My most recent investment thesis for early stage crypto deals:

1. Apps who own end user relationships will dominate in the same way the apps you have on your phone own your time. The strong top of funnel allows teams to monetize all the way down to the bottom of the funnel. Wallets have sneakily become a very hot category for a good reason, they own the user. These may also be 'chains' because they will want to be opinionated applications. Owning the stack is important.

2. The most prominent base layers (<10 total) which power the killer applications will accrue network effects and long-term staying power. They will be the backbone of the best apps, attract the highest quality talent for entrepreneurs/builders, and will have a consistent financial model for projected future cashflows.

The protocols in between the very top of the stack and the bottom may have a hard time actually building a moat with sustainable network effects outside of slight technical architecture benefits/tradeoffs.

There will always be someone who wants to come and undercut for the sake of free markets. If you don't have the best tech with a moat (lowest level) or a highly popular application (highest level), it will be very tough imo.