Smart Contract Platforms are the new financial infrastructure. Despite incredible scaling, aggregate fees are set to rise — and as inflation trends toward zero or even deflation, one of the biggest structural drags on price begins to fade. Meanwhile, adoption and tokenization are fueling powerful DeFi flywheels. Stablecoin payments are driving increasingly non-cyclical settlement activity, making these networks look more like Big Tech — with growing, steadier cash flows. Metcalfe’s Law tells us what that means for market-cap expansion. As more L1 tokens are committed to staking and DeFi collateral, they create deep collateral sinks that transform them into productive, yield-bearing stores of value — measurable in the same way we assess Bitcoin’s monetary strength. Increasingly, they’re attracting capital away from TradFi yield assets by offering Big Tech-style growth with sovereign-bond-level yields. As settlement volumes inflect and value accrues on-chain, the sector’s next 3–5x is a function of adoption, not hype.