Quick observation about these 2 points.
1/ PERP DEX
- We had beamswap on Moonbeam, which never really took off despite Moonbeam Treasury incentives.
- Hydration is planning to launch their own PERP DEX.
See their sub0 keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eatPndYCXOY
Perp DEX is not something new, Hyperliquid success is also due to their TGE and airdrop success. Because on the tech side, there is nothing spectacular. It’s centralized.
Perp Dex narrative has already faded like any other crypto narrative.
Why this protocol is successful and this one is not, it’s crypto, there is usually no rationality about it in most of cases.
And PERP DEX won’t be a major game changer for the ecosystem, the ecosystem has never been a DeFi ecosystem by design. It’s not built for DeFi only (compared to some other eco).
If you take prediction markets, Zeitgeist existed way before Polymarket.
So it’s not just who make the 1st move on a given narrative, it’s a combination of many factors.
2/ Marketing Dollars
You take the example of football sponsorships (it could have been Conor Daly i guess), don’t forget these sponsorships were made during the MB 1.0 timeframe (Giotto’s policy being brand awareness before all). I think the point is not valid anymore.
Has Conor Daly sponsorship been reconducted since ?
No.
Will IMFC sponsorship be reconducted?
No, (and the ref for the fan app was NAYed)
So here you take an example which is even not applicable anymore to the current state of Marketing (MB 2.0) or community mood. Such sponsorships have now clearly 0 chance to happen for various reasons (ROI, DOT price, strategy, etc etc…).
On a positive note, vbrick was brought to ecosystem thanks to the Conor Daly sponsorship.
We can all disagree with the different marketing strategies we had in the eco, but it’s not marketing who sank the DOT price.
Marketing is just a drop in the ocean of DOT being created and sold by validators/nominators as a reminder, benefiting from the (insane) 2 digits yield rate.
Validators + nominators = 85% share of inflation
Treasury = 15%
The main issue for a very long time was just the tokenomics design (high inflation, infinite supply), and they have been hopefully changed or cut by community decisions, even if still not implemented (deadline March).
It’s sad, because as shown above, community decisions have started to change the face of the eco, tokenomics being the best example of it. DVs have been much more conservative too.
Cheers 