able to pull off a 100x if the Arbitrum ecosystem develops as well as most people anticipate.

I will not invest in all tokens selected by 0xDegen but rather select 3 -$GMD, $XCAL, and $RDNT- and invest 0.1 ETH / 120 USD into each. I will then post regular status updates on Medium and, with some delay, here.

GMD Protocol

GMD Protocol is a yield optimizing and aggregating platform built on top of existing applications and GMD’s reserve token on Arbitrum. GMD employs delta-neutral or pseudo-delta-neutral strategies to aggregate yields from an index pool or an LP to its constituent individual assets, eliminating their risks of impermanent loss or exposure to unwanted assets.

While I am not planning to actively use GMD´s services at this point, I can certainly see why a delta-neutral strategy can be enticing. Impermanent loss is a constant fear of a lot of crypto investors and I am looking forward to seeing GMD find a way around it.

If you are interested in learning more about GMD Protocol, make sure to check out their Twitter and their website.

Coinmarketcap currently shows $GMD at $47.09 with a fully diluted market cap of USD 2.4m

3xcalibur

The 3xcalibur Protocol is a permissionless, liquidationless, oracleless Open Finance protocol offering stableswaps, variable swaps, borrowing & lending of any asset and more…

Inspired by solidly & timeswap — 3xcalibur is the result picking the good from the bad and merging that into one design. The result is a highly-capable and modular decentralized exchange. Our design allows us to offer a plethora of financial instruments on top of the base protocol. Development, operation and management of the 3xcalibur protocol is managed by The 3six9 Collective.

3xcalibur is an Arbitrum-native dex and lending platform that makes a good first impression on me. I might actually use this from time to time outside of this experiment.

If you are interested in learning more about 3xcalibur, make sure to check out their Twitter and their website.

Dex Screener currently shows $XCAL at $0.4797 with a fully diluted market cap of $8.3m.

Radiant Capital

Radiant aims to be the first omnichain money market, where users can deposit any major asset on any major chain and borrow a variety of supported assets across multiple chains.

The Radiant DAO’s primary goal is to consolidate the ~$22 billion of fragmented liquidity currently dispersed across over the top ten alternative layers (source: DefiLlama).

Lenders who provide liquidity to Radiant are interacting and providing utility to the platform. Lenders can capture the added value from the communities’ engagement through the native token $RDNT.

Borrowers are able to withdraw against collateralized funds in order to obtain liquidity (working capital) without selling their assets and closing their positions.

Radiant is a cross-chain lending platform that aims to improve the experience of market participants who hold assets across multiple chains. As someone who dabbles in the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems, I am a big fan of this mission and would love to see Radiant succeed.

Dex Screener shows $RDNT at $0.03459 and a fully diluted valuation of $7.7m.

The Execution

I will now go ahead and purchase ~0.1 ETH worth of each token shown above and you can expect my first update in late November.

As mentioned above, I see this as a long-term, high-risk play and do not recommend anyone invest their own money into this unless their own research made them do so. I´d much rather have you follow me on this journey via Medium and Twitter.

On top of updates here and on Medium, I might give the occasional brief update on Twitter.

Note: This article was first published on Medium on Nov 18th 2022 https://medium.com/cryptostars/arbitrum-play-for-2023-f91e8eb3a63e

Update Nov 19th 2022: You can find the second Article of the series here.

Update Nov 22nd 2022: I have added another article on generating recurring rewards here.