The Superapp Thesis

In Kain's recent blog The Superapp Thesis, he outlines how Infinex replicates the Centralized Exchange experience on-chain, and how sustainable protocols require sustainable revenue models, just as we've seen in traditional finance. Read his blog here, or read on for the highlights.

The revenue playbook

In The Superapp Thesis, Kain outlines a straightforward playbook: "Have revenue, have a token, buy back the token with revenue, make sure the revenue is meaningful relative to the token market cap, profit."

Kain's thesis identifies a critical insight about value capture. He said, "Outside of crypto, most value is captured by the layer that owns distribution. And we are already seeing this play out as crypto evolves."

"Today, Metamask charges 1% vs the 1-5bps on a Curve swap. So Metamask is capturing 20-100x more value than liquidity providers and orders of magnitude more than the protocol itself. Over the long term, distribution wins," he says.

Why distribution wins

"Centralized exchanges are the original superapps," Kain says. "They have custody, spot, perps, staking, launchpads, and many more services all in a single platform."

Infinex aims to replicate this model, but onchain, "Infinex was built to replicate all of the functionality of a CEX by leveraging onchain protocols." The superapp is systematically building each component - perps trading, spot markets, yield interfaces, and more.

The key insight is diversification. Kain said: "It is not enough to have one undiversified revenue stream. If we are going to supplant CEXs, we must have multiple independent revenue streams that can all be directed towards token buybacks."

Validation before TGE

Infinex’s approach to our token launch carefully considers the revenue meta and what we need to achieve before TGE. Kain said: "We need a real token. But only once we have earned it."

"We will transition to a new token once we have truly validated the superapp thesis by demonstrating sustained and diversified revenue from multiple platform features."

As Kain’s superapp thesis demonstrates, the projects that capture the most value won't be those with the best protocols, they'll be those that own distribution and user experience. Dive into the full blog here: The Superapp Thesis.