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 probably 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 focus on a number of the most fascinating knowledge factors from the 12 months, and what all of it means for the long run. (Excessive stage takeaways beneath)
Metaverse and sensible contract belongings outperform
Value isn’t all the things, however the two high performing belongings in 2021 are indicative of broader traits all year long. 2021’s greatest performing belongings 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 % positive aspects respectively. In the meantime, platform tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, all posted 8,000% positive aspects or extra.
Provided that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout 12 months, and layer 1s not named Ethereum noticed sturdy adoption, these traits ought to 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 belongings doesn’t inform the complete story, nevertheless. TVL of Ethereum DeFi purposes confirmed large progress 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 progress of general market share.
The nice migration & the EVM normal
In Might, there was $200M sitting in Ethereum bridges. That quantity climbed to $20B by the top of the 12 months, underscoring the nice 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 actually the mind of Ethereum that performs computations for the community. When different Layer 1s undertake the EVM, it makes deploying present purposes 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 forth) counsel that a typical is forming across the EVM. This could in the end hold Ethereum because the gravitational heart of the sensible contracting world, as ETH purposes and belongings will likely 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 typical popularized by Cosmos, that lets builders construct software particular blockchains which can be able to interoperating with each other.
Constructing app-specific chains previously got here with vital alternative value, as a result of they had been lower off from most liquidity and customers. With the progress of Tendermint chains like Osmosis (AMM), Umee (lending), and Stargaze (NFTs), that’s changing into much less of a difficulty.
Now that these app particular chains have a widening array of use instances and liquidity that they will interoperate with, search for extra builders to make the most of customizability that these chains supply in 2022.
The ENS airdrop + DAOs
In 2021, ENS reminded everybody of Web3’s native consumer acquisition technique: the airdrop.
ENS (Ethereum Title Service) addresses are greatest regarded as e-mail addresses that you would be able to ship cash to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years in growth, the venture shifted to a DAO mannequin, and airdropped ENS governance tokens to each consumer with an ENS deal with.
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 properly 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 preferred multisig pockets DAOs use to handle their treasuries, noticed 3x progress in each the variety of Safes and transactions executed in 2021. Snapshot, a software that helps DAOs execute off-chain votes with on-chain verification, exhibited sturdy progress as properly.
EN-EFF-TEES
Exercise on the dominant platform for NFTs tells you all it’s good to know concerning the breakout 12 months NFTs loved.
OG NFT CryptoPunks noticed 60x YoY progress, 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’s in on-chain knowledge.
The second most notable NFT venture of the 12 months was Bored Ape Yacht Membership, which went from a distinct segment group to the movie star NFT of selection, together with the likes of Steph Curry, Shaq, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, Paris Hilton, amongst others. At one level the BAYC flooring (worth of the most affordable NFT within the assortment) momentarily flipped the CryptoPunks flooring.
Within the warmth of recent issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections reaching billion greenback market caps, the common worth of NFTs altering fingers did a 150x from 0.1 ETH to roughly 15 ETH by 12 months finish.
One of the crucial fascinating NFT launches of the 12 months was Loot (coated right here), which let anybody mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that might type the idea of a Dungeons and Dragon type RPG sport. Preliminary pleasure was skyhigh, earlier than petering out as time went on.
Whereas Loot’s flame might have dimmed, it was nonetheless a landmark 12 months for NFT primarily based gaming, with the breakaway success of Axie Infinity bringing play-to-earn and GameFi narratives to the forefront. As the info reveals, Axie Infinity NFT quantity dwarfs that of any prior NFT primarily based sport.
Lastly, whereas Ethereum was the middle of the NFT present, marketplaces seem like bobbing up throughout a number of chains. The information reveals that decrease price environments are enabling various kinds of consumer exercise. Solana’s Magic Eden, for instance, has extra transactions than OpenSea since customers are unencumbered by exorbitant fuel charges.
Extra in Elias’s epic thread
Past being chock-full of illuminating knowledge factors on the 12 months in crypto and Web3, the complete thread underscores the great thing about on-chain knowledge and the elevated maturity of the business. The flexibility for one particular person to place collectively a dataset this wealthy is a testomony to all the nice knowledge suppliers the business now has at our disposal.
For those who 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.
