Author: 0xresearcher
Recently, a seemingly simple question has been hotly discussed in the crypto community: "If I have 10 million, where should I invest? Can I still achieve a 10% annualized return?"
At first glance, it sounds like a continuation of middle-class anxiety, but behind this is actually a true portrayal of the crypto market - incentive dividends are gradually receding, stable returns are becoming increasingly scarce, and capital is beginning to re-examine the "return structure" itself.
In traditional finance, what does a 10% annualized rate mean? Either credit sinking, leveraged support, or extremely poor liquidity. The high returns that Web3 once gave were more from incentive-driven bubble dividends rather than efficiency changes brought about by the underlying structure.
As the “fleecing economy” exits, DeFi blue chip returns fall, on-chain transaction volume continues to decline, and capital efficiency gradually becomes the main theme. The real anxiety in today’s market is:
“In the absence of subsidies and a bull market, can Web3 still provide a sustainable return answer for stable funds?”
This article attempts to deconstruct possible solutions to this problem through several key projects.
DeFi dividends recede, and funds begin to shift to "real use + structural optimization"
At present, most users have realized that airdrops alone cannot sustain for long, and the structural problems of on-chain liquidity are becoming increasingly prominent.
On the one hand, the incentive model is unsustainable; on the other hand, the liquidity competition between DeFi protocols has reached an extreme, but the infrastructure itself has not made a qualitative leap. Most Rollups are still replicating the old Ethereum model, and the on-chain matching performance is far from meeting the needs of real transactions.
In this context, funds have begun to look for new profit structures. The core is no longer "speculative assets" but "investment structure" - investing in systems that can generate real on-chain cash flow and improve transaction efficiency.
Two directions began to attract market attention:
- On-chain trading infrastructure for professional traders and reconstruction of the matching system
- A composable service layer for developers that provides standardized transaction modules
Hyperliquid: On-chain matching system designed for professional traders
Hyperliquid is a full-chain perp protocol running on a self-developed L1 chain. This project currently has no tokens and no incentives, but its transaction depth has been among the top three in the entire network for several consecutive months.
This is not accidental. Hyperliquid has redefined the performance standards of on-chain perpetuals, using a "centralized experience + on-chain settlement" design to create a system that is closer to the usage habits of professional traders. Its self-developed L1 chain supports sub-second matching, while achieving low slippage and low gas costs, which is enough to support frequent transactions of large amounts of funds.
More importantly, Hyperliquid does not position itself as an “airdrop platform” or “retail investor portal”, but rather a structured product for high-frequency traders. In this system, profits come from real trading depth rather than incentive stacking.
For funds like "10 million", this is the new on-chain funding strategy: not pursuing one-time short-term gains, but looking for trading infrastructure with real user concentration, high capital efficiency, and long-term depth.
Orderly: From on-chain matching to transaction module standardization
Compared to Hyperliquid's vertical integration, Orderly Network provides a "modular trading infrastructure". It does not do front-end or guide users, but provides developers with a set of composable and pluggable trading systems.
Simply put, Orderly wants to become the "Amazon Cloud" in the Web3 transaction field. It does not participate in retail, but only provides development tools and basic components.
Orderly's structure is divided into four core modules:
1. Matching Engine
The performance bottleneck of on-chain matching has always been an obstacle to high-frequency strategies. Orderly adopts off-chain matching and on-chain settlement, taking into account both efficiency and transparency, supporting more complex trading instructions and higher capital utilization.
2. Funding pool system
Unlike AMM, Orderly introduces a fund pool model that is closer to traditional exchanges, allowing market makers to inject liquidity on demand while ensuring a stable depth of the order book. This also provides a foundation for subsequent multi-strategy market making.
3. Clearing and Settlement System
Fund settlement is based on Layer 1, and user assets are managed in isolation. There will be no systemic risks due to front-end projects or middle layers, which improves fund security.
4. Risk Control System
Orderly modularizes off-chain risk control to facilitate quick integration by developers and lower the threshold for project building.
The greatest significance of this modular solution is that developers can quickly build their own trading products like building Lego, without having to build complex systems such as matching, clearing, and risk control from scratch.
Real implementation of high-performance chain
Orderly’s recent application on Solana provides a very typical case.
Although Solana has far superior infrastructure performance than Ethereum, it was only recently that an "Order Book Infrastructure" that can match its performance appeared. Orderly's integration on Solana has achieved:
- The matching engine runs off-chain, balancing speed and user control
- Process thousands of order requests per second to meet the needs of robots and professional traders
- Settlement back-chain to ensure transaction verifiability
This not only significantly reduces the user's actual transaction costs, but more importantly, it truly transforms Solana's high performance into the user's capital efficiency.
Orderly has therefore become one of the few matching protocols that currently supports both Ethereum and Solana, and has extremely strong cross-chain compatibility.
Open up real earning power to ordinary users
For most users who are unable to trade at high frequencies or develop their own strategies, structural matching benefits are no longer out of reach. OmniVault is a typical representative of this trend.
As a one-stop income platform created by Kronos, OmniVault allows users to deposit USDC and automatically participate in market making on the Orderly network, running Kronos strategies in multiple on-chain markets to obtain real and verifiable LP income. Different from the income sources of "simulated matching" or "internal circulation transactions", the income captured by OmniVault comes from the real trading behavior of on-chain matching orders, which is more sustainable and anti-cyclical.
Recently, Binance Wallet officially supports OmniVault access. This Web3 wallet with the largest transaction volume in the world (accounting for more than 95% of the market transaction volume in 2025) not only opens up the entrance to hundreds of millions of users, but also releases billions of dollars of liquidity. OmniVault's current TVL is close to 7 million US dollars, and the annualized rate of return has steadily increased to 30%, becoming one of the few universal entrances that convert "real market-making income" into "user passive income."
From incentive dividends to structural dividends, a new paradigm of on-chain benefits has taken shape
Whether it is Hyperliquid designed for professional traders, Orderly providing modular infrastructure for developers, or OmniVault opening up real earnings capabilities for users, they all show a trend:
The new paradigm of "stable and high returns" on the chain no longer relies on subsidies and speculation, but on real transaction needs and capital efficiency structure.
In the past few years, Web3 capital has rotated in narratives such as airdrops, market making, and Restaking, but a system that truly has the ability to cross cycles must be built on real usage scenarios + structural optimization capabilities.
It is still possible to get a 10% annualized return on 10 million - but the premise is that you invest in the right structure, not the right hot spot.
