Published on January 21, 2026
Watch the video of this keynote speech on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel:
Keynote speech by Alex Momot (CEO & Founder at Peanut Trade):
Hello everyone, I’m Alex, CEO of Enantrade, and today I’m here to talk about liquidity theater and tokenized markets.
So, what is this actually about? On the surface, current markets look pretty good: deep liquidity, great order books, nice yields, and everything like that. But as a market maker—and I think anyone here can relate—we saw cases like October 10th, when absolutely everything disappeared from the markets. There was a massive dump, and we could clearly see that a lot of what was there was fake.
So how does this work? We need to understand that liquidity is not about great listings, TVL, or 40% yields. It’s about real user attraction. It’s about truly understanding the product you’re building and attracting real users.
As an example, let’s look at Starknet. The technology is great—the team did a great job. There was huge hype on Telegram, amazing listings, and a massive valuation. But what did we actually see with liquidity right after the TGE? Almost $200 million in TVL, but the majority of it came from the team and investors, funded by Starknet itself. The tokens were simply locked.
So in this case, we saw a perfect example of great theater: an amazing picture on top, but almost no real user base and no real liquidity underneath. And what happened next? We saw the same outcome across many projects building models like this.
It’s not enough to show a great picture. You have to build something for real users.
Another good example is zkSync. Almost the entire industry used this amazing technology to farm—it was basically the only use case. We had bridging quests, swaps, and liquidity locking. But what was the main reason? Expecting the airdrop.
So what happens once the airdrop happens? Exactly what you expect. Only small leftovers of user liquidity remain. Once the program ends and VC funding runs out—what’s next?
You might say, “But they did a great job earning fees from trading activity.” Yes, definitely—but what’s next? What do you do with those fees if you don’t have real user attraction? It doesn’t make sense.
When building products—building everything in Web3—you have to keep in mind that you need more than incentive models and airdrops. You need something real behind them.
Now let’s talk about how this theater is actually created.
First, APYs. Many projects try to attract users with high APYs. It sounds great—20%, 30%, 40%, even 100%. But who are you really attracting? Mostly farmers. And farmers are not there to use your product the way it’s intended; they’re just looking for yield.
A good example is Portal to Bitcoin. No offense to the team—the technology is great and beautifully built. But what do we see on the chart? High APYs bring farmers in, liquidity spikes. Once the APYs are gone, so are they.
You’re only benefiting from this strategy for a short period. If the APY isn’t supported by real product value, technology, and user acquisition, users will leave. They use you temporarily, and that’s it.
It doesn’t make sense to increase yields purely from VC funding. And when you’re evaluating a project to invest in, you need to understand this. You should ask: what is the source of the APY? Can they sustain it? Will the project survive once that source dries up?
The second point is buybacks that support price, not demand.
Buybacks are generally a good part of tokenomics. Using fees or revenue to support growth makes sense. That’s good. But it’s not enough on its own.
Take PumpFun as an example. They had an amazing launch—over 50% price increase. In two months, they introduced buybacks inspired by Hyperliquid, and it worked well. But what’s next? When the market goes down, the system struggles.
Buybacks are just one tool. You can’t rely on them entirely.
Another example is Jupiter. It controls almost 80% of the market. It generated $750 million in fees, with 50% allocated to buybacks. But look at the charts. Even with such scale and a great product, success is not guaranteed.
This shows that you need to analyze the full picture. You can’t just rely on buybacks and expect them to solve everything.
Next are points, rewards, and the new illusion challenge. Many products build engagement loops: add liquidity, trade, swap, earn points, get an airdrop—and that’s it.
This can be good if it’s used for real adoption, allowing users to try the technology and see its value. But if the only reason users try it is to get an airdrop, it doesn’t make sense.
All this really does is inflate valuation. You show numbers to VCs and say, “Look, we have real user traction.” But when you analyze the data, you need to ask: how much of this activity comes from incentives, and how much comes from genuine product usage?
All incentives are temporary—APYs, buybacks, farming tools. They’re just tools to help users discover your product.
But if you’re building only attraction tools without a product that lasts, it doesn’t make sense. At some point, VC funds will run out, and that’s it.
What I want to say is this: when we’re building the Web3 future, we shouldn’t forget the lessons from Web2. Products can’t be built without proper unit economics, without measuring LTV, without understanding user journeys.
You can’t rely solely on point systems and incentives and expect them to solve all your problems.
Thank you for your attention. If you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them. You can meet us at the booth, scan our QR code, and let’s build proper Web3 products for users—not just for VCs.
