Since the end of April, the Uniswap v4 hook concept has undoubtedly been the most market-focused "new" concept.

The reason "new" is in quotes here is not to say that the Uniswap v4 hook is a brand-new concept. In fact, Uniswap v4 was launched as early as January 30 last year.

The hook feature is not being overlooked or unused. On the official support side, there are both the Uniswap Hook Incubator and the Uniswap Hook Designer Lab, providing funding, training, and incubation. On the adoption side, there are projects like Flaunch and Bunni, and the overall TVL and trading volume data of the v4 ecosystem are also impressive.

However, it wasn't until the recent emergence of projects like $upeg, $sato, and Slonks that the hook sparked widespread discussion among retail players. Based on this phenomenon, the author wants to put forward a "wild theory" at the beginning—

For a long time, Uniswap's promotion of the hook, at least in terms of retail-level attention, has been skewed.

And if this deviation is corrected, the "Hook" is poised to become the on-ramp to the bull market.

What Exactly Is a "Hook"?

Let's explain this issue in a straightforward manner, while also arriving at another answer—why has the "Hook" only caught the attention of retail investors now?

In the past, our general understanding of Uniswap was that we could provide liquidity on it and swap tokens. And indeed, before the v4 version (when the Hook was introduced), these were the main profit points of Uniswap.

Many games support player community-created "plugins" to change the game's mode, attracting a broader player base beyond the official game modes. For example, in CS, if players don't install plugins, they can only play the confrontation game of planting/defusing the C4. But if they install plugins, they can race each other, compete in long jumps, or even play soccer or basketball in the game, disguised as part of the map to surprise other players.

The Hook is equivalent to a game plugin, allowing Uniswap to move beyond the game between LP and trades. However, for a long time, these plugins have not been attractive to retail players. Either they copy gameplay that other chains already have or they solve pain points in LP and trades.

This is like in a MMORPG where only a few game-enhancing plugins have been installed, such as enemy kill statistics. It does make the gameplay better, but it lacks the imagination to attract casual players.

What casual players want is something Uniswap wouldn't do officially, but can be achieved through a Hook—an innovative and imaginative new gameplay. The concept of Hook itself has been too abstract for casual players in the past.

So how is this "imagination" reflected in the three popular projects, $upeg, $sato, and Slonks?

The Core of "Imagination"

The core imagination of $upeg is "trading as art creation and manufacturing of supply form chaos." First, its image creation concept is complete, taking on-chain data as creative input rather than simply copying artistic inspiration from existing NFT series, allowing every integer purchase to become a new creation. Second, the more fragmented small transactions there are, the more difficult it is to generate an image. This makes it not just a simple conversion between token forms or merely for "having images exist in token form for better liquidity," but shifts everyone's focus to a "prediction of the supply form."

If $upeg exists on DEXs, CEXs, and NFT trading markets, being both a coin and an image, what kind of impact will different liquidity sources and different trading methods (spot, contract, LP, or buying images) have on its supply form?

This is a kind of attention shift that no graphic coin project in recent years has ever achieved.

Now let's look at $sato. Its core imagination is not "made a bonding curve using Uniswap v4 hook," but it accurately grasped why would it be appealing to do a bonding curve on the ETH mainnet?

Its correct points are:

Decentralization. This is not another "platform"; it's just a contract dictated by code.

Huge internal circulation. The market cap must reach $1 billion to graduate. Doing this on any chain outside the ETH mainnet would seem like a fantasy. But not on the ETH mainnet because people have the impression of "old money" and "many diamond hands" on this chain. And this impression will deepen as the curve progresses.

No intervention. Once the curve is completed and the token graduates, the contract self-abandons. What comes next, like forming a pool, is left to the community to handle.

A bonding curve is not a new concept, but $sato has presented the most fitting one for the Ethereum mainnet, shifting players' focus from the bonding curve to a "game of belief."

On the other hand, Slonks, despite receiving optimistic remarks such as "incorporating AI concepts" and "the developer is a co-founder of ETHS," I believe its core attraction to retail players is "providing a sufficiently memeable game mechanism."

Slonks' artwork is generated by redeploying CryptoPunks with an on-chain neural network model. Since it is AI-generated, there will inevitably be deviations. The developer considers the chaos manifested by these deviations as a form of art. The less resemblance to the original work, the higher the "slop (low-quality) value."

This value ranges from 0 to 576, as CryptoPunks are 24x24 pixels, with each pixel's deviation representing a slop point. With a total of 10,000 Slonks NFTs, the theoretical maximum slop value is 576*10000 = 5,760,000, which is also the supply cap of $SLOP.

Holders can either burn an NFT, receiving $SLOP based on the NFT's slop value, merge two Slonks NFTs to obtain a less similar one and redeem more $SLOP, or burn $SLOP to exchange for an AI-recreated NFT with an unknown slop value.

In essence, this is a "game of who has better strategy and luck."

Why the Need for Hook?

So here's the question. Whether it's $upeg, $sato, or Slonks, couldn't they be implemented without the Uniswap v4 hook? Why add an extra layer of hook?

Indeed, even without the hook, they could exist as standalone projects. However, Uniswap needs these projects to attract a retail player base, and these projects can leverage Uniswap's ecosystem and concepts to thrive further.

It's not necessary, but it's indeed a mutually beneficial relationship. If $upeg didn't use a hook in the beginning, it might not have caught the Uniswap team's attention, and this current hook trend narrative might not have existed.

As a retail investor, although the "Uniswap v4 hook" is a concept that everyone understands, we cannot simply dive in at the sight of a "hook." What we need to consider more is whether a project with the "hook" concept has innovative gameplay and a compelling narrative. This will determine how likely a "hook" project is to attract Uniswap's attention and support.

Only when players set high standards for their choices, Uniswap is determined to make itself the application market on Ethereum, and developers are full of creativity, can we truly say that the "Hook" will become the track that opens the bull market.

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