2 years ago
As astir of america were enjoying immoderate R&R implicit Christmas break, Coinbase Cloud protocol specializer Elias Simos was scouring the web for the astir absorbing crypto charts of 2021: 69 of them to beryllium exact.
In the latest Around The Block podcast, we beryllium down with Elias and sermon immoderate of the astir absorbing information points from the year, and what it each means for the future. (High level takeaways below)
Metaverse and astute declaration assets outperform
Price isn’t everything, but the 2 apical performing assets successful 2021 are indicative of broader trends passim the year. 2021’s champion performing assets were:
- Metaverse gaming tokens
- Smart declaration level tokens
The governance tokens of gaming worlds Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND) each posted 16,000 and 13,000 percent gains respectively. Meanwhile, level tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, each posted 8,000% gains oregon more.
Given that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout year, and furniture 1s not named Ethereum saw beardown adoption, these trends should beryllium of nary surprise. Now let’s excavation a spot deeper.
The authorities of Layer 1s
Ethereum’s autochthonal token (ETH) did a humble 2X implicit the year, portion it was somewhat of a unsmooth twelvemonth for Ethereum DeFi bluish chips, with the DeFiPulse scale down 80% implicit the twelvemonth vs ETH.
The terms of DeFi assets doesn’t archer the full story, however. TVL of Ethereum DeFi applications showed tremendous growth implicit the year, and the fig of unsocial Ethereum addresses interacting with DeFi protocols 4x’ed.
Regardless, ETH killers and sidechains won the twelvemonth erstwhile measured by maturation of wide market share.
The large migration & the EVM standard
In May, determination was $200M sitting successful Ethereum bridges. That fig climbed to $20B by the extremity of the year, underscoring the large migration of worth from Ethereum to different ecosystems.
The flipside, however, is that contempt this migration distant from Ethereum, astir worth inactive sits in EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible environments.
Remember that the EVM is fundamentally the encephalon of Ethereum that performs computations for the network. When different Layer 1s follow the EVM, it makes deploying existing applications connected caller networks easier for developers, successful summation to making it easier for users to migrate to these caller chains.
The dominance of worth connected EVM compatible chains (Avalanche, Polygon, etc) suggest that a modular is forming astir the EVM. This should yet support Ethereum arsenic the gravitational halfway of the astute contracting world, arsenic ETH applications and assets volition beryllium natively interoperable with astir different chains.
Rise of the app chains
While EVM chains inactive predominate the landscape, the extremity of 2021 saw a emergence successful worth connected Tendermint chains. Recall that Tendermint is simply a modular popularized by Cosmos, that lets developers physique exertion circumstantial blockchains that are susceptible of interoperating with 1 another.
Building app-specific chains successful the past came with important accidental cost, due to the fact that they were chopped disconnected from astir liquidity and users. With the growth of Tendermint chains similar Osmosis (AMM), Umee (lending), and Stargaze (NFTs), that’s becoming little of an issue.
Now that these app circumstantial chains person a widening array of usage cases and liquidity that they tin interoperate with, look for much builders to instrumentality vantage of customizability that these chains connection successful 2022.
The ENS airdrop + DAOs
In 2021, ENS reminded everyone of Web3’s autochthonal idiosyncratic acquisition strategy: the airdrop.
ENS (Ethereum Name Service) addresses are champion thought of arsenic email addresses that you tin nonstop wealth to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years successful development, the task shifted to a DAO model, and airdropped ENS governance tokens to each idiosyncratic with an ENS address.
After the driblet successful November, consciousness of ENS and registration of .eth addresses skyrocketed.
Since the ENS DAO treasury collects gross from caller .eth registrations, gross for the recently minted ENS DAO treasury ramped up significantly: different testament to however overmuch a good orchestrated airdrop tin determination the needle.
Beyond ENS, DAOs had a beardown year, evident by the increasing usage successful cardinal pieces of DAO infrastructure. Gnosis Safe, which is the astir fashionable multisig wallet DAOs usage to negociate their treasuries, saw 3x growth successful some the fig of Safes and transactions executed successful 2021. Snapshot, a instrumentality that helps DAOs execute off-chain votes with on-chain verification, exhibited strong growth arsenic well.
EN-EFF-TEES
Activity connected the ascendant level for NFTs tells you each you request to cognize astir the breakout year NFTs enjoyed.
OG NFT CryptoPunks saw 60x YoY growth, reaching a full measurement of 650K ETH, oregon $1.7B astatine existent prices. This fig however, includes a flashloan powered $500M lavation merchantability — a almighty reminder of however overmuch subjectivity determination is successful on-chain data.
The 2nd astir notable NFT task of the twelvemonth was Bored Ape Yacht Club, which went from a niche assemblage to the personage NFT of choice, including the likes of Steph Curry, Shaq, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, among others. At 1 constituent the BAYC level (price of the cheapest NFT successful the collection) momentarily flipped the CryptoPunks floor.
In the vigor of caller issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections achieving cardinal dollar marketplace caps, the mean terms of NFTs changing hands did a 150x from 0.1 ETH to astir 15 ETH by twelvemonth end.
One of the astir absorbing NFT launches of the twelvemonth was Loot (covered here), which fto anyone mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that could signifier the ground of a Dungeons and Dragon benignant RPG game. Initial excitement was skyhigh, earlier fizzling out arsenic clip went on.
While Loot’s occurrence whitethorn person dimmed, it was inactive a landmark twelvemonth for NFT based gaming, with the breakaway occurrence of Axie Infinity bringing play-to-earn and GameFi narratives to the forefront. As the information shows, Axie Infinity NFT measurement dwarfs that of immoderate anterior NFT based game.
Lastly, portion Ethereum was the halfway of the NFT show, marketplaces look to beryllium springing up crossed aggregate chains. The information shows that little interest environments are enabling antithetic types of idiosyncratic activity. Solana’s Magic Eden, for example, has much transactions than OpenSea since users are unencumbered by exorbitant state fees.
More successful Elias’s epic thread
Beyond being chock-full of illuminating information points connected the twelvemonth successful crypto and Web3, the afloat thread underscores the quality of on-chain information and the accrued maturity of the industry. The quality for 1 idiosyncratic to enactment unneurotic a dataset this affluent is simply a testament to each of the large information providers the manufacture present has astatine our disposal.
If you haven’t already, cheque retired the full thread which covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, MEV, L2 adoption, ETH2, staking, Web3, memecoins, DEXes, stablecoins, and a full batch more.
~Written by Connor Dempsey & Justin Mart.
English (US) 