---
title: "What Next After Protected Perps?"
date: "2026-02-05"
excerpt: "Why rent a house when you can own a mansion?"
tags: ["crypto", "defi", "L2", "stablecoins", "derivatives", "entrepreneurship"]
---

Crypto, AI, and alternative energy sources are the hottest sectors right now (not in any order) — and they'll attract the most capital.

**Crypto is the easiest for me**: quickest and surest path to liquidating ESOPs or equity, close ties to math, plenty of remote jobs, and salaries on par with the U.S.  
That's why I chose crypto.

In crypto, the biggest opportunities are building:  
- **L2 chains**  
- **Stablecoins**  
- **DEXes**  
- **Bridges**  
- **Derivatives**  

Everything else is either dumb (NFTs, social media) or beyond my expertise (RPCs and other deep tech).

I want to capture the opportunities I truly believe in.  
My current ideations — around derivatives, DEXes, and stablecoins — are areas where I have a **strong core understanding** from my background in finance, trading, economics, and math.  
I envision these hitting **$1–2 billion valuations**.

But the **biggest opportunity outside of that**? Building an **ETH L2 with a native gas token**.

We should absolutely build an L2.  
We boosted Mantle's TVL by 30–40% with PUFF, bringing in the highest number of users.  
But we captured none of the:  
- Bridging fees  
- Transaction fees from every swap  
- Second-order benefits we created for AgniSwap, Merchant Moe, and other DEXes  

**That's why I want to build an L2.**

Building a DeFi protocol is like renting a house in a 50-floor DLF Camellias.  
I don't want to just do that.  

Most founders have only 1–2 big ideas in their lifetime.  
I think I have **>5**.  
The best way to capture them all? **Build an L2.**

I don't want to rent a house in Camellias.  
**I want to build the Kingfisher Tower** — sell/rent houses to other people (protocols) and build a mansion for myself at the top.

In my self-fulfilling philosophy/worldview, **everything I understand and am bearish on fails**.  
It's happened with zero-knowledge rollups, proof-of-anything (except PoS and PoW), social media, gaming, metaverse, and all NFTs post-2019.

Right now, DePIN and metaverse are hot narratives.  
Either they fail… or I become bullish and build something in them.