Crypto’s 69 most fascinating charts from 2021

Metaverse and good contract belongings outperform

Value isn’t every thing, however the two high performing belongings in 2021 are indicative of broader traits all year long. 2021’s best performing assets have been:

• Metaverse gaming tokens
• Good 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 features respectively. In the meantime, platform tokens from Polygon, Terra, Solana, and Fantom, all posted 8,000% features or extra.

On condition that play-to-earn gaming had a breakout 12 months, and layer 1s not named Ethereum noticed robust adoption, these traits needs 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 worth of DeFi belongings doesn’t inform all the story, nonetheless. TVL of Ethereum DeFi purposes showed tremendous growth 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 good migration & the EVM normal

In Could, there was $200M sitting in Ethereum bridges. That quantity climbed to $20B by the tip of the 12 months, underscoring the nice migration of worth from Ethereum to different ecosystems.

The flipside, nonetheless, is that regardless of this migration away from Ethereum, most worth nonetheless sits in EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible 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 current 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 suitable chains (Avalanche, Polygon, and many others) recommend that an ordinary is forming across the EVM. This could finally maintain Ethereum because the gravitational middle of the good contracting world, as ETH purposes and belongings will probably be natively interoperable with most different chains.

Rise of the app chains

Whereas EVM chains nonetheless dominate the panorama, the tip of 2021 noticed an increase in worth on Tendermint chains. Recall that Tendermint is an ordinary 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 price, as a result of they have been reduce off from most liquidity and customers. With the growth 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’ll interoperate with, search for extra builders to reap the benefits of 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 greatest regarded as e-mail addresses that you could ship cash to (e.g. Jimbo.eth). After 5 years in improvement, the challenge shifted to a DAO model, 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.

For the reason that 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 effectively orchestrated airdrop can transfer the needle.

Past ENS, DAOs had a robust 12 months, evident by the rising utilization in key items of DAO infrastructure. Gnosis Secure, which is the preferred multisig pockets DAOs use to handle their treasuries, noticed 3x growth 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 strong growth as effectively.

EN-EFF-TEES

Exercise on the dominant platform for NFTs tells you all you must know in regards to the breakout year NFTs loved.

OG NFT CryptoPunks saw 60x YoY growth, reaching a complete quantity of 650Okay ETH, or $1.7B at present costs. This determine nonetheless, features a flashloan powered $500M wash sale — a robust reminder of how a lot subjectivity there’s in on-chain information.

The second most notable NFT challenge of the 12 months was Bored Ape Yacht Membership, which went from a distinct segment neighborhood to the superstar NFT of selection, 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 latest issuances flooding the market, and older NFT collections attaining billion greenback market caps, the typical worth of NFTs altering palms 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 here), which let anybody mint 1 of 8,000 NFTs that might type the premise of a Dungeons and Dragon model RPG recreation. Preliminary pleasure was skyhigh, earlier than fizzling out as time went on.

Whereas Loot’s flame could 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 information reveals, Axie Infinity NFT quantity dwarfs that of any prior NFT primarily based recreation.

Lastly, whereas Ethereum was the middle of the NFT present, marketplaces look like bobbing up throughout a number of chains. The information reveals 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 fuel 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 business. The flexibility for one particular person to place collectively a dataset this wealthy is a testomony to the entire nice information suppliers the business now has at our disposal.

In the event you haven’t already, try 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.