You may not have noticed, but Avalanche's C chain has become popular again recently.

While the TVL of most ecosystems is slowly declining and the market topics are crowded with AI, Restaking and Meme, C Chain has quietly rebounded against the trend

Recently, C Chain has become a hot topic again.

Most ecosystems' TVL is slowly declining, and the market is discussing AI, Restaking, and Memes. However, C Chain has quietly rebounded against the trend: active addresses have increased for three consecutive weeks, the TVL of mainstream protocols has risen again, and even the "forgotten" old project BENQI has returned strongly.

At the same time, Avalanche launched a Visa virtual card, the Core wallet supports gas-free operations, and the on-chain infrastructure continues to upgrade - these signs all hint at one fact:

The value of infrastructure is being repriced.

Smart money has already quietly boarded the train. They don’t tell stories or chase trends, but they always walk ahead of others.

What is "smart money"? It's not the richest, but the longest-lived

Many people think that smart money is “whales,” but in reality, “smart” ≠ the biggest wallet, but the highest long-term winning rate.

Their three magic weapons:

Bet calmly, without greed or fear: Don't be aggressive in a bull market, and don't be pessimistic in a bear market. Only those who can survive three rounds of bull and bear markets can be called alive.

Risk control comes first, returns come second: Don’t look at how high the APY is, just care whether the protocol code has been reviewed.

The chain is transparent and the liquidity is controllable: we are not afraid of locked positions, but we are afraid that they are locked but not told to the users; we are not afraid of falling, but we are afraid that there is no place to check the data.

These people are more like a hybrid of fund managers and hackers in Web3: they understand financial modeling and can read smart contract codes. They don’t talk much, but their actions often become the vane of the ecosystem. For example, the recent surge in BENQI’s liquidity is one of the choices made by these “quiet smart people” on the chain.

The "risk-avoidance posture" of smart money: Don't be crazy, just be "Buddhist"

In the second half of 2024, when the market was volatile and sentiment was low, smart money began to deploy stable income agreements.

For example, BENQI, an old project in the Avalanche ecosystem: TVL soared to US$520 million, of which Liquid Staking's $sAVAX reached nearly 10 million AVAX, setting new highs almost every day.

What they chose was not the coin that "could increase tenfold", but:

APR stable: currently about 5.2%

Assets can be reused: sAVAX can participate in lending and staking without affecting liquidity

Clear mechanism and transparent operation: no fancy lock-up clauses

Friendly interface: even non-technical users can use it easily

You may not have seen it, but the data on the chain does not lie: there is an address that has converted AVAX into sAVAX for several consecutive days, and then used it for loan cycles, totaling over one million US dollars. This **"income-collateral-compound interest"** combination is a typical "fear of death but not idle" strategy of smart money.

Not a discard, but a trump card

Many people mistakenly believe that Avalanche's promotion of Subnet multi-chain means that the main chain C-Chain will be marginalized. But the reality is that C-Chain is becoming the core of infrastructure construction.

Check out these "silent moves":

Avalanche Visa virtual card is now online: USDT / USDC / AVAX can be used for direct spending, and even Alipay can be linked.

Core wallet supports gas-free operations: the threshold for new user experience is greatly reduced.

On-chain data service upgrade: developers and investors can query contract and asset data with one click.

The meaning behind this is that the C chain is not about showing off, but about absorbing real users and asset inflows.

For smart money, this is the core logic behind their bet on Avalanche: when everyone is telling stories, only infrastructure is the real armor that can survive the cycle. And BENQI, as part of the early infrastructure, is gradually being re-evaluated and re-priced.

Stable income is not just a transitional solution to "wait for the bull market"

If you zoom in, you will find that smart money is not investing in a specific project, but investing in a long-term logic:

Stable returns are the moat during market panic periods.

Whether it is BENQI’s $sAVAX, Lido’s $stETH, or Frax’s sfrxETH, they are all finding new release paths for “non-trading assets”.

You’ll also find that they are continuously laying out:

Frax focuses on stable pools such as sDAI to improve