Hi Stitch, I read your comment with great interest, primarily because it’s something I think we are all trying to hack / figure out: How do we bring/funnel more people into our defi ecosystem?
I can’t say what is right or wrong because I don’t think anything has been really successful yet to prove any one strategy. Personally I do not see pairs with other chain’s tokens as the top of the funnel like you do but that is an interesting take.
I think most people who want exposure to other chains tokens wouldn’t care about doing it on Algorand because there’s a lack of use cases and other than BTC and ETH that have crazy gas fees, most of the transaction fees today are more affordable. I suspect people who are getting in on these wrapped chain tokens are people already in the algorand ecosystem who want to diversify their exposure so thats not leading to the growth we desire.
What I lament about our Algorand DeFi ecosystem is a lack of tokens. Most protocols have not launched a token and the ones that have are not super exciting where people from other chains are desperate to get in and get their hands on. There are also a small handful of meme or community tokens so all in all it’s kinda boring.
My personal suspicion is the top of the funnel will be unique Algorand ASAs that somehow capture the imagination of people on other chains, either for their value or tokenomics or yield or how viral/meme worthy they are…but something that is unique to Algorand that has enough of a hook for them to want to cross-chain and get it.
Probably the current uncertainly with regulation is holding protocols back from launching a token which doesn’t help this. But when it clears up I would think more tokens and good marketing about them beyond the algorand ecosystem could be the top of the funnel? We already make it pretty easy for people to get native USDC through messina.one so after that I think its unique tokens. =)