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High Signal Wallets: Trader Activity
Sandra Leow
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Key Takeaways

  • This report focuses on high-signal DEX traders whom have realized significant profits in their trades.
  • Part 1 dives deeper into Influencer Wallets, especially notable people on CT with large audiences. We drilled down to wallets that are both influential and high signaling.
  • Part 2 surfaces Smart DEX Traders. We split it into two-folds, where the first section includes the Top 10 Smart DEX Traders of All Time in terms of realized PnL. Another includes the Top 10 Smart DEX Traders in the past 30D.
  • Part 3 explores previous narratives and smart wallets that have profited from catalyst trading. Trading based on narratives can be extremely profitable, especially in identifying individuals who might be privy to insider information. We included tokens like CHZ, THE, APE, and BONE as part of our case study.
  • This report aims to help Alpha members surface the signal and easily identify traders that are profitable to further conduct due-dillegence. An actionable step is to set up smart alerts for specific Smart DEX Traders and/or Influencer Wallets of interest.

General Methodology

This report was broken down into three parts. Part 1 focuses on “Public Figure” wallets that are both influential and high signaling in the crypto space.

Part 2 dives deeper into Smart DEX Traders. To complement the report, a custom dashboard was constructed to view these traders’ DEX trades in real-time. Smart DEX Trader refers to the top 300 addresses ranked by realised profit, considering only on-chain trades via DEXes (excluding MEV Bots). Resources to learn more about the wallet labels.

Part 3 is an exploratory section, where we provide an analysis of previous narratives and profitable traders during specific time periods. The limitation of this section is the backward-facing analysis, however, following these wallets that made substantial profits trading narratives may be a good way to stay on top of the markets.

Influencer Wallets

This section covers notable wallets that are considered “Smart Money” and have made profitable trades historically. These “Influencer Wallets” have a large follower base and have proven to be high signalling addresses.

Incoom.eth (CryptoMessiah)

  • He shilled GMX, XMON, RBN, etc. in the early days
  • On 18 Oct, Messi bought a $2m position in FXS
  • Largest position is locked AURA for AURABAL rewards - $2.2m
  • Staking GMX
  • Locked staking Ribbon (RBN)

Arthur Hayes

  • One of the largest staker for GMX ($9m worth of GMX). Arthur has been consistently stacking his GMX position since 11 March 2022, despite constant price volatility.
Nansen Query
Source: Nansen Query

Cobie

  • Mostly holding spot ETH

YFIMaxi

  • Smart NFT Airdrop Pro
  • Airdrop Pro
  • Elite DEX Trader
  • First Mover Staking
  • Has 7m staked in stETH (55.16% in terms of overall token allocation on portfolio)
  • Providing liquidity on XXMON-WETH pool
  • Staking GMX
  • Locked CRV until 2024
  • Holding $2.6m worth of spot LDO

Analytico.eth

  • Airdrop Pro
  • Mostly holding stables and blue-chip assets (DAI, RETH, WBTC, USDC, ETH) - $15m in spot
  • Farming on Convex - $18m
  • Staking CVXCRV for 3CRV and CRV rewards
  • Locked $1m worth of CVX until early 2023
  • $5.8m position in Bancor
  • Staking AETH on Ankr

Farmer X

  • Locked AURA to receive AURABAL
  • Borrowing on Cream V1 (deposit CREAM and borrowing FTM, BAL)

vFat

  • Staking 32 ETH on ETH2
  • Staking on Beethovenx and SpookySwap on Fantom
  • Chain allocation: 70% Ethereum, 11.49% Arbitrum, 7.68% Polygon

Sifu

  • Staking $3.4m worth in GMX on Arbitrum
  • Staking $2.1m in the WMEMO pool on Wonderland (Avalanche) and receiving rewards in USDC.E.
    • Current APR for the WMEMO pool is 10.4% APR
    • Total staked WMEMO is 1.7k
  • Staking $500k in KyberSwap’s WMEMO and UST.E pool on Avalanche
  • Staking $227k in GMX on Avalanche
  • Providing liquidity in AURORA-USDT pool on Uniswap v3
  • Involved with Radiant’s lending pool
  • Auto-compounding in PancakeSwap’s CAKE pool and receiving CAKE rewards

0xnigiri.eth

  • Airdrop Pro
    • Received a sizeable Across Protocol airdrop on 28 Nov 2022
  • Elite DEX Trader
  • Smarter LP
  • Staking AURABAL and getting BAL rewards
  • Locked AURA until early next year
  • Lending on Liquity
  • Depositing USDC and earning on Gearbox

Smart DEX Trader

  • Wallet typically receives their tokens from exchanges
  • Frequently trades alt-tokens in size

Smart DEX Traders

Methodology

  • This dashboard was created for the purpose of tracking high-signal wallets and their DEX trades on Ethereum
  • Simply observing and copy-trading smart money wallets is valuable, however, it is not the end-all solution for degen traders
  • This dashboard is more fitting in the bull than the bear market as traders generally have more risk-appetite and interest to invest in altcoins

In this report, we constructed a custom dashboard with these parameters:

The dashboard was constructed to track all DEX trades on Ethereum from the pool of “Smart DEX Traders”. In the query, we limited the maker token to WETH, USDC, and USDT as the focal point of the report is to track what tokens the traders are buying. These addresses have all been vetted to meet a few main criteria:

  1. The address is active and has made recent trades
  2. The wallet address falls under the pool of “Smart DEX Traders” which could include “Elite DEX Traders” and “Heavy DEX Traders”
Nansen Query
Source: Nansen Query

Top 10 DEX Traders of All-Time

AddressAdjusted PnL ($ in Millions)Nansen Label
0xdf8efb8a522561ea9bd8c55874dca4536ee5c61882.5Smart Dex Trader
0x6e90ae41af1dea6f0006aa7752d9db2cf5e6a49f60.0Smart Dex Trader
0xdf63be2e473ba04c26b1609e51d08cf0d78e091356.0vast.eth
0xd9a5c5bde6031f84422fbe53409804c403e1b1af55.0Smart Dex Trader
0x98041ab523024dacaefa3bb70dd982dbac68e85555.0Smart Dex Trader
0x8889ff5b6323e71c28c26d2c34b8bb52654f00a644.0Smart Dex Trader
0x580150ce0052c40b09d20fff61e5a71ba4cfbf4f29.1Smart Dex Trader
0x9250b9b5c67618b4753abfa3ee52bc7a13e2b81427.6Smart Dex Trader
0x4ad230890e71797e3e0580deb33dafea841c074427.2Smart Dex Trader
0xb4982f934db398cd4e1f24a581ebdf5df9ba406923.6Smart Dex Trader

Top DEX Traders in the last 30D with realised PnL

AddressAdjusted PnL ($ in Thousands)Nansen Label
0xfe263102682933297cb65dc813e5193249769251360.2Heavy Dex Trader
0x9b5dc5d08614951e8ce03db2dc41185a8de8038c234.0ETH Millionaire
0x6a06a7f368dd9c57de34b0f725709e8939b9bec1199.7Medium Dex Trader
0x001c90675bb5e65e23932ac88c3e084c43f6b9d8182.2Heavy Dex Trader
0xc502082e743de34999c43ed0ba38d6ebc99072f9173.7Medium Dex Trader
0xa1175a219dac539f2291377f77afd786d20e5882166.1Elite DEX Trader
0x9fb1750da6266a05601855bb62767ebc742707b1165.0Heavy Dex Trader
0x66a675837c9779fdfa64fd96020b2de3e092350f160.7Heavy Dex Trader
0xc0c0b1e384e088cf91f198f1405ad0a04daba750157.6Heavy Dex Trader
       

Narrative-driven Trades and Notable Traders

For this section, our analysis focused on narrative-driven trades and specifically traders whom have profited from such trades.

The PnL query focused on the top ROI adjusted by the amount spent. The ROI calculation is based on the USD amount spent within the specified time range.

Trading based on narratives can be extremely profitable, especially identifying individuals who might be privy to insider information.

APE Staking Narrative

  1. Machi Big Brother

Machi Big Brother has proven to be effective in the APE trade, especially nailing the buying low and selling high strategy.

Nov 27-30:

  • Machi Big Brother sold 230k APE (~$1m) in 3 days, prior to APE staking which is set to take place in Early December. Although we are unsure how the APE trade will perform, it is interesting to see how a fellow APE trader is positioned on this trade.

BONE

There was a price rally for BONE between mid-August to late September at its local peak. Traders were anticipating an upwards price movement in light of the Shibarium chain narrative. As seen in the chart below, there was a spike in the number of smart money wallets between August to September, as well as a consistent increase in smart money balance since last year.

Below, we included traders that were profitable BONE traders during the time period. To reduce noise and to ensure that they are profitable in other trades, we limited our findings to only “Elite DEX Traders” and “Smart DEX Traders”:

LabelInvested ($)Realized profits ($)Other profitable trades for this wallet
Elite DEX Trader11.0k56.4kILV, GALA, GEL, PEOPLE, LQTY, PENDLE
Elite DEX Trader109.5k6.5kRBN, APE, SPELL, FRAX, CRV, PSP, FXS
Elite DEX Trader13.6k13.4kOkinami, THE, SYN, WHITE, SHI

CHZ

CHZ is the utility token for chiliZ and Socios.com platform, made for sports and entertainment. Football fan tokens have had a massive runup leading to FIFA World Cup 2022. Besides CHZ, other notable fan tokens( e.g: WCI, ARG, POR, BFT, SNFT, FPFT, etc.) have also experienced a similar short-term pump leading to the World Cup.

The local dip recently was on 21 Oct, and local ATH in 30D was on 7 Nov. This specific timeframe was picked in our analysis, and we wanted to find the top traders who profited from this period.

LabelInvested ($)Realized profits ($)Other profitable trades for this wallet
Elite DEX Trader22.7k15kKCS, XYZ, MAGIC
Elite DEX Trader10.9k529DERC, FTM, CVX
Elite DEX Trader2987283RNDR, AGIX, AMPL, RBN
            
            

THE Protocol

THE Protocol was inspired by Vitalik Buterin’s tweet. Immediately after his tweet, multiple THE token contracts started appearing, with this particular contract gaining the most traction and liquidity.

labelInvested ($)Realized profits ($)Other profitable trades for this wallet
Heavy DEX Trader134.5k6733WCI
Elite DEX Trader34k5378UFO, ELON, SYN, OHM, SPELL
Heavy DEX Trader10k3443XEN, DC, KUMA
Elite DEX Trader33k2140STARL, TSUKA, VEMP, SHIB, TAMA

Conclusion

Utilizing on-chain data to complement the different trading strategies that one undertakes is extremely important to stay on top of the markets.

These addresses are wallets that we have specially curated following their current and historical on-chain tracks. This list is certainly non-exhaustive and we highly encourage readers to curate their own list of wallets. This report aims to help readers discover and experiment with different strategies, and does not serve as investment advice of any form.

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Disclosure: The authors of this content and members of Nansen may be participating or invested in some of the protocols or tokens mentioned herein. The foregoing statement acts as a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and is not a recommendation to purchase or invest in any token or participate in any protocol. Nansen does not recommend any particular course of action in relation to any token or protocol. The content herein is meant purely for educational and informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as financial, investment, legal, tax or any other professional or other advice. None of the content and information herein is presented to induce or to attempt to induce any reader or other person to buy, sell or hold any token or participate in any protocol or enter into, or offer to enter into, any agreement for or with a view to buying or selling any token or participating in any protocol. Statements made herein (including statements of opinion, if any) are wholly generic and not tailored to take into account the personal needs and unique circumstances of any reader or any other person. Readers are strongly urged to exercise caution and have regard to their own personal needs and circumstances before making any decision to buy or sell any token or participate in any protocol. Observations and views expressed herein may be changed by Nansen at any time without notice. Nansen accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or liabilities arising from the use of or reliance on any of this content.