The Fat protocols thesis first emerged in 2016. This suggests that in the web3 space, protocols (here blockchains) are fat, and applications are thin. That means the value is locked in the protocol layer, and the app layer shares a lower value. Ethereum acquires the most investor's attention. The reason behind this is the vast ecosystem it has created around it. So it's needless to say that a protocol can not be successful without its ecosystem and the adoption of the projects on top of it. You can read more about this theory here.

Fuel is the new cool kid in the town, and everyone's talking about it. Let us see which projects are building on Fuel and how they can make Fuel a fat protocol in future. Defi provides a massive value in the blockchain ecosystem. So we're going to start with them.

Poolshark Protocol is a liquidity layer, for Defi that takes place on Fuel Network. This protocol will deliver great control and automation for the Liquidity providers.  Poolshark is introducing some cool new concepts:

1. Directional liquidity is an alternative to the popular bidirectional liquidity, seen in popular AMMs such as Uniswap and Curve.

2. Fungible Queues provide a way to have your LP position at an exact price such that you will receive time priority for your liquidity. This model enables the Liquidity providers to receive 100% fees for the liquidity they provide.

We've seen the Grid trading bots only in Centralized exchanges. But Poolshark's unique liquidity mechanism will end that once and for all. To know more, please read here.

Elix Finance is a new generation hybrid automated decentralized exchange (DEX) based on Fuel. In their words, their value propositions are:

• High capital efficiency

• Flexible pools

• Automatic liquidity and lighting fast transactions

Elix was part of the first-ever batch of Fuel grantees, participating in the newly founded Fuel Grants Program.

Yama Finance is a novel omnichain decentralized stablecoin. Yama Settlement Standard (YAMA) is an over-collateralized stablecoin that unifies liquidity across many protocols and chains. Yama is secured by the Hyperlane interchain messaging protocol, which utilizes PoS consensus. In their word: We’re a collateralized stablecoin, always backed at least 100%. Being omnichain, YAMA can be minted on an established chain with capital-efficient CRs and bridged almost instantaneously to new chains.

Acumen is leveraging Defi to provide sustainable yields. Acumen bridges crypto and traditional assets to provide a stable, uncorrelated yield to the community, enabling lower costs for capital to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) globally. Its initial target market is El Salvador. You can read more about it, here

PEPA Market is an algorithm-driven decentralized all-in-one exchange marketplace built on Fuel Network. Pepa market is going to offer high capital-efficient liquidity pools that support:

• single token provision

• lowers slippage

• decreases impermanent loss for swappers and Liquidity providers

The users can choose either AMM or PMM model. Other notable features are -

1. An Initial DEX Offering Launchpad

2. A Bond marketplace

MicroChain, A low-cost easy-to-use token swapping terminal. They claim to be able to process 10k transactions per minute.

Infrastructure projects are also a major building block for a budding ecosystem. Here we're going to discuss some of the Infra projects on building on Fuel.

Orao is a next-gen network providing general data on any blockchain. Data that current oracles can sell is very narrow, confined almost entirely to financial data — mostly price feeds. Another thing, financial data oracles provide tends to be very shallow.

ORAO solves this by using Predefined Data Protocols. Instead of having fixed protocols that provide only the same data product over and over. This platform allows data providers to choose between a variety of different protocols — from narrow price feeds to more detailed market data to non-financial data.

In addition, ORAO is built from the ground up to support data transfers from one blockchain to another.

Thunder is an NFT marketplace with superior experience built on the Fuel Network. Thunder supports bulk execution. This feature will allow users to perform a series of operations in one go — streamlining the process of managing and trading NFTs.

Other notable features are:

• Great UX.

• Real-time analytics

• Sweep

• Low fees

Fuel Nomen is the blockchain name system of the building on top of Fuel. Current blockchain domain services possess a major flaw which is the ownership model. As per the current model, the owner of a blockchain domain can hold on to the ownership indefinitely.  Fuel nome is trying to resolve this problem by suggesting a mixture of Harberger taxation and capped demand-based recurring fee models. You can read more about it here.

PlayEstates is a gaming platform, that is backed by Tangible real assets. This platform is aiming to tokenize and fractionalize Real estate. It eliminates the large investment costs that prevent young people from accessing the real estate investment market by allowing users to begin investing for the price of membership to their platform. Members can buy and sell earnings whenever they want without having to go through another entity to do so. To read more about it, check the lite paper here

Here are some of the projects which fall into other categories:

Fuel Names is another decentralized naming registrar on Fuel.

Fuelet wallet is a self-custodial crypto wallet for iOS, Android, and Browsers.

Webgump is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell encrypted files.

Although I am not a big fan of NFTS, here are some projects building on Fuel.

Unic  is an NFT 2.0 project and trying to real-world utility to NFTs

Fuel Punks is an NFT project building on Fuel.

Fuel Monkeys is another NFT project building on Fuel.

This is in no way a complete list of the projects. Though I've tried to add as many as I've found. It'll be interesting to see how these projects grow and how the ecosystem matures. Web2 has valued the application layers more than the protocol layers, but we're seeing the opposite in the case of web3. Maybe the scenario will change in future when the space matures. But for now, protocols are the talk of the town, and Fuel has all the potential to lead the race. I've talked about Fuel in more detail here.

The Fat protocols thesis first emerged in 2016. This suggests that in the web3 space, protocols (here blockchains) are fat, and applications are thin. That means the value is locked in the protocol layer, and the app layer shares a lower value. Ethereum acquires the most investor's attention. The reason behind this is the vast ecosystem it has created around it. So it's needless to say that a protocol can not be successful without its ecosystem and the adoption of the projects on top of it. You can read more about this theory here.

Fuel is the new cool kid in the town, and everyone's talking about it. Let us see which projects are building on Fuel and how they can make Fuel a fat protocol in future. Defi provides a massive value in the blockchain ecosystem. So we're going to start with them.

Poolshark Protocol is a liquidity layer, for Defi that takes place on Fuel Network. This protocol will deliver great control and automation for the Liquidity providers.  Poolshark is introducing some cool new concepts:

1. Directional liquidity is an alternative to the popular bidirectional liquidity, seen in popular AMMs such as Uniswap and Curve.

2. Fungible Queues provide a way to have your LP position at an exact price such that you will receive time priority for your liquidity. This model enables the Liquidity providers to receive 100% fees for the liquidity they provide.

We've seen the Grid trading bots only in Centralized exchanges. But Poolshark's unique liquidity mechanism will end that once and for all. To know more, please read here.

Elix Finance is a new generation hybrid automated decentralized exchange (DEX) based on Fuel. In their words, their value propositions are:

• High capital efficiency

• Flexible pools

• Automatic liquidity and lighting fast transactions

Elix was part of the first-ever batch of Fuel grantees, participating in the newly founded Fuel Grants Program.

Yama Finance is a novel omnichain decentralized stablecoin. Yama Settlement Standard (YAMA) is an over-collateralized stablecoin that unifies liquidity across many protocols and chains. Yama is secured by the Hyperlane interchain messaging protocol, which utilizes PoS consensus. In their word: We’re a collateralized stablecoin, always backed at least 100%. Being omnichain, YAMA can be minted on an established chain with capital-efficient CRs and bridged almost instantaneously to new chains.

Acumen is leveraging Defi to provide sustainable yields. Acumen bridges crypto and traditional assets to provide a stable, uncorrelated yield to the community, enabling lower costs for capital to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) globally. Its initial target market is El Salvador. You can read more about it, here

PEPA Market is an algorithm-driven decentralized all-in-one exchange marketplace built on Fuel Network. Pepa market is going to offer high capital-efficient liquidity pools that support:

• single token provision

• lowers slippage

• decreases impermanent loss for swappers and Liquidity providers

The users can choose either AMM or PMM model. Other notable features are -

1. An Initial DEX Offering Launchpad

2. A Bond marketplace

MicroChain, A low-cost easy-to-use token swapping terminal. They claim to be able to process 10k transactions per minute.

Infrastructure projects are also a major building block for a budding ecosystem. Here we're going to discuss some of the Infra projects on building on Fuel.

Orao is a next-gen network providing general data on any blockchain. Data that current oracles can sell is very narrow, confined almost entirely to financial data — mostly price feeds. Another thing, financial data oracles provide tends to be very shallow.

ORAO solves this by using Predefined Data Protocols. Instead of having fixed protocols that provide only the same data product over and over. This platform allows data providers to choose between a variety of different protocols — from narrow price feeds to more detailed market data to non-financial data.

In addition, ORAO is built from the ground up to support data transfers from one blockchain to another.

Thunder is an NFT marketplace with superior experience built on the Fuel Network. Thunder supports bulk execution. This feature will allow users to perform a series of operations in one go — streamlining the process of managing and trading NFTs.

Other notable features are:

• Great UX.

• Real-time analytics

• Sweep

• Low fees

Fuel Nomen is the blockchain name system of the building on top of Fuel. Current blockchain domain services possess a major flaw which is the ownership model. As per the current model, the owner of a blockchain domain can hold on to the ownership indefinitely.  Fuel nome is trying to resolve this problem by suggesting a mixture of Harberger taxation and capped demand-based recurring fee models. You can read more about it here.

PlayEstates is a gaming platform, that is backed by Tangible real assets. This platform is aiming to tokenize and fractionalize Real estate. It eliminates the large investment costs that prevent young people from accessing the real estate investment market by allowing users to begin investing for the price of membership to their platform. Members can buy and sell earnings whenever they want without having to go through another entity to do so. To read more about it, check the lite paper here

Here are some of the projects which fall into other categories:

Fuel Names is another decentralized naming registrar on Fuel.

Fuelet wallet is a self-custodial crypto wallet for iOS, Android, and Browsers.

Webgump is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell encrypted files.

Although I am not a big fan of NFTS, here are some projects building on Fuel.

Unic  is an NFT 2.0 project and trying to real-world utility to NFTs

Fuel Punks is an NFT project building on Fuel.

Fuel Monkeys is another NFT project building on Fuel.

This is in no way a complete list of the projects. Though I've tried to add as many as I've found. It'll be interesting to see how these projects grow and how the ecosystem matures. Web2 has valued the application layers more than the protocol layers, but we're seeing the opposite in the case of web3. Maybe the scenario will change in future when the space matures. But for now, protocols are the talk of the town, and Fuel has all the potential to lead the race. I've talked about Fuel in more detail here.