Unit 4 · Level 2 · The multichain world
Choosing a chain
Every chain flashes big numbers: users! volume! value locked! The catch is that activity can be rented. Chains run incentive programs that shower token rewards on users, and the dashboards light up... until the rewards stop and the crowd migrates to the next farm. Sharper questions: do users stay after incentives end? Are they paying real fees? And where are developers building? Builders attract builders, and that gravity is hard to fake.
Free to play. No ads, no token, no account needed to start.
What you get asked
A chain's activity exploded right after it launched a big token-rewards program. What's the caveat?
Paid-for activity measures the size of the reward, not the appeal of the chain. Watch what remains after the music stops.
Why does 'developer gravity' matter so much for a chain's future?
Apps bring users, users attract apps, and tooling compounds. Ecosystems snowball, which is why dev activity predicts more than price charts do.
Match each metric to the caveat or insight behind it
Headline metrics tell you a chain is busy today. Retention, real fees and builders tell you whether it will be busy next year.
Activity bought with token rewards often vanishes when the ___ stop.
Mercenary capital farms the reward and moves on. It isn't evil, just not the loyal user base the dashboard implies.
So how do you actually judge a chain?
Same discipline as evaluating any investment: ask where the numbers come from and whether they'd survive without subsidies. 🐜
The rest of this unit
Alt-L1s, bridge hacks, and the honest fight over crypto's endgame.