As of January 21, the transaction volume of the Ethereum NFT field reached 33 million US dollars, compared with only 3 million US dollars in December last year, an increase of more than 10 times.
The beginning of 2021 made the crypto industry excited: BTC exceeded $40,000, ETH exceeded $1,400, and the total market value of crypto assets reached $1 trillion.
The DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum is still the most important market in the blockchain industry. The total locked-in value (TVL) has exceeded US$30 billion.
Ethereum's scalability issues continue to exist, causing gas fees to rise. Focusing on the Layer 2 solution of Ethereum, and the Layer 1 blockchain as a competitor, continued progress in January 2021.
The enthusiasm in the NFT field is soaring, and Dapp, which has always been the leader, is replaced by newcomers. NBA Top Shot and Hashmasks rocked the NFT field with record sales in the first week of 2021.
Ethereum's scalability problems continue
The gas price of Ethereum tends to increase with various booms. There was a Tether (USDT) boom in early 2020, followed by a DeFi ecosystem or yield farming boom in mid-summer. In 2021, gas price increases are mainly triggered by DeFi and NFT activities.
Although the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 looks promising, developers are turning to different blockchain or Layer 2 solutions. BSC (Binance Smart Lotus) distributed several well-developed new DeFi Dapps. Matic demonstrated its potential in gaming activities. And Flow demonstrated the potential of the NFT field with the fastest growing NFT Dapp-NBA Top Shot.
Image source: DappRadar
Ethereum still dominates
Historically, the main competitors for Ethereum's dominance are EOS and Tron. Although these agreements have generated a lot of activity in 2021, other projects such as BSC and Wax have also risen rapidly.
In terms of only active wallets, in January, the daily growth rates of the only active wallets of Ethereum, BSC, and Wax were 29%, 10%, and 9%, respectively.
The largest category of Ethereum blockchain is still the DeFi ecosystem. Uniswap and 1inch Exchange are the two largest contributors, with 44,000 and 3400 unique active wallets respectively.
BSC also performed well. PancakeSwap generates an average of 11,000 unique active wallets, while Venus has about 1,000.
WAX takes the lead in gaming activities with its Dapp called "Alien Worlds". The number of unique active wallets increased from 1,700 to nearly 8,000, becoming the fastest growing Dapp on WAX in January 2021.
Other Ethereum competitors such as Polkadot, Cosmos, NEAR Protocol, Solana, Avalanche, etc. are also trying to challenge.
Reef Finance is the first Polkadot project. In addition, the price of Polkadot (DOT) rose by 85% in January 2021, and its market value once exceeded XRP.
The Flow blockchain can be described as the foundation of a new generation of games, applications, and the digital assets that power them. NBA Top Shots rocked the NFT industry in just a few weeks and became the number one player in the NFT Dapp.
As Ethereum suffers from scalability limitations, the L2 solution stands out. Recently, Aavegotchi and SkyWeaver announced that they will publish on Matic Network, increasing the number of only active wallets to 900, the highest level in history.
Image source: DappRadar
DeFi TVL hits a record high
In January, the total lock-in value (TVL) of DeFi exceeded US$30 billion. The main reason behind this surge is the increase in token prices in January. Uniswap's UNI and Compound's COMP surged to US$20.03 and US$366, respectively.
In the case of ETH and other altcoin prices soaring, aTVL shows the true growth of assets added to smart contracts. According to aTVL data, DeFi TVL surged from US$12 billion to US$14 billion in January. This indicator helps to better understand the true growth of the DeFi ecosystem.
As the DeFi ecosystem continues to grow significantly in 2021, activities in the NFT field are also increasing. Not only is the volume of well-known Dapp transactions soaring, new players have also shown the potential to surpass their predecessors.
More hot spots in the NFT field
In the second half of 2020, competitors tried to imitate Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem, and in 2021 it seems to begin to imitate NFT. Recently, TRON announced its NFT standard TRC-721.
In general, the collectibles industry has been heating up, with sales increasing rapidly. The two projects with the largest transaction volume are Ethereum's Crypto Punks and Flow's NBA Top Shot.
Crypto Punks has been achieving high sales. Recently, the NFT collectible Alien CryptoPunk 2890 was sold for 605 ETH (over US$760,000). NBA Top Shot also has several deals of up to $100,000.
NBA Top Shot leads NFT
NBA Top Shot soon gained attention in the blockchain industry after its launch. Recently, the platform has jumped to the first place in the NFT field with record sales. In contrast, the first collectible Crypto Punks built on the blockchain took 3 years to achieve sales of more than $100,000.
NBA Top Shot had the highest sales volume in January 2021, with sales exceeding 40 million U.S. dollars, which pushed the Dapp to number one.
Image source: CryptoSlam.io
Pranksy's new NFT project
Pranksy is an anonymous collector and a leading figure and investment influencer in the NFT field. Its latest product is the NFT Boxes project, which is a bundle of NFT sold.
According to Pranksy's Twitter message, these NFTs were sold out within 6 minutes. Statistics from OpenSea, the top secondary market, also show high sales: 200 ETH in the past 24 hours.
Image source: Pranksy tweet
Hashmasks becomes the leading NFT platform on Ethereum
Hashmasks' recent performance is also very impressive. Four days after its launch, its transaction volume exceeded 9 million US dollars. Although it is too early to draw conclusions, the project has received a lot of attention and is ranked second in the OpenSea ranking.
Image source: OpenSea
Image source: DappRadar
As of press time, Hashmasks NFT has been the number one collectible Dapp on all platforms collected by DappRadar in the past 24 hours, and ranked fourth among all Ethereum Dapp categories. Interestingly, Hashmasks is the only collectible Dapp in the top 5.
Month summary
In summary, Ethereum's scalability issues still exist, and therefore, Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions are becoming more and more popular.
Nevertheless, Ethereum is still the most important blockchain, with impressive performance in the DeFi and NFT categories in 2021.
Although the recent record high of TVL was mainly driven by the rise in token prices, the actual growth is still obvious. aTVL exceeded US$14 billion at the end of January.
BSC's only active wallet and transaction volume data set a new high in January, and the activity is mainly driven by DeFi Dapp.
NFT has also proven to have great potential. Not only have well-known projects such as Crypto Punks reached the highest sales volume in history, but new projects have also performed well.
The Flow-based Dapp NBA Top Shot became the NFT Dapp with the highest transaction volume in 4 months.
In general, the blockchain industry seems to be ushering in the next wave of growth-NFT Dapp.