Chainlink Tokenomics: Who Actually Gets Paid? | Daily Crypto IQ

[music] >> I think that we just holding on to something >> [music] [music] >> I think that we're just holding on to something. I think that we're just holding on to something. I think that we're just holding on to something. >> [music] [music] >> What's up, all my undergrounders? Welcome to the Token Autopsy. Hey, there I am. What's up, everybody? How's everybody doing? Let me fix this microphone. All right, that's a little bit better. Well, how's everybody doing tonight? Tonight we're going to be talking about Chainlink. We're doing a token autopsy series. I don't know how long the series is going to go for. I've changed up a lot of stuff. Going to take a moment just in the beginning to do some housekeeping and things because later on I'll clip all this stuff out for the replay, right?

Because we don't want people to come to the live and then immediately just hear me talk about stuff they don't care about. They want to hear about Chainlink. So, we'll have a definitive start and that's going to be part of our normal routine here. First and foremost, I took a little bit of time to kind of go back over the Discord. I'm working on putting the token autopsy stuff in there, but I got to do it a little bit differently. I'm not a Discord professional, so I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm learning as I go. I'm a one-man army over here. So, I added some uh I don't know, emojis I guess next to all the things to make the Discord look a little bit better and easier to click through. There's going to be a forum

added. It's going to have all the token autopsy, the individual ones, and then a leaderboard, and all those kind of things. I've been working on it. It's just not ready yet, but it's coming. And that information will be free for now, wink wink. Um at some point when we've done a lot of them, I probably will make you have to be at least a basic member. That rolls right into my next thing that I want to say here. So, I got rid of the ads, all right? I took away the ad revenue, all right? That's a little bit of a loss for me. They weren't making thousands of dollars or anything like that, but it is a loss to me. So, we have different tiers down in the membership, all right? Basic membership, $3. I mean, $3 just to

show some appreciation. You get some cool emojis that I made. You'll see them used in the chat. Um think about supporting the research that we're doing on this channel, all the game of all the stuff that we do, all the time that I spend, right? So, check those out. They're different tiers. We're going to be working on adding more and more value to those. And at some point, the Token Autopsy stuff is going to go to at least having a $3.99 membership or the membership above that. So, if you get it now, you'll be locked in there. And of course, you get like a members free super chat, you get the emojis, you get videos before they're actually put out like that can be a video that I made the other day. And uh I think that's about everything

that I have to say. Let's go ahead and get into the Token Autopsy. So, Chainlink, that's what we're going to be talking about. If you've been around for the Avalanche and the Sweet Autopsy, you know we get deep into the project, but ultimately a Token Autopsy is really just about trying to figure out if the ecosystem that has been created on that project, right? Cuz not everything's a layer one, but is it capturing value for the token? AKA, know your tokenomics, raise your crypto IQ, you're in the right place, you're in good company, we'll help you. Free Discord linked down in the chat. I actually have to link it right now, so give me 1 second. I forgot to do that. But anyways, that Discord is where you're going to find all the information for the stream. Also, where

you can hang out with us whenever we are not streaming. Or if you love crypto and you have a lot of opinions about crypto, well, that's the place to go. And now it's linked in the chat. So, check that out and uh join the underground crypto community. I think I covered all my bases there. And smash the like button while you're at it. So, Chainlink, it might be one of the strongest products in cryptocurrency. How many people don't know what Chainlink is? It's data helps operating lending markets, right? Or operate lending markets. It's infrastructure, moves assets between blockchains. So, it's interoperability. Banks and financial institutions are experimenting with its technology. And projects representing billions of dollars have migrated critical infrastructure to Chainlink. But none of that tells us whether Link, the actual token, is a strong token for price

go up, what everybody really wants to know. Tonight, we are separating three numbers that make crypto marketing constantly blends together, right? Value secured, revenue earned, and value captured by the token. Those are three different things, and value captured by the token is what is important to somebody speculating on the token. All right, it's not so much like a stock where you can buy a share of the actual company and its revenue. It's more like there's a token associated with it, and it's up to the tokenomics that were built by the team when they launched the project or updated later to come up with a way to make that token valuable within their ecosystem. Also, we'll answer one question: Who is getting paid in Chainlink? So, of course, welcome to the Underground Crypto Deep Dive Research Show in the Token

Autopsy series. And this is our first week applying the Token Autopsy framework project by project to selected major cryptocurrencies. We did a whole week prior to this of just laying out what a Token Autopsy is and what it should uh have in it. So, Monday, Avalanche scored 66 out of 100 with a watch verdict. So, we have a pass, fail, and watch verdict that we give each stream along with the score. Tuesday, Sui scored a 64. So, Avalanche actually scored a little bit higher than Sui on token value capture. And it also got a watch verdict. So, tonight is money investigation. Chainlink clearly has services, customers, integrations, and reasons to exist. But, a successful network and a successful a successful Woah, I need to sip my tea. A successful network and a successful token are not automatically the same

thing as we keep talking about value capture for the token. We're examining service fees, node operators, link staking, payment abstraction, if you know what abstraction is, and the Chainlink reserve, and the continued token release. At the end, Chainlink receives a complete score and joins the weekly leaderboard. This is an educational research, not financial advice. Let's perform the Chainlink token autopsy, right? How's everybody doing out there in my chat? Shout out to Melissa. Shout out to Rawhandyman. Shout out to uh the Funky Ferret, Struggahart, Blues Guy, Copper Dude, Under Health uh Health Under, I should say. I read that backwards. So, welcome in. Welcome in, everybody. Drop something in the chat. Let me know that you are with me. I actually remember to make myself some honey tea. So, hopefully that'll help me from kind of losing my voice here.

So, as you can see, I got Chainlink pulled up. Too many tacos. It's a good problem to have. Struggahart, thank you for being here. All right, so Chainlink chilling out at about $11 market cap 8.2 billion. So, very large market cap. Number 18 by market cap in the crypto asset world. A billion max supply, and our circulating supply is about 748 million. So, I believe that would make it about 74% of the total supply is circulating. Which are some pretty good numbers. It's got an Ethereum contract and many, many, way too many to even name. Look at this. I've never seen a token with more interoperability than LINK. But, it's a data oracle, right? It feeds data, and so it's kind of main job is being interoperable, right? So, there you go. And let's see what kind of categories

it gives it. Probably a lot. Oracle, real-world asset, a bunch of indexes, made in the US, Coinbase top 50 index, chain abstraction, X402 ecosystem or X402 protocol, micro-payments, specifically going to probably be used for uh AI agents and agentic networks, and then we have privacy. So, that's a quick little overview of Chainlink, but we're going to get into way deeper than that. Now, I'm not going to go to their website at this moment because uh their website probably is got a lot of stuff we're going to already go over. So, let's talk about who gets paid, right? Let me bring up the notes so that everybody can see them. All right, here we are. Everybody can see them? All right, Blues guy speaking other languages. All right, so who gets paid? The question does LINK LINK when you see

Chainlink, we're talking about the project. When you see LINK, that's the ticker for the actual token. Make that distinction as we go through our notes here. So, does LINK capture the value created by Chainlink, or does most of the value remain with the customer, operator, or Chainlink organizers? The bullish case here, Chainlink is becoming important infrastructure. Service revenue is increasing um into LINK. Staking economic demand and reserves purchase and hold LINK. So, bear case of course is that adoption statistics are much larger than transparent [music] revenue. LINK is not equity, passive holders receive no automatic payment and continuing [music] tokens release remain uh the token release coming into issuance or coming into the supply remains substantial. Want to make sure I really break everything down for you guys so you can raise that crypto IQ. So, one thing you

have to think about is like a stock, you're buying into the company. Like you're buying a portion of the company. [music] Where in crypto, it's very different. You're not buying a portion of the company, you're buying a token associated with the company and like any startup company or any company, they can decide how things run. So, how they set up the tokenomics, the economics of the token, depend on if value is captured and put into the market cap of the token, aka number goes up. I want to make that really clear cuz most people are like, you know, what token should I buy? Never financial advice here. We do crypto research, but there is some understanding here that most people want to see the number go up on the token that they're associating their future gains with that they're

doing their token math. Frank Glaser, he bought a membership. Hey, I really appreciate that. Thank you very much. It supports the channel and the work that we do. So, three numbers that must stay separate, right? Owen Blues Guy got uh the basic as well. Very awesome. I love to see that. Thank you guys. I spend a lot of time on this channel and we're up-and-coming, so I'm not making tons of money off of YouTube, that's for sure. Ad revenue doesn't generate a lot, but I am giving it up. So, you guys got grabbing that membership makes up for it and that's a beautiful thing. All right. So, measurement, value secured or transferred, revenue and token value capture are the three different things we want to keep separate. So, value secured or transferred is how economically important the infrastructure may

be. Revenue, of course, is what customers actually pay that's generated by the network. And token value capture is how much of that revenue creates demand or reward for the LINK token. A project, of course, can secure billions or earn millions and distribute nothing directly to the token holder. And that is kind of where I feel like a lot of people need to raise their crypto IQ is because we look at a project and we think, "Wow, this project's got great tech. It's cutting edge. There's great people, CEOs or leaders or founders, um people in great positions." And then you're like, "Well, how come the token doesn't move?" It's tokenomics. A project can be amazing in everything else but tokenomics and you will not make much gain on that token, right? It's all speculation. Camp's in the house. Welcome in.

Welcome in. All right. So, Chainlink is not another blockchain. These are surprising facts. It operates specialized decentralized oracle networks across many blockchains. Now, I want to say, of course, we're trying to learn if value is captured for the token naturally within the economics of the project. Also, we are learning in depth what Chainlink is and how it operates because that's highly important as well. Melissa sending a super chat from work, $2.99 with love. We appreciate you, Melissa. Melissa is a mod. She does a ton of stuff. Blues Guy's also a mod. And they do a lot of stuff for the channel. So, I really, really appreciate it. Me and Blues Guy's have done uh Blues Guy's I said that like plural like there's multiple of you. Me and Blues Guy have done videos on uh Flare Network and all

kinds of stuff before. So, he's a part of the channel as well. So, customers do not always need to buy LINK themselves. Payment abstraction allows other payment assets assets to be converted into LINK behind the scenes. The reserve is not a token burn, right? Reserve LINK remains in existence and does not belong proportionally to the holder. Now, we have the signal versus noise portion, which I really like. Signal, important. Noise, [clears throat] not important. So, make those distinctions. So, signal, traditional market keeps moving towards tokenization. That's a positive. That matters. On September 1st, the LSEG announced plans to offer blockchain-based representations of UK shares through a partnership with Payward, which I believe is Kraken's parent company. Oh, it literally says that next. All right. The launch is planned for 2027. So, this hasn't happened yet and remains subject to

regulatory approval. UK's crazy about their MiCA regulation and things like that that they've recently rolled out. So, we kind of got to pump the brakes and wait and see how that's going to go. So, this is not a confirmed Chainlink integration. It is evidence that the potential market or financial data interoperability and tokenized asset infrastructure is expanding, though. So, this is signal. The CCIP is showing measurable usage. Chainlink reported 4.9 billion of CCIP volume during quarter two. 353% year-over-year volume growth. More than 7 billion in asset value migrating to the CCIP during the quarter. These are Chainlink reported figures, but they show more than a collection of announcements. Noise, treating 15 billion of migrated asset value as 15 billion of chain link revenue is nonsense. Treating every bank experiment as guaranteed commercial adoption also not a guaranteed. You don't

want to over hype yourself on those type of things until they're legitimately using it and paying for the service. An experiment is a test. Treating link price performance as proof that the token economics has improved is also maybe not the best ideas get exciting people run in they throw money they don't even know what they're doing they haven't raised their crypto IQ most of the time. Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of people who do institutions and stuff but retail not so much. That's why they're considered dumb money. If you don't want to be dumb money you should probably raise your crypto IQ and you're already in the right place. So what does chain link sell? Right? What does chain link actually sell? Data feeds and data streams. Right? It's an oracle. Delivers external market information to smart contracts

and you'll know if you build something you're a developer or you hire developers for your project in real time your products are really only as good as the real time data that they can get and that's why you need a trusted source of data that is highly uh what's the right way to put it? Trustable and up to date. So it's product itself is highly sought after and is a good product as far as I know. The CCIP transfers messages and assets between the blockchains. So the CCIP is very much involved with the transfer of the messages, automation functions and VRF. Triggers contracts, performs computation and supplies verifiable randomness. Now there may be some of these things that go over your head and I do apologize. It's why I encourage everybody to come to the stream, raise your crypto

IQ. We go over so many different topics. If you go back to past videos I have tons and tons of live streams on different topics. You might want to revisit some of those. I Otherwise, hop in that Discord and get to chatting with me or somebody and we'll help you raise that crypto IQ. So, smart value recapture recovers part of the value created during selected DeFi liquidations. Institutional infrastructure that of course connects blockchains with existing financial systems, data, and compliance process, basically combining TradFi with DeFi. DeFi standing for decentralized finance. Chainlink's moat is no longer one Oracle product. It is the ability to combine data, cross-chain communication, and automation within one infrastructure platform. Let's talk about the headline trap. So, what we're really getting at here is that you'll read headlines, fud, news cycles, and things, and what they

say a lot of times is taken out of proportion. So, Chainlink says its recent projects representing approximately 15 billion in asset value have migrated critical Oracle or cross-chain infrastructure to Chainlink. So, basically they're trying to kind of uh say that that 15 billion is theirs, right? It's in their it's in their ecosystem, but is that actually true? That includes wrapped assets, liquid staking products, stable coin, and the Wyoming Frontier stable token. What does the $15 billion actually prove? Customers trust Chainlink with valuable assets. Integration can create meaningful switching costs, and Chainlink is winning important infrastructure decisions in a lot of the institutions. What it doesn't prove is that Chainlink earned $15 billion. It's not saying that. The reserve purchased 15 billion of LINK. LINK holders receive 15 billion, basically an increase. Every represented dollar continually produces fees. It didn't

prove any of these things. So, we're saying, just to be clear, Chainlink holders of LINK did not get $15 billion into the market cap of the LINK token. The reserve didn't purchase $15 billion of LINK. And represented dollars continually producing fees was not proven, either. So, now we have the money trail. You hear this constantly, follow the money, follow the money, follow the money. So, let's go ahead and do that here. Customers pay for the Chainlink service. That's the beginning of the chain. From there, payments accepted in LINK or another asset. From there, payment abstraction converts participating revenue into LINK. And this is where it goes into different phases. This is the part that's actually important. Some of that goes to node operators and network costs. Some of it goes to eligible staking rewards, and others go to the

actual Chainlink reserve. So, that's where the money is going. Not every service uses the same route or fee split. So, who receives what? How's everybody doing out there? I want to check in with you guys. I am aware that this is a lot more intense. And that's why we're hitting it with a duo here, right? We're doing real education with real high value, in my opinion. This is some of the highest value that I can produce for you guys, but that makes it a little bit more intense. And then directly after this stream, we have our gaming stream, where we can hang out and game and do some other things. I've been kind of making them tutorials, but they won't be like that every day. So, who receives what? So, node operators provide data or other network services and

receive compensation, kind of like any node operator anywhere. Applications may receive revenue sharing from products such as smart value recapture, and we read what that was a minute ago. LINK stakers receive rewards for helping secure supported services. Chainlink Reserve accumulates LINK purchased with participating revenue. And of course, passive holders receive no automatic dividend or ownership. Right, just holding LINK you don't get a dividend like you would a stock, but I'll remind you that not every stock pays a dividend and just because you own a stock that does pay a dividend doesn't mean that it's subject not subject to changing over time. If you originally bought a stock because of a certain dividend, that doesn't mean that lifetime that you're holding it, you're going to get exactly what you signed up for. Payment abstraction. Let me pre-reference this with abstraction.

Abstraction means to take the complexity away from the user. Basically, they don't see it. And this is uh really great for adoption of anything because in crypto, it's decentralized because of the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, that means you have to know how to do a lot of things on your own. There's a lot of risk, yes, but there's a lot of self-education and things that have to go on. You want to self-custody your money, well, you better know what you're doing. That can be abstracted through wallets and chains and projects to make it easier for the user, but it does sometimes hide the risk or make the user less aware of the risk of what they're doing. So, payment abstraction. Customers can pay in supported stablecoins, gas tokens, or off-chain forms of payment. The system can convert that revenue

into LINK through decentralized exchange infrastructure. Why does that matter? Well, it removes the inconvenience of forcing every customer to acquire LINK while preserving LINK's demand inside the network. Genius, if you ask me. So, >> [music] >> it all ultimately becomes acquired LINK and money into LINK's market cap, probably how LINK got such a large market cap, but the actual customer can use stablecoins and other things for gas and and payments wherever they have to pay for the services? What remains uncertain though, what percentage of the total enterprise revenue is actually converted into link? That's unknown. How much purchased link is later paid to operators? So just cuz they convert it into link, if they give it to somebody else as payment, well then it's not in the market cap because those people who received the link as payment are

likely to sell it. Do you understand? How quickly fee backed purchases can grow and how revenue will ultimately be divided between operators, stakers, and reserves. Going to take a moment just to pause here. One thing I want to clarify. I know I'm reading a lot of facts to you. I know I'm saying maybe some things that could possibly go over your head. I hope not. I just want to take a moment to say this is underground crypto research community and we like to research together. Obviously, I'm the face of it and I have to present this information well to you guys. I'm not trying to sit up here like I know it all and you should listen to me cuz I know everything about crypto. We learn together. I learn a ton of stuff while I'm doing this stream.

I go over the information when I put the stream together, but I still reinforce it while I'm doing the actual stream. So I just want you guys to know like I'm with you. I'm learning this stuff as well with you and I don't know every little detail about everything in crypto. I don't think anybody can and that's exactly the sell point for the community is we need people who are very into different subjects, different niches. Maybe you're into meme coin trading, maybe you're into, you know, tokenization and RWAs and all that. We need everybody so that when things get hot and things get chaotic, especially in bull markets, we have sophisticated people to help the new people in the community and also the intermediate and more advanced people to communicate with each other. That is a big part of

what I was hoping to build with this community. Let's see what's going on in the chat. Campster says, "Have fun at work." To Melissa, "It's not fun. I wish I was home." Yeah, that's how work always goes. "Lighter is good token to DCA, I believe." Hey, there's probably going to be an autopsy for as many tokens as I can think of. Lighter could easily be one of those. So, this is a revenue snapshot as of September 2nd, which is today. DeFi Llama tracked approximately 2.8 million in 30-day fees. This is on Chainlink network. 4.4 million in 30-day revenue linked flows and 58 million in annualized annualized uh tracked revenue. So, about 58 million in tracked revenue. Here is Chainlink's 30-day money flow. I'm zoomed in a little bit, so it can make these a little wonky. But, uh service

fees and tracked revenue are two categories. Service fees are about 4.8 million, where tracked revenue is about 4.4 million. They're pretty equal though. That's That's pretty evened out, I would say. And of course, all that information comes from DeFi Llama. You can see the links and everything, so you know I didn't just make that up. So, what this shows the point of that is revenue backed link demand is measurable and the economic system has moved beyond promise alone. Most track 30-day fees into revenue linked distinction, which is good for the coin. What it doesn't show is profit after every expense that goes on with Chainlink, cash distributed to passive link holders, complete enterprise revenue, or guaranteed future run rate. Valuation scale check. And there's some of these are a little bit more meticulous. I'm going to skip over it,

right? Let's get to staking now. If I If I feel that some information is not super valuable, I might skip over it a little bit. I want to keep it running. I want to keep it high energy as best I can. So, staking volume 0.2 has capacity for 45 million link. 40 million for community stakers and about 4 million for node operators. So, community stakers are getting the big chunk here. Staking adds economic collateral, community alerting, node operator slashing, and security for supported Oracle service. Of course, think of things like proof of stake. The important distinction is subsidiary subsidy reward paid from previously allocated link. Revenue reward is paid from consumer-generated fees. Both compensate the staker, but only one fee-backed rewards demonstrates that customers can sustain the network security budget. Staking still does not secure every Chainlink product, right?

It secures like proof of stake a lot of things in it, but not every product that Chainlink has is secured by the link token, right? And we're going to skip the reserves. I don't really necessarily think that that is Maybe not. Maybe we need to go over the reserves, now that I think about it. All right. So, what is in the reserve? Revenue-backed link demand, of course, an observable connection between service usage and link, a temporary reduction in liquidity liquid supply while the token remains held. What is not, of course, in the reserve is a permanent burn, a dividend, an asset legally owned by link holders, or proof of purchase already outweighed the new supply. Current supply, though, is 1 billion link, which is not so bad for such a big project. And again, 748 million, almost about 75%

of the max supply is circulating, which is pretty good. That's a pretty high percentage for such a big project. So, here we have our circle. You'll see you have your circulating link, and then you have a very small portion, about 25% that's not circulating. Another way to say this to make it simpler is 25% of the coins are not out in circulation, so the dilution for the project is about 25%. All right. So, supply pressure versus economic lock. So, Link supply and economic lock scale. So, selected Link amounts in millions. Annual release schedule is about 70 million. The staking pool capacity is 45 million. Total reserve at quarter two, 4.5 million, and quarter two reserve additions about 1.4 million. Honest interpreted interpretation to the best of the ability, current release schedule equals about 70 million Link annually. Reserve accumulation

is genuine, but remains much smaller. Release tokens may fund operator rewards, development, or ecosystem ecosystem programs, and release does not automatically mean selling. This is probably one of the most important things here is that just because tokens are unlocked, you kind of have to pay attention to who's getting those tokens because that doesn't mean they're going to sell them. Other times it may mean mean may mean that they're highly likely to be sold. So, the difference between [music] a node operator receiving Link, does a node operator generally operate a node to make money? Well, then they're highly likely to sell that. Where maybe a foundation or a reserve or a treasury kind of thing, they're more likely to hold on to it, or a lab that's associated with the building or developing. So, competition and moat. We're looking at

who is the competition to Chainlink? Pyth, Redstone, Chronicle, and API3. I would say Chainlink blows most of those out of the water with brand recognition and probably trust by institution. So, what is Chainlink's advantage? Integration history, data source diversity, and production trust. They've just been around a lot longer. The risk here, of course, is that specialized competitors, cuz all these competitors are more specialized, Chainlink is more generalized, can win faster and cheaper data markets. Cross-chain infrastructure, we have Layer Zero, Wormhole, Axelar, and Hyperlane. Security reputation and institutional relationship it has >> [music] >> as a winning metric, but customers can choose cheaper or more flexible alternatives. Institutional tokenization, of course, private bank networks and other middleware are their competition, but the ability to connect public chains and private systems and external data is where it will probably win out

over those private bank networks. Institutions may build internally or limit public token dependency. They're not really into that kind of thing. So, strong moat against their competitors, moat means their ability to win out against their competitors, right? Chainlink has accumulated trust in markets where one incorrect price or cross-chain instruction can create enormous loss. Say that a little bit better. Chainlink is feeding data. If the data is bad, if a project picks a bad project that doesn't live up to its ability to give good data, it can result in large losses. So, underestimated risk, infrastructure can use infrastructure use can grow while fees per dollar decline. Competition and large institutional customers can pressure pricing even if transaction volume continues rising. And here is our scorecard. So, of course, real utility and adoption, it gets a 19 out of 20. And

I did shorten up how how long this is supposed to run. So, I hopefully you guys got a good good amount information without it being too overbearing. This honey tea is is heavenly right now. I was losing my voice yesterday on the stream. All right. So, the category real utility and adoption got a 19 out of 20. That's a almost perfect score. Why? Because important production services with measurable usage. Pretty pretty cut and dry there. Token value capture, probably one of the most important things that we're looking at, got a 13 out of 20. It's a good score, but there's some to be desired about seven points. Payment abstractions taking in reserve purchases are credible but not indirect. Tokenized tokenomics and supply, 10 out of 15, still a pretty good score. Fixed maximum 78% in circulation and about 25%

not out in circulation. If you really want to be 25.2 if you really want to be on the dot. I don't know why my firearm's going off. >> All right, very sorry about that. I have no idea why it went off. There are no fires that can be found anywhere. And you know, you know how it goes. Usually the one in the kitchen goes off when somebody's cooking. Nobody's cooking. I don't know why mine went off in my room. Anyways, let's pretend like that didn't happen and hopefully I remember to cut that out of the video. What's going on in the chat? Fire alarm, trades too hot. There you go. There you go. We got Daylon Carr. Hey, I've never seen that name in the chat before. Thanks for being here. Link to our free Discord in the description.

Also in the chat. Now somebody's calling me on Discord. This is wild. I got to turn that off. All right. It's been a fun stream. Hey, you go live almost every day. There's going to be things that happen, right? It is what it is. And I love to see new names in the chat. Hopefully I didn't lose too many people during that. So where were we? Competitive moat, its ability to win out against its competitors. Well, it gets a 14 out of 15, which is a great score. Trust, [music] integration, product breadth, and switching costs. It wins out against its competitors. So that's good. Security and decentralization, eight out of 10. Strong operating history, curated participation, and limited staking coverage. Eight out of 10 still a great score. Catalyst and execution, nine out of 10. CCIP growth, tokenization, and

expanding economic mechanism. Risk and unanswered questions, six out of 10. Revenue transparency is somewhat of an issue. Valuation and fee routing remains unsolved. So, there is some problems with this, but it did get a 79 out of 100, which is a passing score. Both Avalanche and Sui got a watch score, meaning like kind of wait and watch, see if maybe they change, upgrades can change things like tokenomics, and there are some of those on the horizon for both of those projects. So, of course, we're just going to watch them, but this link actually gets a pass. And of course, it is structured judgment, not scientifically certain or a price prediction. I always want to make that absolutely clear. So, we're giving it a pretty high score. But, what would be the strongest counter argument? Because we want to be

neutral and we want to be transparent. The strongest bearish case is not that Chainlink lacks utility. As you can see, Chainlink does not lack utility. It is that Chainlink could become essentially infrastructure, while LINK remains in it a expensive working capital token with weak passive holder rights. Let me say that again. Chainlink could become essential infrastructure, the company, while LINK, the token, could remain an expensive working capital token with weak passive holder rights. Because again, most people who bought LINK, they may be rooting for or betting on Chainlink, the project, doing very well, but that doesn't mean that their LINK token is going to perform well for them. So, the argument depends on five concerns. Customers do not have to hold LINK themselves. That can be problematic. Operators may sell LINK to cover expenses as operators normally do. Reserve

tokens are not burned or distributed. Staking rewards can still include subsidies. Transparent revenue remains small relative to its valuation. What supporters get right. Payment abstraction deliberately converts participating revenue into LINK. That's a positive. The reserve proves that at least part of Chainlink's activity is creating measurable LINK purchase or value capture for the token. Chainlink also has stronger product moat than most cryptocurrency projects. Again, moat meaning ability to win out against its competitors. So, that's what the supporters get right. What do the critics get right though? A reserve purchase is not the same as a dividend. So, if you're coming from the traditional world of finance, remember Chainlink is a big project. So, it's going to get a little bit more interest from institutions than people who are far more used to being in the world of traditional finance, right?

So, a reserve purchase is not the same thing as a dividend. And partnership reveals little about contract value margins or reoccurring usage. The fact that would break this thesis. Chainlink adoption continues to grow, but reserve inflows and fees back staking rewards stagnate. While others 70 million LINK into circulation over the year, basically have dilution without a bunch of value capture. That would kind of break our thesis here. That would demonstrate product growth without proportional token value capture. So, our final verdict is a pass for Chainlink. Chainlink has the strongest infrastructure moat examined this week. Out of the three projects. We are just starting the series. And LINK is now credible revenue backed demand mechanism. But those mechanisms remain incomplete and should not be confused with equity ownership. Now, if you've been in crypto for a while, I don't know

why you would think it was equity ownership, but a lot of people in tradfi. Bearish conclusion, transparent revenue remains modest compared with LINK's valuation and passive holders have no automatic claim or Chainlink income or revenue asset. [music] Again, that's a little bit more for your your tradfi style investors, which is most people because cryptocurrency is emerging asset, even though what, Bitcoin's been around almost 20 years, getting close to 20 years. I don't have the exact number for you. But, it's still a very new asset class. Think about how long oil's been around, or gold, or silver, those kind of things. So, what we're going to monitor is reserve growth versus token release, the CCIP fee growth versus CCIP transaction volume, percentage of staking rewards funded by customers, expansion of staking into additional Chainlink services, better disclosure of enterprise revenue

and fee routing. Let's see. Do we need any of this other stuff? Here's our updated uh weekly leaderboard, right. So, you have Chainlink getting the highest score so far. We've done three projects, getting a 79, and the other one's close, but not that close. Avalanche getting a 66, Sui getting a 64. Those two are both on a watchlist where a pass verdict has only been issued for Chainlink. Our token autopsy has a very specific rating and scorecard, okay? So, elite infrastructure with credible but incomplete token value capture. So, great infrastructure, some token value captured, that is good, but it's somewhat incomplete, and that's why it didn't get a higher score than a 79. All right. So, I think that's all we really need to go over there. What else do we want to take a look at? We can

kind of get to the ending of the show here. And we will take a look at those crypto bubbles. Anybody have any questions? Anybody feel like there was anything about Chainlink that I didn't go over? Did I miss any critical upgrades or anything like that? So, Arbitrum's up 12%, Lyda up 10%. Funny that was brought up in the chat for sure. Shout out to all my undergrounders who purchased a membership. I really appreciate that. Um [music] and it again helps me just not have ads for you guys, which makes a better show. So, BTW is Bitcoin DeFi. It's up 12.2%. Algorand up 6.3%. ADA up 4.2%. File up 5%. Let's toggle our 1 through 1,000 here. 100 to 200 the biggest gainers. Let's go there. Akita getting a big jump back up. Akita. Had a really high wick and

then it probably gave back 50 or more of that, right? Interesting though because it had been pumping, then it dumped a little bit and it looks like it rallied back up right away. It's what you want to see in a project. Struggle Heart says, "I miss the ads." Hey. I I I'll send some ads your way just for you. Wait, didn't you say that you had YouTube Premium? I don't think you ever saw any ads, Struggle Heart. I noticed no CCP here today. So, CashCat 21.7% to the upside. What's its market cap nowadays? Two 69. Let's go to the all-time here. Is that the highest we've been? So, CashCat's actually at a all-time high. Is CashCat going to go to a billion dollars? I don't know. Kite ponds up a little bit, e-gold, ape Pepe. Seeker bounced back. Seeker

pumped and then it dumped and looks like it's pumping again. So, it's kind of coming back. Let's look at it on the weekly. You'll see what I mean. So, we were up, then we were down, then we were up. And then we fell out of it. It's like a asymmetrical triangle, 50/50 pattern. It dumped. All right. Let's look at it on the monthly, though. Yeah, on the monthly it is absolutely ripped. Shout out to everybody who bought a Seeker phone. I know you guys have done very well. Jasmy got a little bit of pump and now it wants to give it back. I always talk about Jasmy being one of my most impulsive, probably worst time purchases ever of Jasmy. Two to 300 here, what do we got? Unify is down 24.9, call it 25, and Helium Network down

about 15%. Where backpack, useless, and Zama are rallying over 8% between 8 and 10%. And let's go look at the fear and greed index. I uh I definitely got thrown for a loop here with that firearm going off. It definitely threw me off my game a little bit. Lighter had a nice pump today, exactly. Stick with that fear and greed index again. Haven't said it in a while. The fear and greed index, that number that measures sentiment in the market. You keep it in the back of your mind. Kind of tells you when, you know, is a good time to buy and when's not when's a good time to sell. Historically, we know that to be true, but that doesn't always prove future, right? So, past performance is not indicative of future performance. But, we're in greed, which is

good. I'd love if we could just stay in this like You see what I mean? This little range right here. A little fear, a little greed, a little fear, a little greed, [music] and not get over into this extreme greed because when things get into extreme greed, it's about time when sentiment gets euphoric, and then people take profits, and we go back to extreme fear. That's no fun. Strike a heart said, "My fire alarm went off, too." Hey, maybe it did. I'm not sure. But, if it did, that's that's very strange. Top gainers, top losers of the day. Maybe it's some radiation interference. Maybe. And since I put these smoke alarms up, I've never had the one in my room ever go off. Like, it's never gone off, which is very weird. Timing and things like that. If you

know, you know. It's just very strange. Something's trying to mess with me here. So, we got top gainers, of course, Akita, Multiverse, and Seeker. Of course, Akita 72%. That was a good buy if you were swing trading that thing. And what are our top losers? Convex Finance, Sky, which used to be Maker DAO, SPDR S&P 500, and Jasmine. All your top losers under 10%. That's a pretty good day, if you ask me. They can bounce back 10% no problem. So, I put a poll up. I wonder how that poll is doing. What do you guys think of the new token Autopsy? How do I even look at it here? Did anybody even see the poll? That's a good question. I'm going to go ahead. Everybody, if you haven't seen the poll, I'll give it a minute. You can check

out the poll real quick, vote in it, and then I'm going to end it cuz I think I can't see the results of it until I actually end the poll. So, based off of this, who's feeling bullish on Chainlink? How do you feel about Chainlink when it is so high in overall market cap already? This is where things get interesting, right? Because it's got a 8.2 billion market cap. And a lot of people's thinking would be, well, I need something with a smaller market cap because in order for this to go to, you know, double $22.24, [music] uh the market cap has to double, which $8.2 billion coming into Chainlink is a lot of money. But, you also have to reference that with what the project is and who has their eyes on it. So, for retail to pump

this thing another $8 billion is almost unheard of. Institutions, it's not that crazy. It's not that crazy at all. And it's very orientated to that. So, this is why the value capture matters so much. And this is why I'm kind of really going all out on these token autopsies. Will we teach other things and stuff? Probably. But, the token autopsy is here to stay for a while because we hopefully have found the bottom of the market. I kind of want to lay this out for all of my regular undergrounders here if I haven't already. Bottom of the market hopefully has already happened. Even if we dip down and make a lower low and have a new bottom, we got to be very close to that 1,000, what was it? 1,028 days, 68 days from bottom to bottom historically Bitcoin

4-year cycle is about October 5th. So, are we going to get a new low before then or somewhere in that, you know, a lot of times history rhymes, but it's not perfect repetition. Either way, we're close to or have already bottomed. So, now for me, I've stepped away a lot from trading and stuff like that, just focused on making spot bags. And so, we should focus on what tokens have the best ability to run. A token or a project, two different things, but a project can be highly speculated and a lot of people look at it like it's some kind of hot thing and it can even pump with all that excitement and hype. But, on a regular basis, how well that project has designed its tokenomics, the ecosystem of the project to capture value into the token is

all that really matters to the person who bought the token. You didn't buy the project. I don't think there is any way to buy the project. Like, Coinbase Well, Base doesn't really have a coin, does it? Does No, Base doesn't have a coin. I don't know why I'm blanking there. But anyways, Coinbase went public, right? Kraken, I believe, is public, of course. Like, there are crypto-related things that are publicly traded on the stock market, but that's not the same as a cryptocurrency. And, of course, Coinbase's stock on the stock market is not Web 3. It's not blockchain technology. Like, it's not those things, even though the project itself has those integrations. My point here is why I'm doing this series and going so hardcore with it right now and switching focus is literally because that's what matters to people

who are buying, and buying should be a lot more attractive right now as we hopefully have bottomed in the market. Hopefully, I did some justice there to explaining that. Anybody have any questions? Does anybody not agree with us giving Chainlink uh a high rating like that? Anybody? Anybody? Otherwise, that pretty much wraps up this stream. We got another stream back-to-back. You'll see that the gaming stream is scheduled for 10:30 p.m. It's not a guarantee. I I What, this is the third day that we're doing this and splitting the stream. So, I'm not actually sure how long each token autopsy is going to take me. The other one seemed to be much longer. I tried to cut it down a little bit cuz I felt like it was too long. Now, I feel like it was a little bit too

short. So, I got to find that happy medium. I'm always playing around with it. Anybody out there? Anybody out there? Well, one thing that we could do is invite you guys come follow me. I've been super active on Twitter here lately. I'm going to continue to try to be super active. Uh hey, this post is popping a little bit. Maybe we should refresh this. So, I just wanted to say come follow me Crypto Raw with the blue check mark. You'll see it at _groundcrypto because I'm posting all of the score and how we got to the score and stuff for each token autopsy as its own post. I'm going to use those. They're going to go in the Discord. They'll be a cleaner, more organized place to find them versus just scrolling through my feed. But, as of right

now, if you want access to that information, that's the easiest way to find it until I get it up in the Discord. I'll probably have it up in the Discord within a day or two, I feel like. Anybody look at uh the changes in the Discord? Nothing massive, but I put some more descriptions on the different tabs and there's other tabs. I don't know if you've joined the Discord and you haven't taken the time to look at the different tabs. If you're into certain things, feel free to post in those different tabs. I didn't really come here just to look at my feed. So, OMO. This is an interesting thing here. Hey Dev. Hey Dev here. Okay, I need to say something, and I genuinely don't know where to start. Ohm site is gone, deleted, not by me. I

woke up, and it was just different. Stripped, rewritten, someone else is living in it right now. Dang. Wow. Um if you don't know what this is and stuff, that's that sucks. So, me that a lot of people like this guy. I'm starting to look at a lot of his stuff. Of course, the Crypto Lifer. Make sure you watch his live in the morning if you love technical analysis. And then, of course, I get a lot of gaming stuff in my feed. I call this the Twitter doom scroll. Yakaman, it's coming. Pretty excited about it, I guess. We'll see what it is. Like, I want to be excited about it, but I've learned to like temper expectations. Why did my score start over? That sucks. What happened there? Woah, what's going on? Everything is reset. My points have reset, my

leaderboard point This they must just be having some kind of issue. What happened? All right, that's always fun. I don't know what happened. I'll have to figure that out later. Maybe we could do that in the gaming stream. All right, guys. Well, I appreciate everybody staying till the end. I'm going to go ahead and fire up that gaming stream. Give me like 15 minutes or so to do that. And we will be on to the next part of the stream, the underground hangout part is what we used to always call it, segment of the night. Stay underground, stay crypto. Reliable J says, "You're good, bro." I appreciate you saying that. Always appreciate your support, Reliable J. And you being here and Reliable J, I think you've been here like we're going to start a new stream. I think you

already know that. But, it'll be up in about 15 20 minutes. You'll see that it says 10:30. You'll see it's going to start in about 15 20 minutes. I'll dial in our times on those things a little bit better. I never know how long they're going to go. That is the conclusion of the Chainlink Autopsy. I'll see you guys in the next one. Underground Crypto out. Of course, a bunch of people come rushing into the stream now. Go to the next stream. We're starting a gaming stream. Appreciate you saying that, Rels. Rels, we're starting a new stream. Go to the new stream. Underground Crypto out.