Arthur Hayes: The Next Wave Will Focus More on Cash-Flow-Positive Veteran DeFi Projects On October 13, 2026, Maelstrom co-founder Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) shared in an interview with The Rollup (@therollupco) that market confidence should be built on cash flow. He is more interested in projects with real paying customers that can return profits to token holders. He believes AI Agents will utilize time-tested protocols, and attention should be given to projects that have survived since the 2020 DeFi Summer and are still generating revenue. Although the prices of these projects have dropped significantly, they are still widely used, have reasonable price-to-earnings ratios, and offer composability between protocols. He does not believe the next wave of opportunities will primarily come from newly established projects. Instead, he mentioned that the tokens of projects he expects to 10x are already tradable now. Wu Blockchain reminds readers that Arthur Hayes' market predictions have historically had low accuracy and are often subject to adjustments. It is recommended to focus on his analytical framework rather than specific price and timing predictions. Source: The Rollup