Web3 · DeFi · Tokenomics

Blockchain analysis
without the hype
or the hand-waving

Technical deep dives on DeFi protocol mechanics, smart contract security, tokenomics design, and on-chain data - written by engineers who build production blockchain systems, not analysts covering the space from a distance.

Featured Analysis Published 14 May 2026 · 18 min read
DeFi Protocols
Why Most AMM Designs Break Under Concentrated Liquidity - and What Uniswap v4 Hooks Actually Change

The mechanics of impermanent loss get covered endlessly. What doesn't is why the capital efficiency gains from concentrated liquidity create specific, predictable failure modes under volatility. We modelled twelve protocols and the pattern is clear.

S
Sequere, ADMIN 14 May 2026
ETH
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SOL
$172
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120+ Technical articles published
48 Protocol audits documented
$8.2B TVL analysed across DeFi research
22k+ Monthly readers
3yrs Continuous blockchain coverage

Latest Analysis

DeFi Protocols Technical Analysis

Why Most AMM Designs Break Under Concentrated Liquidity - and What Uniswap v4 Hooks Actually Change

The mechanics of impermanent loss get covered endlessly. What doesn't is why the capital efficiency gains from concentrated liquidity create specific, predictable failure modes under volatility. We modelled twelve live protocols and the pattern is consistent.

Tokenomics Research

Emissions Schedules and the Death Spiral: What Three Collapsed Protocols Have in Common

High initial APY attracts mercenary capital. When emissions slow, that capital leaves - often faster than the protocol can absorb the selling pressure. Three recent collapses share an identical emissions curve shape.

DeFi Snapshot
Total DeFi TVL
$92.4B
↑ +4.2% 7d
ETH Gas (Gwei)
18
↓ 6.1% 7d
DEX Volume 24h
$8.1B
↑ +11.4% 7d
Active Wallets
4.2M
↑ +2.8% 7d

Find what you're looking for

DeFi Protocols

AMMs, lending markets, yield aggregators, liquidity mechanics, and protocol risk analysis.

28 articles

Smart Contract Security

Re-entrancy patterns, access control vulnerabilities, audit methodology, and post-mortem analysis.

22 articles

Tokenomics

Emissions design, incentive alignment, ve-tokenomics models, and governance token mechanics.

18 articles

On-Chain Data

MEV analysis, wallet behaviour, liquidity depth, and what raw blockchain data actually tells you.

16 articles

Layer 2 & Scaling

Optimistic rollups, ZK rollups, validiums, data availability, and the real differences that matter in production.

14 articles

DAOs & Governance

Governance mechanism design, voter participation, treasury management, and real DAO case studies.

12 articles

Development Practice

Solidity patterns, Foundry testing, gas optimisation, and engineering workflows for production Web3.

19 articles

Protocol Deep Dives

Full technical breakdowns of specific live protocols - architecture, trade-offs, and failure modes.

11 articles

The analyses that take four weeks to write

Most blockchain content covers what happened. Our deep dive series covers why it happened, what the mechanism actually is, and what it tells you about the protocol category more broadly.

AR
Latest by Sequere, ADMIN
May 2026
Tokenomics Incentive Design Protocol Research 6,400 words
01
The Oracle Problem Nobody Talks About Anymore (But Should)
Chainlink and Pyth have made price feed reliability a solved problem for most protocols. The manipulation vectors that remain are subtler, more expensive to exploit, and more devastating when they work.
Security 26 min read
02
How Curve's Stablecoin Design Actually Works - and Where It Could Break
crvUSD's LLAMMA design is genuinely novel. The liquidation mechanism is counterintuitive enough that most coverage of it is wrong in at least one important detail.
DeFi 31 min read
03
The Gas Optimisation Playbook: What's Worth It in 2025
Custom errors, storage packing, assembly for tight loops - a ranked list of optimisations with actual benchmarks across Foundry gas reports, not theoretical savings.
Development 19 min read
04
Uniswap v4 Hooks: What You Can Actually Build and What the Risk Profile Looks Like
Hooks introduce composability that makes protocol-level security analysis significantly harder. Here's how to reason about the new attack surface.
Smart Contracts 24 min read

Terms used precisely, not loosely

A lot of blockchain content uses terms interchangeably that aren't. These are the definitions we use consistently across all our analysis.

TVL
Total Value Locked - the dollar value of assets deposited in a protocol's smart contracts. A lagging indicator of protocol adoption that can be heavily distorted by token price movements and recursive leverage.
MEV
Maximal Extractable Value - profit that block producers and searchers can extract by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block. Includes arbitrage, liquidations, and sandwich attacks.
Impermanent Loss
The difference in value between holding tokens in an AMM liquidity pool versus holding them in a wallet. The loss is only "impermanent" if prices return to their original ratio - which they often don't.
Re-entrancy
A smart contract vulnerability where an external call is made before state changes are finalised, allowing the called contract to recursively call back and drain funds before balances are updated.
Oracle Manipulation
Artificially influencing the price data that smart contracts use to make decisions - typically by exploiting low-liquidity price feeds or flash loans to move on-chain prices temporarily.
ve-Tokenomics
Vote-escrowed tokenomics - a model where token holders lock tokens for a period to receive governance power and fee revenue, incentivising long-term alignment. Pioneered by Curve Finance.
Flash Loan
An uncollateralised loan that must be borrowed and repaid within a single transaction block. Legitimate use cases exist, but they're also the primary capital source for large-scale DeFi attacks.
Sequencer
In optimistic and ZK rollups, the entity responsible for ordering and batching transactions before posting them to the base layer. Most sequencers are currently centralised, creating a point of censorship risk.