As most of us had been having fun with some R&R over Christmas break, Coinbase Cloud protocol specialist Elias Simos was scouring the online for essentially the most fascinating crypto charts of 2021: 69 of them to be precise.
Within the newest Round The Block podcast, we sit down with Elias and talk about among the most fascinating information factors from the 12 months, and what all of it means for the long run. (Excessive stage takeaways beneath)
Metaverse and good contract property outperform
Worth isn’t every part, however the two high performing property in 2021 are indicative of broader developments all year long. 2021’s finest performing property had been:
- Metaverse gaming tokens
- Sensible contract platform tokens
The governance tokens of gaming worlds Axie Infinity (AXS) and The Sandbox (SAND) every posted 16,000 and 13,000 p.c good points respectively. In the meantime, platform tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, all posted 8,000% good points or extra.
On condition that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout 12 months, and layer 1s not named Ethereum noticed robust adoption, these developments must be of no shock. Now let’s dig a bit deeper.
The state of Layer 1s
Ethereum’s native token (ETH) did a modest 2X over the 12 months, whereas it was considerably of a tough 12 months for Ethereum DeFi blue chips, with the DeFiPulse index down 80% over the 12 months vs ETH.
The value of DeFi property doesn’t inform all the story, nevertheless. TVL of Ethereum DeFi functions confirmed super development over the 12 months, and the variety of distinctive Ethereum addresses interacting with DeFi protocols 4x’ed.
Regardless, ETH killers and sidechains gained the 12 months when measured by development of total market share.
The nice migration & the EVM customary
In Might, there was $200M sitting in Ethereum bridges. That quantity climbed to $20B by the top of the 12 months, underscoring the good migration of worth from Ethereum to different ecosystems.
The flipside, nevertheless, is that regardless of this migration away from Ethereum, most worth nonetheless sits in EVM (Ethereum Digital Machine) appropriate environments.
Keep in mind that the EVM is basically the mind of Ethereum that performs computations for the community. When different Layer 1s undertake the EVM, it makes deploying present functions on new networks simpler for builders, along with making it simpler for customers emigrate to those new chains.
The dominance of worth on EVM appropriate chains (Avalanche, Polygon, and so on) counsel that a regular is forming across the EVM. This could finally preserve Ethereum because the gravitational heart of the good contracting world, as ETH functions and property will probably be natively interoperable with most different chains.
Rise of the app chains
Whereas EVM chains nonetheless dominate the panorama, the top of 2021 noticed an increase in worth on Tendermint chains. Recall that Tendermint is a regular popularized by Cosmos, that lets builders construct utility particular blockchains which can be able to interoperating with each other.
Constructing app-specific chains up to now got here with important alternative value, as a result of they had been lower off from most liquidity and customers. With the development of Tendermint chains like Osmosis (AMM), Umee (lending), and Stargaze (NFTs), that’s turning into much less of a problem.
Now that these app particular chains have a widening array of use circumstances and liquidity that they’ll interoperate with, search for extra builders to benefit from customizability that these chains supply in 2022.
The ENS airdrop + DAOs
In 2021, ENS reminded everybody of Web3’s native person acquisition technique: the airdrop.
ENS (Ethereum Identify Service) addresses are finest considered electronic mail addresses which you can ship cash to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years in growth, the undertaking shifted to a DAO mannequin, and airdropped ENS governance tokens to each person with an ENS handle.
After the drop in November, consciousness of ENS and registration of .eth addresses skyrocketed.
Because the ENS DAO treasury collects income from new .eth registrations, income for the newly minted ENS DAO treasury ramped up considerably: one other testomony to how a lot a nicely orchestrated airdrop can transfer the needle.
Past ENS, DAOs had a powerful 12 months, evident by the rising utilization in key items of DAO infrastructure. Gnosis Protected, which is the most well-liked multisig pockets DAOs use to handle their treasuries, noticed 3x development in each the variety of Safes and transactions executed in 2021. Snapshot, a device that helps DAOs execute off-chain votes with on-chain verification, exhibited robust development as nicely.
EN-EFF-TEES
Exercise on the dominant platform for NFTs tells you all it’s essential to know in regards to the breakout 12 months NFTs loved.
OG NFT CryptoPunks noticed 60x YoY development, reaching a complete quantity of 650K ETH, or $1.7B at present costs. This determine nevertheless, features a flashloan powered $500M wash sale — a robust reminder of how a lot subjectivity there may be in on-chain information.
The second most notable NFT undertaking of the 12 months was Bored Ape Yacht Membership, which went from a distinct segment neighborhood to the celeb NFT of alternative, together with the likes of Steph Curry, Shaq, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, amongst others. At one level the BAYC ground (worth of the most affordable NFT within the assortment) momentarily flipped the CryptoPunks ground.
Within the warmth of recent issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections attaining billion greenback market caps, the typical worth of NFTs altering arms did a 150x from 0.1 ETH to roughly 15 ETH by 12 months finish.
Some of the fascinating NFT launches of the 12 months was Loot (coated right here), which let anybody mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that would kind the idea of a Dungeons and Dragon type RPG sport. Preliminary pleasure was skyhigh, earlier than truly fizzling out as time went on.
Whereas Loot’s flame might have dimmed, it was nonetheless a landmark 12 months for NFT based mostly gaming, with the breakaway success of Axie Infinity bringing play-to-earn and GameFi narratives to the forefront. As the information exhibits, Axie Infinity NFT quantity dwarfs that of any prior NFT based mostly sport.
Lastly, whereas Ethereum was the middle of the NFT present, marketplaces seem like arising throughout a number of chains. The information exhibits that decrease payment environments are enabling several types of person exercise. Solana’s Magic Eden, for instance, has extra transactions than OpenSea since customers are unencumbered by exorbitant gasoline charges.
Extra in Elias’s epic thread
Past being chock-full of illuminating information factors on the 12 months in crypto and Web3, the total thread underscores the fantastic thing about on-chain information and the elevated maturity of the trade. The power for one individual to place collectively a dataset this wealthy is a testomony to all the nice information suppliers the trade now has at our disposal.
Should you haven’t already, take a look at the full thread which covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, MEV, L2 adoption, ETH2, staking, Web3, memecoins, DEXes, stablecoins, and an entire lot extra.
~Written by Connor Dempsey & Justin Mart.
