For those looking to profit from airdrops, it is the endpoint. However, for the project and the market, airdrops are just the starting point. After the airdrop, we should focus on the project's narrative, ecosystem, and token price.
What is narrative? My definition is: to persuade the market to invest.
How to evaluate the quality of a narrative? I previously proposed a framework for assessing the quality of project narratives, including three dimensions: demand-side narrative, supply-side narrative, and innovation narrative.
Here, I would like to add two more dimensions:
First, the ability of the narrative to spread, because even the best narrative needs to be disseminated.
Second, token empowerment, because for the market, the narrative ultimately needs to translate into token price. If the token has no consumption scenarios, even a strong narrative can lead to a drop in price. This was the case with the AI Agent in January this year.
➤ Huma's demand-side narrative ability: 70 points
Since we are discussing the project's ability to persuade the crypto market to participate in investment, we will also only discuss the crypto market's demand for the project on the demand side.
Huma initially was a B2B platform, but Huma 2.0 has opened up retail deposits, making it a B2C platform.
This means that institutional and individual users in the crypto market can deposit and earn returns on the Huma platform.
To avoid confusion, we need to distinguish between Huma's Web3 demand and loan demand. Huma's Web3 demand is actually from depositors, whose demand is to earn interest. The loan demand comes from borrowers, whose demand is to finance through pledged receivables.
In a previous article, I compared Huma with Web3 lending platforms like AAVE. Huma's advantage is that its loan users come from the Web2 sector, making its loan demand less affected by the crypto market's bull and bear cycles. This means that users depositing money in Huma can relatively continuously earn returns.
Of course, we need to be rigorous. Although loan demand is almost unaffected by bull and bear markets, depositors are influenced by market cycles. In a bull market, there are more high-yield opportunities in the crypto market, so depositors may be fewer, making funds in Huma relatively scarcer. In a bear market, with fewer opportunities, more funds may be deposited in Huma, increasing the supply of funds.
But overall, the relative stability of loan demand is more appealing to Web3 users (depositors) than existing Web3 lending platforms.
Additionally, looking at the data, Huma's current annualized return is 10%. The annualized deposits for USDT and USDC on AAVE are 3.46% and 4%, respectively. The annualized deposits for USDT and USDC on Compound are 3.5% and 3.65%, respectively. Compared to on-chain options, if this return rate difference can be maintained long-term, Huma's advantages are quite apparent. However, because Huma has deposit limits, this may be a reason for the difference.
However, compared to exchanges, Huma's return rate does not show any obvious advantages. After all, Huma has a centralized offline component and there are credit risks associated with application accounts.
On the other hand, compared to Compound's lending mining in the first half of 2020 and DEX trading mining in 2021, even if Huma can continue to accumulate feathers to receive airdrops after TGE, its on-chain demand may lack explosiveness.
Overall, the on-chain demand advantage is generally weak (while off-chain demand may be stronger), which does not provide much attraction to depositors and faces certain credit risks. The on-chain demand lacks explosiveness, and Huma is given a score of 70.
➤ Huma's supply-side narrative ability: 80 points
As a DeFi protocol, Huma's model design and implementation are key on the supply side.
Huma is not just a simple deposit and lending platform; it also has certain distributed characteristics.
Currently, the pools on the Huma platform should be led by the Huma team, but in the future, they can be created by third parties. The creators of the pools are called 'pool owners', who can set certain parameters for the pools, such as the maximum loan amount and the minimum deposit amount. Depositors can choose pools and deposit funds based on their situations.
Borrowers need to have their pledged receivables assessed by a third-party 'evaluation agent' before they can proceed with a loan.
'Pool owners' and 'evaluation agents' need to be approved by Huma, but in the future, the Huma platform will be a distributed lending platform composed of multiple pools.
Therefore, Huma is actually a relatively complex DeFi ecosystem product, reflecting the team's wisdom and effort. In layman's terms, the design and implementation costs of the Huma platform are not low.
On the other hand, the Huma team is composed of elites from major Web3 companies and mainstream Web2 institutions. This signifies both Huma's execution capability and that the costs on the supply side are not low.
Overall, Huma's design, execution ability, and costs on the supply side are not low. Of course, compared to public chains and infrastructure products, the complexity is somewhat lower, so I give it a score of 80.
➤ Huma's innovation narrative ability: 90 points
In terms of innovation, Huma's innovation is quite strong.
Huma is a Cefi+DeFi product that integrates Web3 and Web2, enabling payers in the Web2 sector to discount in the Web3 ecosystem. This innovation is significant in this round of DeFi ecosystems.
The reason its innovation is substantial is that its product positioning differs from existing DeFi products, and the discounting demand in the Web2 sector may be greater than the DeFi demand in the Web3 ecosystem.
Thus, I give it a score of 90 for innovation narrative.
➤ Huma's narrative dissemination ability: 85 points
Huma utilizes the Kaito platform, which has attracted many KOLs and bloggers to research, write, and disseminate information about Huma.
On the other hand, Huma has also launched airdrops and launchpool activities on Binance, as well as activities on OKX.
It has flourished in both information dissemination and exchange activities.
But why only score 85?
There are doubts about Kaito's algorithm for recognizing article quality and depth, leading to a far greater quantity of Huma's dissemination on Twitter than its quality.
On the other hand, Kaito's influence is limited to Twitter and may only be of interest to a local audience. Some friends compared $HUMA with $xrp and $XLM, but a look at Google Trends shows that both Huma and Huma Finance have far lower search popularity than Ripple and Stellar. Note that I am comparing Ripple and Stellar; if comparing $xrp and $xlm, the gap would be even larger.
Additionally, there are many news articles related to Huma and exchanges on blockchain media. However, there are almost no in-depth analysis articles about Huma.
The latest article on 'Block Rhythm' was from last November.
'Panews' only has some news collections mentioning Huma, but no standalone article analyzing Huma.
'Chain Catcher' has the latest articles from last November, besides news collections and cooperation with Roam (which mainly focuses on Roam).
The number of long articles about Huma in the media stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming number of long articles about Kaito…
➤ Huma's token empowerment: 20 points
The full score for empowerment is like $BTC, which has strong consensus, store of value, payment functions, and a large number of trading pairs based on BTC in the market.
$ETH and $SOL, such public chain coins, are next, with slightly weaker consensus, used as payment tools for Gas on-chain, and naturally have trading pairs based on public chain coins in the market, with ETH also having some in CEX.
Then there are platform tokens like $BNB and $Parti, which can be used to offset transaction fees. Tokens like $Uni and $Cake, where holding or staking tokens can participate in protocol revenue sharing. Other tokens that can be used to participate in project ecosystems have some empowerment, for example, $LINK for paying oracle fees.
There is also a special category, such as $OP, $ZRO, and $Swarms, which do not have direct empowerment, but OP Stack can be used to build new Layer 2 solutions, and such projects may frequently release positive news, creating periodic emotional empowerment.
Of course, like pure MEME tokens, they have neither consumption, dividend, nor burning scenarios, making it difficult to have any subsequent positive news releases; such tokens score zero for empowerment.
$huma currently appears to be primarily a governance token, with relatively weak direct empowerment, and has not yet introduced mechanisms for dividends, consumption, or burning. As a non-technical project, Huma may rely on ecological expansion for future positive news releases. An optimistic expectation is that some large institutions may participate in creating mining pools and 'evaluation agents' to form emotional empowerment.
Overall, the empowerment of the $huma token is relatively weak, and Huma is currently given a score of 20. However, the possibility of future empowerment cannot be ruled out.
➤ In conclusion
This article’s rating is TVBee's personal subjective evaluation and does not constitute investment or non-investment advice.
❚ Bee's Words: TVBee Talks About Huma Series
(Ten Questions and Answers to Help You Understand Huma's Differentiated Narrative)
(One Image to Get to Know the Core Team Members of Huma):
