Illustrative brief · L2 · fee-generating
Harbor · 25 Aug – 31 Aug 2026
Harbor is a fictional protocol used to show the job. Figures are reconstructed in the style of a public-data Monday brief — not a customer, not a live feed, not a recommendation to trade.
- North-star
- $41.6m
- -18% WoW · Sticky deposits (30d)
- Spend in window
- $240,000
- Fully loaded growth spend
- Confidence
- medium
- Monday 1 Sep · 07:12
What moved
01 · 61% of the move
Incentive expiry on the ETH–USDC pool, not ‘narrative fatigue’
Pool X emissions ended 27 Aug. Depth −34% in 72 hours. 61% of the sticky-deposit drop concentrates in wallets that entered during the last two emission epochs and exited when APR normalized.
02 · 22% of the move
Competitor APY shock on a sister chain
A named competitor lifted ETH-stable APR to 19.4% for 11 days. Harbor’s comparable pool sat at 6.1%. Cross-chain outflows in the 10k–250k band explain ~22% of the move.
03 · 17% of the move
Campaign Helios imported mercenary wallets
Helios KOL + quest cohort: high mindshare, sticky-TVL ≈ 0 at day 21. 17% of the deposit drop is this cohort leaving with the points window. Four of nine KOLs have cost-per-sticky-wallet that does not clear.
Do this
- 01
Do not renew Helios
Growth · by 3 Sep. Kill the quest. Keep the three KOLs with non-zero sticky wallets; pause the other four.
$0
- 02
Refill pool X for 3 weeks
Treasury · by 5 Sep. Target depth restoration, not headline APR. Cap mercenary inflows with a 14-day vest on the incentive.
$180,000
- 03
Hold the CEX listing conversation
BD · by 12 Sep. Listing OSA is fine. Do not spend to ‘create a moment’ on top of a deposit hole.
$40,000
Would falsify
- If pool X depth recovers ≥80% by 10 Sep without refill, expiry was overstated — kill the $180k.
- If Helios wallets reappear as sticky at day 45, the mercenary call is wrong.
Missing
- First-party KOL invoices (we used public handle lists).
- Exact emission contract timestamps from the incentive multisig.
- Internal CEX market-maker inventory.
