The Sonic blockchain is leveraging redesigned airdrop incentives and its FeeM program to propel DeFi activity and attract institutional capital, setting the stage for ecosystem growth. Within this environment, leading protocols Shadow Exchange and Silo are poised to asymmetrically benefit due to innovative features and favorable valuations, despite facing ecosystem dependency and competitive pressures. This positions them as compelling, potentially shorter-term, investment opportunities contingent on Sonic's sustained success.

2025 has facilitated unprecedented growth in generative AI adoption. By late 2024, over 71% of companies were using generative AI in some form, a massive jump from 33% the year prior. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and open-source models have proliferated, with potentially billions now leveraging AI chat bots. In Q1 2025, OpenAI’s release of the o3 & o4 models marked another leap, touted as a multimodal "reasoning" model capable of breaking responses into smaller components, testing different approaches, and validating solutions until reaching a final output.

Sei recently announced Sei Giga, a full re-architecture of its Layer-1, designed to deliver 200k TPS and sub-400ms finality. With multi-proposer consensus, parallel execution, and a revamped storage engine, Sei Giga can position the it as the fastest EVM-compatible chain to date. This report breaks down the architecture, compares it to other high-performance chains, and models its potential ecosystem impact.

Unless incentive structures change, or there are ways for competitive protocols to implement either higher take rates on fees, or increase volume on their application through incentive programs, it seems that Hyperliquid will continue to consolidate its lead on both volumes as well as fees earned from those volumes.