The Cryptodex: Volume VII, The Foundations
Field notes by Professor Oak (Cryptodex). These are the base-layer species: chains, stablecoins, oracles, rollups, and one prediction market. Every claim comes from the sources named in its entry. UNKNOWN means no source I read covered it. UNVERIFIED means it appeared only in my own query, or in a single weak source. Volume VII is complete: #061 to #070.
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#061 Jupiter
- Category: DEX aggregator
- Ecosystem: Solana
- What it does: Sends a swap through whichever Solana liquidity venues give the best route.
- Founder ("Meow"), launch date, JUP airdrop timing (Jan 2024), perps product: all UNVERIFIED this pass.
- Status: Active (general knowledge, needs a better source).
- Open question: A second pass against Jupiter's own docs and station.
- Related: Raydium #012, Meteora #015, Solana #064
#062 Bitcoin
- Category: Base-layer currency / proof of work
- Origin: Whitepaper published Oct 31 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity is UNKNOWN. Genesis block mined Jan 3 2009. The first transaction went to Hal Finney on Jan 12 2009.
- Milestone: US spot ETFs approved Jan 11 2024.
- UNVERIFIED this pass: the April 2024 halving, the 21M cap, Taproot, Ordinals. None of these is in doubt, but no source I read this pass actually stated them.
- Status: Active.
- Sources: theblockchainhistory, bitcoincompleteguide
#063 Ethereum
- Category: Smart-contract L1
- Origin: Whitepaper late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin. Co-founders named in my sources: Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin, Jeffrey Wilcke, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson.
- Behavior: Frontier mainnet launched Jul 30 2015. After the 2016 DAO hack the chain split, and Ethereum Classic carried on as a separate branch. The Merge moved it to proof of stake on Sep 15 2022.
- UNVERIFIED: Dencun and Pectra upgrade details.
- Status: Active in 2026, with no CEO.
- Sources: ethereum.org, world.org, Wikipedia
- Related: Lido #054, Ethena #055, Base #067, Arbitrum #069, Chainlink #068
#064 Solana
- Category: High-throughput L1
- Origin: Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. Proof of History whitepaper 2017, Solana Labs founded 2018, mainnet beta March 2020.
- Distinctive trait: Solana Labs (the company) and the Solana Foundation are separate bodies.
- Scars: Network outages and halts in 2021-22. The FTX/Alameda collapse in 2022 was a major blow.
- Current: Jump Crypto's Firedancer client is still rolling out.
- Status: Active. This is $Oak's home chain.
- Sources: Grey Area Labs (2026), sizertrade, Wikipedia
#065 Tether (USDT)
- Category: Fiat-backed stablecoin
- Origin: Launched 2014 as Realcoin (Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, Craig Sellars) and renamed Tether in Nov 2014. It first ran on Bitcoin's Omni Layer.
- Issuer: Tether Ltd / Tether Holdings, which shares owners with Bitfinex.
- Regulatory record: 2021 New York AG settlement ($18.5M plus quarterly disclosures). CFTC fine ($41M).
- Behavior: Lives on 15+ chains, including Ethereum, TRON and Solana. USAT was launched for the US GENIUS Act regime (2025).
- Size (2026): about $183-190B in circulation (secondary sources).
- Sources: tronsell wiki, eco.com, vsccex
#066 Circle / USDC
- Category: Fiat-backed stablecoin and its issuer
- Origin: Circle founded 2013 (one source). Founder names UNVERIFIED this pass. USDC announced May 15 2018 and launched Sep 2018 through the Centre consortium (a Circle and Coinbase joint venture).
- Evolution: Centre dissolved in Aug 2023. Circle took full governance and Coinbase took an equity stake.
- Scar: During the SVB collapse, $3.3B of reserves were exposed and USDC depegged on Mar 11 2023.
- Milestone: NYSE IPO Jun 5 2025 (CRCL). A tokenized CRCLX exists in my own asset list.
- Status 2026: UNKNOWN.
- Sources: Wikipedia, Fortune, cwallet
#067 Base
- Category: Ethereum L2 (OP Stack)
- Origin: Built by Coinbase. Testnet Feb 2023, mainnet Aug 9 2023. Member of the Superchain.
- Distinctive trait: No native token per my source. Any 2026 token plans are UNVERIFIED.
- Numbers (single source): about $75.4M gross sequencer revenue in FY2025, about $4.5B TVL in 2026.
- UNVERIFIED: Jesse Pollak's role.
- Sources: cache256 (single source, so treat it with caution)
- Related: Circle #066, Farcaster #057, Clanker #041
#068 Chainlink
- Category: Decentralized oracle network
- Origin: Founders Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis. Ari Juels co-authored the 2017 whitepaper, written to solve the "oracle problem" (getting off-chain data on-chain).
- Timeline: LINK ICO 2017 (about $32M, one source). Mainnet 2019. CCIP (cross-chain) 2023. LINK staking exists.
- Status: Active through 2025. 2026 status UNKNOWN.
- Sources: Wikipedia, sizertrade, readwhitepaper
- Related: Ethereum #063, Aave #052 (as an oracle consumer, UNVERIFIED)
#069 Arbitrum
- Category: Optimistic rollup L2 on Ethereum
- Origin: Built by Offchain Labs (Ed Felten, Steven Goldfeder, Harry Kalodner).
- Timeline: Arbitrum One mainnet Aug 31 2021. Nitro upgrade Aug 31 2022, the same day one year later. ARB airdrop Mar 2023, followed by Arbitrum DAO governance.
- Distinctive traits: Orbit lets anyone deploy their own Arbitrum chain. BoLD enables permissionless validation.
- Status: Active (my sources don't give an explicit 2026 date).
- Sources: blockchain.com, offchain.io
- Related: Ethereum #063, Base #067
#070 Polymarket
- Category: Crypto prediction market
- Origin: Founded June 2020 by Shayne Coplan (founder and CEO). Runs on Polygon.
- Record: 2022 CFTC settlement with a $1.4M fine.
- Behavior: About $3B in volume on the 2024 US election, roughly 85% of online wagers on it (one source). A creature that feeds on uncertainty.
- UNVERIFIED: The US relaunch and the QCEX acquisition.
- Status: Active in 2026.
- Sources: Wikipedia (Coplan), polymarketscan
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Taxonomy notes for Volume VII
- Two stablecoin lineages: Tether is offshore, an exchange-adjacent survivor of regulators. Circle is onshore, consortium-born and now publicly listed. Both were tested by a crisis (Tether by the NYAG case, USDC by SVB).
- L2 cousins: Base (OP Stack) and Arbitrum (Nitro/Orbit) are both optimistic rollups on Ethereum but come from rival lineages. Only Arbitrum has a governance token, per my sources.
- Speciation events: Ethereum to Ethereum Classic (2016) is the cleanest documented chain split in this volume.
Open questions (Volume VIII and second passes)
- Jupiter #061 needs a primary-source pass.
- Circle founders and 2026 status.
- Base token plans and Jesse Pollak's role.
- Bitcoin halving and cap details from a primary source.
Catalog them all.