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Protocol & Ecosystem Deep Dives

Deep dives are Castle Labs' high-conviction format: one protocol, mechanism, or ecosystem examined through architecture, tokenomics, competitive position, adoption data, and market context. This is where flagship reports sit alongside long-form protocol analysis. The audience expectation is institutional-grade synthesis: fewer shallow takes, more evidence, better maps, and clear conclusions that survive contact with the data.

Latest Deep Dives Research

Showing 1-12 of 52 articles

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Beyond Tokenisation: Making RWAs Useful Onchain
·Deep DivesRWAs

Beyond Tokenisation: Making RWAs Useful Onchain

These days, it’s all about RWAs, with a race involving every protocol and ecosystem, rushing to list new assets and boasting about their market size or asset count.

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The Evolution of RWA Trading Onchain: Variational Swaps
·Deep DivesTrading

The Evolution of RWA Trading Onchain: Variational Swaps

Perpetual futures (perps) have become one of the strongest instruments for digital asset trading.

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Solving the Cold-Start Problem in Fixed-Rate Lending
·Deep DivesDeFi

Solving the Cold-Start Problem in Fixed-Rate Lending

This excerpt is from our research on Fixed-Rate Lending: Market Structure and Protocol Design, highlighting new and emerging designs in the category.

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The Expanding Business Model of Blockchains
·L2sDeep Dives

The Expanding Business Model of Blockchains

Selling blockspace is no longer a defensible business for blockchains.

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The Birth of Bitcoin-Native Finance: Turning Idle BTC into Productive Capital
·Deep DivesMarkets

The Birth of Bitcoin-Native Finance: Turning Idle BTC into Productive Capital

The Birth of Bitcoin-Native Finance: Turning Idle BTC into Productive Capital

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The Broken Link between Protocol Revenues and Token Performance
·Deep DivesMarkets

The Broken Link between Protocol Revenues and Token Performance

Since the beginning of the year, crypto protocols have cumulatively made $7.42 billion in revenue.

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The New Security Bar for Onchain Finance
·PrivacyDeep Dives

The New Security Bar for Onchain Finance

Private Today, Durable Tomorrow

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Prediction markets as option-like instruments
·OptionsDeep Dives

Prediction markets as option-like instruments

This article is an excerpt from our research on The Renaissance of Onchain Options, mapping the expansion of options (and prediction markets) as a trading instrument and the volatility that prices them, published in collaboration with BlockScholes.

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The Rebirth of Onchain Options: An Ecosystem View
·OptionsDeep Dives

The Rebirth of Onchain Options: An Ecosystem View

This article is an excerpt from our research on The Renaissance of Onchain Options, mapping the expansion of options (and prediction markets) as a trading instrument and the volatility that prices them, published in collaboration with Block Scholes.

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Prediction Markets: From Curated Platforms to Open Protocols
·MarketsPredictions

Prediction Markets: From Curated Platforms to Open Protocols

In the last 18 months, Prediction markets (PMs) grew from roughly $2 billion in monthly volume to more than $30 billion, scaling rapidly from a niche category to a mature ecosystem.

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Privacy Ecosystem on Solana
·PrivacyDeep Dives

Privacy Ecosystem on Solana

This article is an excerpt from our research on the Full-Stack Privacy Ecosystem.

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propAMMs: Better than CEX?
·L2sDeep Dives

propAMMs: Better than CEX?

PropAMMs are all about onchain execution

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