Introduction

This article provides a candid, team-wide view of Index Coop’s 2024 journey—where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and how we plan to evolve. Whether you’ve followed us since the DPI launch or you’re just discovering us now, here’s a direct look at what’s next for Index Coop. 

Spoiler: Expect a radically different Index Coop by the end of 2025.

Successes in 2024

Leverage

Buying the FLI tokens out from Scalara and deploying an upgraded Leverage Suite to Arbitrum and Base were some of the most positively impactful things that happened at the Coop in 2024. Combined with a new /leverage UI in the App, this created new inflows and enabled significantly greater revenue and longer runway. Despite these wins against the leverage category, there were also notable misses which we’ll cover later.

Product Revenue Tokens PRTs & hyETH

Though not as impactful as the items mentioned in Leverage above, these two linked items are still certainly worth a mention. hyETH was one of the Coop’s first products in some time to generate millions of new inflows. And, it did this in coordination with PRTs - which Index Coop continues to work on (primarily with intermediary partners which could integrate the Coop’s products). PRTs are a potentially interesting new primitive for aligning Index Coop and partners of many forms.

High Impact Hires

Headcount didn’t really increase across core contributors in 2024 with a couple of contributors departing, but hiring David (new Head of Product) from Exodus Wallet and Toki (new Full Stack Engineer) has helped a lot in terms of how Product is executed and the speed and ambition of shipping regarding the App. David’s impact is beginning to show and he’ll be vital in creating more focus and ambition at the Coop.

Runway

Thanks to the items above—particularly leverage tokens—combined with rising crypto asset prices, Index Coop’s runway grew significantly in 2024. As a result, our runway likely extends over four years or more, potentially spanning a whole crypto cycle. This cushion allows us to focus on building, innovating, and delivering value without the immediate constraint of funding constraints.With that said, not everything went as planned in 2024. Here’s an honest look at where we fell short—and how we aim to improve.

Failures in 2024

Leverage (Again)

The leverage wins from 2024 boosted both revenue and runway, but we also missed key opportunities—like launching SOL leverage and refining leveraged yield strategies. This was a big oversight which we plan to correct in 2025.We’ve already taken steps: ETH2xBTC and BTC2xETH tokens are live on Arbitrum as of December, and 2x & 3x cbBTC tokens will launch on Base in January. Plus, we’re evaluating levered SOL, XRP, and SUI tokens which will likely follow soon. Meanwhile, Index Protocol is being upgraded to enable more leverage trades—and crucially, to speed up how we ship new tokens. If we execute well on these initiatives, we could 2-5x our revenue in the leverage category alone.

Integrations and Listings

In 2024, our Partnerships Team—in part bolstered by the Circle relationship—made strides building a more robust pipeline (CRM) across Fintechs, CeFi apps, and wallets. Even so, large-scale product integrations and $INDEX listings did not materialise. 

Looking forward to 2025, we expect for some of these opportunities to come through, especially for our stablecoin yield product (icUSD) and potentially our leverage tokens. 

However, we have to be frank about the appeal of our offerings to integrators. Are they as novel and value adding as 2024’s breakout products (USDe, sUSDe, Fluid), or platforms like Morpho? Maybe not yet, which is why interest has been present but not overwhelming. The reality is, we’ll need a high-touch BD approach to convert these leads into true, large-scale integrations. More on how we plan to tackle this later.

The App

While the App made significant strides in 2024, there’s still a lot more to do. We need faster integrations and a UI/UX that truly stands out as excellent. A larger team, under David, will be focused on this in 2025—we are building a premium destination for onchain leverage traders. If we succeed, the app alone could double (or more) the Coop’s revenue. 

$INDEX Price

As of January 20, 2025, $INDEX is down 25% YoY; a clear miss for 2024. While microcap tokens often struggle to see their value-creating efforts fully appreciated by the market, the reality is that enthusiasm for $INDEX has fallen short this past year.

So, having acknowledged the successes and failures of 2024, where to next?

Focus for 2025

In Q1 and early Q2, the Product Team will focus on capitalizing on our leverage PMF (product-market fit) and performing validation tests with yield products and distribution infrastructure—with both efforts supported by improvements to our app experience. A referral program for leverage traders is also slated for planning, build and release.Meanwhile, the Growth Team aims to close and scale integrations with top CeFi apps and wallets. Although 2-3 deals are currently either agreed upon or in implementation, these will need to ramp up significantly for this strategy to truly flourish. Additionally, the Growth Team plans to roll out a new marketing site—to complement an evolving app site—in Q1 or Q2.This work in early 2025 aligns with our strategic focus for 2025: 1.) Capitalize on PMF in our Leverage Suite to achieve sustainable protocol profitability. 2.) Upgrade and position Index Protocol to achieve outsized outcomes. 3.) Take decisive action with underperforming product categories to improve focus on 1 and 2. Our leverage products continue to offer a significant medium-term path for growth, yet within our broader strategic objectives we view this category as one of several valuable primitives. Simply becoming a “niche business” isn’t enough for our token holders—or for us.  That’s why our Product team is collaborating with Engineering and Growth to define the vision for an upgraded Index Protocol—focused on modular composability, automation, AI integration, and the dynamic creation of new onchain instruments from an expanding universe of options.Standby for more on this focus and our upgraded protocol in the coming months. Index Coop is likely to look very different by the end of 2025 than it did in 2024. It has to.

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