At the beginning of 2020, DeFi has become a driving force in the blockchain industry. Ethereum is also ready for growth, while other blockchains lack developer support and composability. However, this growth is not without symptoms.
In mid-March, the new crown pneumonia broke out, and the value of traditional markets and cryptocurrencies fell sharply, which had a negative impact on the exchange rate of MakerDAO’s DAI stable currency pegged to the US dollar. MakerDAO almost collapsed, it was the power of the community that supported it.
The second key trend in 2020 is liquid mining. The successful issuance of Compound’s COMP token along with the creation of an incentive model proved to be an excellent way to acquire users.
Other DeFi dapps soon began to launch their tokens and incentive activities, while other developers built related protocols to maximize profitability. Other categories such as NFT collectibles and games have also adopted this model.
In general, most tokens created in DeFi and NFT dapps are governance tokens. First, it allows the community to participate in decision-making in the dapp. Second, governance mechanisms are another big step towards real decentralization.
The publicity surrounding yield farming also highlights more problems. One of them is user retention rate. Uniswap’s leadership was shaken by the launch of the so-called vampire dapp SushiSwap, which proved that user retention is a key indicator of future success.
The increase in activity in the Ethereum network has brought another problem-scalability. High fuel costs have hit the activity of low-value dapps, especially the game category, which dropped by more than 90% from May to August. Conversely, this creates opportunities for Ethereum-centric Layer 2 solutions and competitors’ Layer 1 solutions.
The vulnerabilities of smart contracts and hacking attacks prove once again that the industry is still in the experimental stage, which has given birth to insurance products, which may become an important part of the healthy development of the industry.
In the end, protocols and developers began to consider that working in isolation might not be the best way to fight competition. Some important mergers occurred at the end of this year, and this merger looks likely to be a major trend in 2021.
Note: DeFi ecosystem refers to decentralized finance and decentralized exchange Dapp
NFT market refers to collectibles and market dapps.
table of Contents
1. Important points
2. Major challenges in 2020
Scalability issues
Increased competition
Smart contract vulnerabilities
High returns come with high risks
User retention
3. Achieve huge growth in 2020
95% of transaction volume growth belongs to Ethereum DeFi dapps
Yield farming stimulates the DeFi ecosystem
The path to true decentralization
Rising yields incentivize BTC to flow into Ethereum
Accurately measure DeFi active value-aTVL
DeFi team union
The basis for growth
NFT drives dapp growth in 2020
Recent NFT sales performance shows its true potential
WAX has a small success in the NFT field
The current state of blockchain dapp games
Play-to-Earn model
Ethereum’s virtual world
4. 2020 summary
5. Other views
1. Important points
2020 is a record year for the blockchain industry. Dapp’s transaction volume exceeds 270 billion US dollars, 95% of which comes from Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.
Among the top Ethereum dapps tracked by DappRadar, the total value locked (TVL) and adjusted TVL (aTVL) reached the highest figures in history of USD 13 billion and USD 11 billion respectively in 2020.
In 2020, 238 new DeFi dapps were submitted to DappRadar. Of these, 106 (45%) are running on the Ethereum blockchain.
By 2020, a total of 1,353 new dapps will be submitted to DappRadar. Of these, 424 (32%) run on the Ethereum blockchain.
The scalability issue is not the only challenge facing 2020. The increased use of dapps has led to a variety of exploits and hacking attacks, amounting to more than US$120 million.
After implementing the liquidity mining program in the NFT market, the number of independent active wallets on Rarible surged from about 200 to more than 1,500 in September 2020.
The NFT market has shown its potential in 2020, with a transaction volume of more than $100,000.
In 2020, DeFi dapp will lay the foundation for real decentralization by distributing governance tokens. Although it is too early to confirm how the ideology of decentralization will be implemented.
2. Main challenges in 2020
Scalability issues
In 2019, the number of new dapps launched on all blockchains continues to increase. The most important of these are DeFi, NFT and game dapps, which have had a positive impact on the activity in 2020. As expected, most of the activity is concentrated in the Ethereum blockchain.
2020 is a year in which dapps strive to develop at all costs. Of course, this has also brought consequences such as the increase in the price of Ethereum fuel.
The reason for the first wave of price increases was the increase in the use of Tether USDT stablecoins on Ethereum. Coupled with the activity from several high-risk dapps, these dapps have sent numerous spam emails on the Internet.
The second wave of rising waves is accompanied by the latest trend in 2020-yield farming. During peak periods, the average cost per transaction exceeds $50.
From a high-level perspective, Ethereum has encountered obstacles in scalability. The arrival of Ethereum 2.0 will become more important to ensure the leadership and survival of Ethereum.
Source: Etherscan.io fuel price
Increased competition
In 2019, Ethereum’s main competitors are EOS and TRON. Although these protocols have generated a lot of activity in 2020, other projects such as Polkadot and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) are also rapidly emerging.
Number of independent active wallets in the DeFi ecosystem by blockchain in 2020
There is no doubt that in 2020, with the explosive growth of the DeFi category, both EOS and TRON are catching up. TRON established a valid copy of Ethereum, and these dapps began to generate a lot of activity. In the TRON DeFi ecosystem, there are more than 17,000 independent active wallets every day.
EOS is slower, and its current activity is driven by dapps in other categories besides DeFi. Despite this, the EOS DeFi ecosystem still generates approximately 4,000 independent active wallets every day.
In 2020, more Ethereum competitors will be online. For example, Cardano, Polkadot, Binance Smartchain, Cosmos, Near and Flow. However, so far, there are only a few active projects in these blockchains.
In terms of products launched, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is in a leading position. Within three months of launching the top BSC dapp, about 10,000 daily independent active wallets have been generated. Leading BSC revenue is PancakeSwap, which has 3,300 independent daily active wallets. Although this number is still 8 times lower than the top Ethereum DEX Uniswap. However, PancakeSwap has generated more value than other top Ethereum dapps such as SushiSwap or Balancer.
Source: DappRadar other projects are still in the deployment phase, and recently, Cardano announced that it will release its first DeFi project Liqwid. Although Cardano has not yet deployed smart contracts, according to CoinGecko, as the top ten project by market value, it is considered an important competitor.
Although no project has been launched yet, Polkadot is also about to launch an ecosystem to compete with Ethereum. The agreement attracted media attention and attracted new investors such as KR1 and RockX. RockX launched a $20 million investment plan to support the construction of the project on Polkadot.
Another Ethereum competitor is Cosmos, which is creating a decentralized network of independent blockchains running on the Tendermint consensus layer. However, in the early stages of deployment, projects such as Binance Chain, OKChain and Akash have already begun to use.
Flow is another competitor that is more compatible with dapp games and is expected to become a fast, decentralized and developer-friendly blockchain. So far, some of the world’s top developers and big brands have joined in, such as NBA top Shot, Animoca and Ubisoft.
The market value of Ethereum competitors in 2020, unit: thousand/USD
Source: Coingecko
Smart contract vulnerabilities
In addition to the record high indicators in 2020, the DeFi category is still a very fragile ecosystem. In unaudited smart contracts, there are various hacking and vulnerability attacks. Of course, even audited smart contracts may have problems.
One of the most important dapps in the ecosystem, MakerDAO, encountered difficulties in 2020. In mid-March, the value of cryptocurrencies fell sharply, which had a negative impact on the mechanism of MakerDAO’s DAI stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. MakerDAO almost collapsed, and in the end it was the power of the community that made it through it.
Another project, YAM, attracted a lot of attention within 24 hours after its release. But soon, this two-day-old project suddenly collapsed, and the YAM token price plummeted from a high of $200 to $1.04.
The overall increase in dapp usage during 2020 has also led to more and more attacks and exploits. By 2020, the total value of this category will exceed 120 million US dollars. This makes insurance products a more important topic in this field. We predict that insurance products may become a key and necessary part of the healthy development of the DeFi industry. Hacking attacks and exploits in smart contracts in 2020
Insurance plans driven by centralization and decentralization are emerging. For example, yInsure’s NFT insurance token has caused a sensation as a novel project, and it seems that the industry is ready to further research insurance in 2021.
Source: Rarible Another example comes from the audit company CertiK. CertiK has developed a membership service that enables participants to be compensated if they are hacked.
The increasing deployment and attention of such projects proves to a certain extent that insurance will become the next important sub-category of the DeFi ecosystem.
High returns come with high risks
By 2020, people’s interest in DeFi dapps and liquid mining is increasing.
Many dapps show significant benefits, but high returns are often accompanied by risk factors.
In 2020, there are endless cases of users losing a lot of money through simple exit scams and fraudulent behaviors. In addition, although dapps that contain certain risks are classified as high-risk dapps on DappRadar, we can see that the line between them is getting blurred. A project called HEX was released in December 2019, led by Bitcoin maximizationist Richard Smart. The uniqueness of HEX is that it is not a typical high-risk dapp, but is built around game theory or standard MLM.
In addition, it has been active for more than half a year, and most high-risk dapps disappeared after three months. Instead, it combines its tokens with long-term, high-return investment mechanisms and strong affiliate marketing. An ambitious attempt to guide a new cryptocurrency and community. The user exchanges the principal in Ether for HEX tokens and obtains principal and interest in HEX. Therefore, the high risk factors of HEX remain within the price fluctuation range of HEX tokens.
In 2020, the dollar value of HEX tokens fluctuates greatly. Although the current value of HEX USD does not exceed 0.0044, it has shown an amazing growth of 2,100% in 2020.
Source: Coingecko
User retention
The rapid development of dapp in 2020 also highlights the user retention rate from another perspective. As mentioned earlier, in the long run, the number of independent active wallets interacting with dapps smart contracts will be a key indicator of success.
Uniswap is undoubtedly the leader in the decentralized exchange (DEX) category in 2020. However, another project is looking for an opportunity to replace its leadership. SushiSwap, the release of the so-called vampire dapp, dominated the headlines in mid-2020. In essence, SushiSwap encourages users to transfer Uniswap’s liquid funds.
The vampire strategy was successful in a few weeks, but in mid-September, Uniswap fought back, airdropping their UNI governance tokens to current and past users. Although we have noticed that Uniswap has regained its leadership, it can be said that the incident proves that user retention is fragile and can be driven by decoys.
Uniswap and SushiSwap: Number of independent active wallets
In 2020, the concept of achieving growth at all costs has brought challenging issues to the blockchain industry and various dapps. However, through hard work, this industry has also reached a record high.
3. Achieve huge growth in 2020
From all indicators, the industry has achieved tremendous growth in 2020 through the 16 blockchains tracked by DappRadar.
Independent active wallets grew by 466%, from 58,000 at the end of 2019 to around 200,000 at the end of 2020. At the same time, the transaction volume also increased from 21 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 to 270 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, an increase of 1178%.
On the other hand, transactions are highly concentrated in a few dapps. The top 10 DeFi dapps account for 87% of Ethereum’s transaction volume, reaching USD 223 billion in 2020.
Blockchain transaction volume from 2019 to 2020, unit: million U.S. dollars
Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem is the main driving force for total value lock-in (TVL). DappRadar tracks that the adjusted TVL value (aTVL) will also reach the highest level in history in 2020, with two values of 13 billion U.S. dollars and 11 billion U.S. dollars respectively. .
95% of transaction volume growth belongs to Ethereum DeFi dapps
DeFi is the main driving force of dapp growth in 2020, and it has become the leading industry in terms of key indicators such as TVL, AUW and transaction volume. This is also a key topic discussed by news channels and society. In April and September 2020, users’ attention to it reached a peak.
Source: Google Trends competitors are also trying to catch up. Although the Ethereum ecosystem was the first to mature, its competitors have also made some efforts in this regard.
99% of the total transaction volume belongs to the DeFi ecosystem, unit: billion US dollars
TRON is the first blockchain to catch up in developing the DeFi ecosystem. So far, there are more than 70 dapps built on this network. Most of these activities are concentrated in the top three dapps. USWAP, JustSwap, and UME generate more than 5,000 independent active wallets every day, accounting for 70% of the total active DeFi ecosystem.
Number of independent active wallets and transaction volume of DeFi on TRON, unit: million USD
Binance Smart Chain is another rapidly developing protocol, which generated approximately $3 billion in transaction volume within a few months of its release. Although this is still a relatively small number compared to the annual figure of Ethereum (US$256 billion), it is close to the figures of TRON (US$3.6 billion) and EOS (US$6.5 billion).
Number of independent active wallets and transaction volume on BSC, unit: million USD
One of the main drivers of Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem growth in 2020 is the hype surrounding liquidity mining and governance token distribution.
Yield farming stimulates the DeFi ecosystem
Synthetix was the first project to introduce yield farming, and Compound and its COMP token made it popular. It can be said that the introduction of COMP governance tokens by Compound has triggered a chain reaction in the industry.
Balancer and Curve are also following the trend. Nevertheless, the biggest growth point is the release of SushiSwap. The following provides the most important release and peak data points in independent active wallets:
· COMP: Within a week, the number of UAWs increased from about 300 to 2,700 (an increase of 800%).
· BAL: Within a week, the number of UAWs increased from about 200 to 650 (an increase of 225%). · CRV: Within a week, the number of UAWs increased from approximately 1,000 to 4,100 (an increase of 310%).
· Sushi: Within a week, the number of UAWs increased from about 10 to 7,100 (a 70,900% increase).
· UNI: Within 24 hours, the number of UAWs increased from 30,000 to 71,000 (an increase of 137%).
At the end of August, the release of SushiSwap shocked the DeFi ecosystem. The project uses Uniswap as its starting base, with the purpose of transferring its liquidity. In return, in order to encourage users to switch, the agreement gives away Sushi tokens. As of September 2020, the project generated more than $6 billion in transaction volume.
Uniswap then fought back by airdropping their tokens and airdropping 400 UNI to all wallets that have interacted with Uniswap in the past and present. 400 UNI tokens were distributed to each user. At the time, its value was approximately US$1,200.
Trading volume temporarily peaked. In September, Uniswap generated $33 billion in revenue, accounting for almost 60% of the total transaction volume.
Generally speaking, yield farming and the issuance of governance tokens create a template for other dapps, allowing them to begin to understand how to motivate users in the blockchain industry.
The path to true decentralization
All of the above dapps issued governance tokens in 2020, theoretically allowing holders to vote to distribute the fees collected by the platform to themselves as income. Curve is one of the first dapps to pay interest to token holders. Of course, it is necessary to observe how other platforms develop.
Recently, the Compound and Uniswap communities voted on a proposal that will enable the ecosystem to use governance tokens to issue grants and pay contributors. If achieved, this will be a key step in two important projects of the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem on the road to decentralization.
Source: Compound Proposal 030: Funded by COMP Contributors
Rising yields incentivize BTC to flow into Ethereum
In terms of market value, Bitcoin is still the world’s number one cryptocurrency, and it represents a large amount of liquidity that has not entered the Ethereum DeFi field before. The smooth integration of the two is an important step in integrating Bitcoin holders into the active Ethereum network. The increase in yield is the main incentive for Bitcoin to flow to Ethereum.
wBTC is the leading attempt to tokenize Bitcoin on Ethereum. In addition, there are more use cases. Although the hosted solution is leading the competition, the non-custodial solution has been raising funds and launching. renBTC is currently the leading non-custodial tokenized BTC on Ethereum.
WBTC: Number of independent active wallets and TVL value, unit: billion U.S. dollars
Accurately measure DeFi active value-aTVL
At the beginning of 2020, a new indicator became the standard method for measuring growth within the DeFi ecosystem. TVL is the main indicator of growth, used to measure the value of assets locked in dapp smart contracts (usually in U.S. dollars).
Source: DappRadarTVL is most commonly quoted in US dollars. Therefore, the price of locked assets in the smart contract has a greater impact on TVL than the number of locked assets. In 2020, DappRadar proposed a new indicator to effectively solve this problem. aTVL or the adjusted total lock-up value. In the case of rising prices of Ethereum and other altcoins, aTVL shows the true growth of assets added in smart contracts. In addition, adding an independent active wallet (AUW) indicator can show whether the activity is driven by multiple users or a single whale. In addition, it can also show whether there is broader community involvement.
Data source on December 17, 2020: DappRadar
DeFi team union
Another important trend will begin to emerge at the end of 2020. There are several project plans combined. For example, Yearn Finance will cooperate or merge with at least five different DeFi projects in 2020: SushiSwap, Akropolis, Cover, Cream and Pickle.
Yearn.finance (YFI) market value, unit: million dollars
Each project seems to have its own unique characteristics, but faces difficulties in the competition. Such a merger looks like a developer’s acquisition strategy, and Yearn only selected those development teams that may have been in trouble. Mergers are very common in traditional markets, and this is the first merger in the decentralized field.
The merger may provide a template for other dapps and push them to follow this trend. In general, the DeFi ecosystem has made significant progress in recent years, and achieved very significant results in 2020. In addition, it can be said that the DeFi ecosystem has created a blueprint for the development of other categories. It is expected that DeFi will soon promote the further value transfer of the NFT market and dapp games.
The basis for growth
DeFi is the infrastructure of the encryption economy. Therefore, NFT and the game industry have begun to accept DeFi practices to increase their activity.
The number of independent active wallets divided by category in all blockchains, unit: thousand
Rarible is the first NFT platform to introduce governance tokens through RARI to motivate users and increase liquidity mining. Game companies use DeFi to create value and liquidity for the game’s money-making model.
NFT drives dapp growth in 2020
In the past few months, publicity around non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for art and games has begun to increase. Many tokens were launched in 2020. They represent different uses, but they all work towards the same goal-to acquire users.
Source: DappRadarRarible is the first platform to launch governance tokens in the NFT market category. It was quickly accepted by users, but ended its peak period with increasing fees. At its peak, Rarible’s daily trading volume exceeded $1.5 million. On the other hand, this number has dropped recently because of the related fees introduced by the platform.
Source: DappRadar
Another example of governance token comes from the most popular dapp game Axie Infinity. Axie announced the launch of the ANX token. Of course, this has an impact on the activity of the game and Axie market. NFT sales immediately soared, and the number of independent active wallets increased to about 800 by the end of this year.
On the other hand, OpenSea, one of the most famous NFT markets, has not yet distributed tokens. However, the platform shows that even after a temporary drop in user loyalty, the platform can attract and retain users fairly quickly. This may depend on the user experience and capabilities of OpenSea.
By 2020, the interconnection between the DeFi and NFT industries will become particularly obvious. Recently, a platform called NFTfi stated that it can borrow cryptocurrencies while locking in non-fungible tokens as collateral. For example, NFT artwork, a piece of land in Axie Infinity, or CryptoPunk collections can now be used as collateral for borrowing money.
Source: NFTfi.com
Recent NFT sales performance shows its true potential
NFT transaction volume is still relatively small, not exceeding $63 million in 2020, accounting for 0.02% of the total transaction volume of all categories. Recently, NFT sales in dapps such as Sorare and CryptoPunks have truly shown the potential of this category.
For digital sports collections, Sorare wants to be different. Recently, a Sorare Kylian Mbappé card has been sold for 116.15 ETH or more than $64,000, making it one of the biggest recent collectible sales in 2020.
Source: DappRadar (Exchange rate of ETH/USD on the day of the transaction)
It can be said that cryptopunk started this trend 3 years ago by launching its unique and limited number of NFT artworks. According to Larva Labs’ top 60 sales data, the sales volume of cryptopunk during its existence is shocking, ranging from 21 ETH/punk to 185 ETH/punk. Interestingly, there have been two large transactions in the past two months, in which two punks were sold for more than $63,000 and $71,000 respectively.
Source: DappRadar (the exchange rate of ETH/USD on the day of the transaction) The most important sale in 2020 is Axie Infinity NFT. Looking at the top 10 transactions in 2020, two of them exceed $130,000 and $97,000 respectively. In summary, Axie can be selected as the leader with the highest NFT transaction volume in 2020.
WAX has a small success in the NFT field
Ethereum is not the only blockchain experiencing the soaring importance of NFTs. Since its establishment, WAX Blockchain has been focusing on the NFT field of cooperation with brands.
On WAX, the top five major NFT sales were sold out in record time, and NFTs have been sold to thousands of users.
Source: DappRadar (Exchange rate of ETH/USD on the day of the transaction)
In 2020, WAX not only released some very successful NFT projects, such as the iconic Garbage Pail Kids Topps card, but also introduced a new token economic model to the blockchain.
Simply put, WAX hopes to introduce the economic value created on the WAX blockchain into the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. More precisely, WAX uses its advantages in creating, selling and trading NFTs assets to link the value generated with Ethereum.
Although the NFT market on WAX is still relatively small, it is clear that they are positioned to focus on a specific category. In the future, WAX has huge potential to become another important factor for industry growth.
The current state of blockchain dapp games
For the dapp game category, 2020 will be extremely challenging, especially for games running on the Ethereum blockchain. In early 2020, from the perspective of active independent wallets, gaming is the largest category. In its heyday, there were approximately 10,000 active independent wallets.
Due to the demand for DeFi dapps, the price of Ethereum fuel fees has continued to rise. By August 2020, the number of active independent wallets in this category has decreased to less than 1,000, and has been slowly rising since then. The main reason for this phenomenon is that dapp game users are usually unwilling to pay such high fees for simple and low-cost transfers. Even more users plan to pay this fee and migrate to other chains to be active.
Source: DappRadar
This phenomenon provides a perfect opportunity for the rise of other blockchains. For example, the newly forked Hive protocol maintains a strong position in terms of active independent wallets. The main driver of this activity is Splinterlands, which is currently the #1 game in all blockchains, attracting more than 6,000 active independent wallets every day.
EOS is currently in a leading position in the game field. Although active data is only generated by a few individual dapps, namely Upland and Crypto Dynasty. These two games continue to grow on EOS. By 2020, these two EOS game dapps will account for 42% and 16% of the total daily active wallets of EOS games, respectively. EOS game dapp Upland continues to develop in 2020, and recently added the Tilia Pay payment system, which allows players to cash in fiat currency by trading assets.
Soon, the game will allow users to sell their NFTs assets through their virtual enterprises (for example, art galleries, nurseries, and car dealerships, etc.). In our opinion, Upland is a good example of creating revenue in the right way in blockchain games. The smooth user experience and most of the blockchain functions hidden in the background make this game very popular. Crypto Dynasty is another play-to-earn game that has continued to be active on the EOS blockchain for the past two years and has proven to be very popular.
Although currently active independent wallets are at least three times lower than during peak periods, the crypto dynasty still has approximately 1,500 daily active independent wallets. It is worth noting that the recently observed decline in active independent wallet data can be attributed to the downtime update of the game. In addition, we expect this number to stabilize again in 2021.
Source: DappRadar
EOS and Hive are not the only blockchains that have an impact in the gaming sector. The solutions of Layer 1 and Layer 2 also try to gain a place in this field through action. Matic, one of the most popular layer 2 solutions tracked by DappRadar, has produced a relatively slow but significant increase (about 300 active independent wallets per day), the largest contributor of which is 0xUniverse.
Source: DappRadar
As mentioned earlier, Flow is another competitor that positions itself in the gaming category. Flow is a first-layer solution designed to quickly achieve decentralization and its solutions are developer-friendly.
With the addition of brands such as NBA Top Shot, Animoca and Ubisoft, we expect the blockchain will bring more competition in 2021.
Play-to-Earn model
In 2020, high fuel costs have almost killed the game category of Ethereum. Although it has recently recovered, the main reason behind the growth is the rise of the play-to-earn model.
The play-to-earn model is the latest development in the dapp game industry. This is a business model that includes the concept of an open economy and provides certain economic benefits for all value-creating participants. Axie Infinity is one of the first games to introduce the play-to-earn model in blockchain games. For example, you use Axie in a game or upgrade its capabilities, and sell it on the Axie market or other similar platforms. In 2020, there are many reports that players are getting sustainable income from this game. This can be seen as an investment opportunity. Currently, the game has increased to approximately 2,500 active independent wallets per day.
After Binance released the AXS token in early November 2020, it attracted more users’ attention and promoted the further development of Axie Infinity.
Source: DappRadar
Axie Infinity extended analysis. However, the play-to-earn model is not limited to these types of dapp games, it is very common in another subcategory of Ethereum games (virtual world).
Ethereum’s virtual world
Currently, most virtual world dapps are concentrated on the Ethereum blockchain. Projects like Decentraland, MegaCryptoPolis, The Sandbox and Cryptovoxells have made it possible to create an entire universe on the blockchain.
These dapp games include attributes, props, wearable devices, artwork, group activities, etc. Enable users to interact in a virtual environment and have full ownership of their virtual assets. In addition, these dapps create an opportunity to participate in and profit from the virtual economy. For example, MegaCryptoPolis allows users to build buildings such as offices and rent them out to other users, and users will receive game resource rewards that can be easily exchanged for game tokens $MEGA.
Other types of virtual worlds are more like virtual art galleries or venues for concerts, exhibitions or festivals. The user experience of these games is currently limited, but is constantly evolving, and it is clear that the developers have long-term plans for their world. Currently, it allows users to gain economic benefits while studying the virtual blockchain world in depth.
Source: Nonfungible.com (Token/USD exchange rate on the day of the transaction)
Although the activity of most users in the virtual world is still driven by events, these dapps have proven their ability to generate high sales. From a high-level perspective, it is obvious that most of the user’s activity is still very concentrated on the Ethereum blockchain, and scalability issues make it difficult for certain categories and individual dapps to survive.
Nevertheless, in order to reduce the risk of such activity in a particular blockchain, interoperability or cross-chain may be the key to success in 2021.
4. 2020 summary
In general, 2020 has proved to be a year of twists and turns.
Despite the challenges, blockchain applications have emerged in the context of the global epidemic. With the deepening of the dialogue around the universal basic income and the distribution of global database management systems, the global epidemic seems to have aroused people’s attention to decentralized solutions.
Ethereum has dominated this field and maintained its strong leadership position, but new competitors are also coming in 2020 and hope to win the championship. The arrival of Ethereum 2.0 has become even more important for maintaining its strong position.
There is no doubt that 2020 is a year for the development of decentralized finance. Although the category has soared this year, the headlines must belong to DeFi. Looking forward to 2021, we expect DeFi to play a more influential role than 2020.
It is foreseeable that the DeFi ecosystem will form the basis of the encryption economy, not only for the NFT category and the game category, but also for the social category, logistics and other dapp categories.
NFT and market categories hit a record high this year, which indicates that the next year will usher in a year of strong development. Because of new synergies, developers begin to unite to solve problems and contend with competitors. Mergers and acquisitions have become a trend at the end of 2020, and it is expected that this trend will appear not only in the dapp field, but also in the entire blockchain industry.
The data shows that Binance Smart Chain (BSC) should be regarded as a strong contender for Ethereum in the future. The dapps released on its blockchain have attracted widespread attention within a few months with sustained momentum.
In the gaming and NFT categories, Flow has also proven to be a very promising competitor. Looking forward to 2021, we believe that the entry of new users and the retention of old users will become the next challenge, which is also a key indicator of the development of these two just-initiated blockchains.
Finally, although regulation is not the subject of this overview, there is no doubt that it will play a vital role in 2021. As the new regulatory system may affect the way smart contracts operate, the industry is temporarily prepared for the shock. It may even be a comprehensive challenge to the current blockchain infrastructure.
5. Other views
In order to add vitality to the already vibrant 2020 in the field of blockchain and dapp, we asked some partners and the media and interviewed their thoughts on 2020 and the coming year.
Note: The opinions given here only represent the opinions of individual interviewees.
Aleksander Leonard Larsen – Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Axie Infinity
2020 is the best year for Axie Infinity so far. Since the beginning of the year, its user base has grown by more than 700%.
There is no doubt that Small Love Potions is the biggest victory for us, and seeing some players change their lives as a result is a very amazing thing. 2021 should be better for Axie,
Because we have made a major update to the combat system and officially launched the land game, we can expand its scale through the Ronin sidechain. The secret weapon is of course Axie Infinity Shards, which will promote the rapid growth of our products.
Tim Copeland-Decrypt news editor
This year’s feature is that institutions purchase bitcoins in large quantities, mainly through gray-scale bitcoin trust funds and companies such as MicroStrategy. I think that now that so many rich people own so many Bitcoins, then how Bitcoin will develop next will be a very interesting thing.
In terms of Ethereum, although it has made technological improvements and started to move towards Ethereum 2.0, DeFi has exploded this year. How many innovations can be made on this blockchain platform is worthy of our attention.但更要注意的是，大量资金被投入实验性的智能合约中，大量黑客的攻击导致许多投资者蒙受巨大损失，这其中的风险是不可估量的。
事实是这个行业正以惊人的速度发展，似乎没有什么能阻止它。明年可能会看到更多的监管之战。既然有如此多的机构投资者和公司都有比特币的风险敞口，监管机构可能会有更多的理由介入其中。他们今年已经相当活跃，美国证券交易委员会（SEC）打击了ICO，并提出了一些法案，例如《Stable Act》。但这是加密货币领域，所以很难预测将来走向。
Sebastien Borget–The Sandbox的联合创始人兼首席运营官
2020年的数据证明了人们对联网游戏体验的渴望。虚拟世界比以往任何时候都更受关注，仅我是世界（Minecraft）一家公司8月份就有1.24亿活跃用户。但正像Travis Scott的堡垒之夜音乐会有1,200万玩家所喜爱，以及Roblox市值约为80亿美元所展示的这些信息，都传达出这款游戏的潜力。
尽管这些成功都是建立在他们的社区上，但他们并没有给玩家带来任何实质性的好处，因为游戏的经济存在于封闭的闭环里，玩家购买的物品仍然被锁定在内部。到2021年，这种情况将会改变。在2021年初，我们将会推出我们的“play-to -earn”赛季系统，同时我们会推出我们的第一个可玩的测试版本。玩家在游戏的166,464个土地(由玩家和投资者如Atari所有)中赚取的物品可以转移到其他土地进行交易，或出售。由于NFT具有可追踪性和有限性，因此NFT资产也会基于其稀缺性而获得更多价值。
在虚拟世界中，我们可以设计新模型，以有意义的方式推动社区参与并提供更多价值，而我们尚未探索互操作性的领域，这为释放数百万NFT资产的真正价值提供了巨大的潜力！
仅在游戏领域仍有很大的增长空间，围绕治理、staking和DeFi进行了更多试验。基于NFT的加密艺术和游戏上个月的突破性销售数字暗示2021年将进一步增长。
Han Kao – Crypto Briefing的首席执行官兼创始人
如果我用一个词来概括2020年，那将是苦乐参半。全球疫情使数字经济在全球受到重视。随着人们活动和日常工作更多的转移到网上，政府希望为恢复工作提供资金，加密社区中的理论开始引起更广泛的用户的共鸣。
在全球范围内，人们在艰难应对特殊时期的同时，我们可以看到，比特币的理论得到了宏观事件和著名传统投资者的认可，而DeFi也不再只是一个白日梦。
2020年，许多dapp开发者终于可以建立并进行大规模生产试验。随着越来越多的工具和选择的出现，在将来我们应该可以看到更多的开发和创新，不过，我们希望开发者能更多地关注最终的用户体验。
Matthew Lam – OKEx Insights的分析师
意见仅代表Matthew Lam的观点，并非OKEx的观点。我认为2020年是“进步的”。特别是在DeFi、NFT和CBDC方面，我看到了很多开发进展。其中流动性挖矿一直是加密社区关注的焦点。我相信2020年是进步之年，2021年是丰收之年！
在DeFi方面，我认为AMM和价格预言机是值得关注的！与此同时，明年中国将推出DCEP，与华尔街巨头们相互竞争并推出自己的加密交易平台和机构级加密托管解决方案也就不足为奇了!我认为ETH 2.0的推出是一个长期的价格驱动因素，明年ETH价格趋于看涨!
李俊（Jun Li）—— 本体Ontology创始人
对我们来说，今年的一项重要成就是推出了基于本体区块链开发的创新性跨链信用DeFi平台——Wing，与其他DeFi平台不同的是，Wing通过“借、贷、保”三方的良性博弈来提升用户资金使用效率，并在一定程度上降低用户风险。
此外，通过引入基于本体信用评估体系OScore，使用户可通过身份识别、社交身份识别和资产的混合计算，生成自己的OScore分值，以获得信贷额度，实现真正的信用借贷。
到2021年，我们的重点是继续进一步拓展生态应用，帮助更多dapp解决用户去中心化身份ID和数据方面的相关问题。另一个目标是进一步优化产品体验，让用户更方便地使用我们的跨链钱包ONTO、去中心化信用借贷平台Wing和数据产品SAGA。
我们相信，随着越来越多的玩家进入这一领域，DeFi将在2021年之前继续保持上升趋势。这将推动进一步的创新，例如通过和staking和NFT的不同组合，得到进一步发展。
Antonio Madeira – CryptoCompare & CoinTelegraph撰稿人与广告主管
2020年，DeFi成为了万众瞩目的焦点，而比特币也显示出它在各大联盟机构中崭露头角的迹象。我相信DeFi将开始显示出成熟的迹象，而且该领域的其他细分项目也在发展，尤其是NFTs。我认为比特币将继续吸引机构投资者。我相信很多山寨币的利息和价值会继续下降，因为大多数都是没有实际用途的空气币。
孙宇晨（Justin Sun） – TRON首席执行官兼创始人
2020年是不平凡的一年！我对TRON在2020年取得的进展感到非常满意。这期间TRON推出了许多新产品，包括JustStable、JustSwap、JustLend、JustLink、SUN社区，这为TRON的去中心化金融生态系统奠定了基础。
我们将专注于发展和扩展我们的DeFi基础架构。TRON的DeFi项目将以JST为基础，整合去中心化借贷、交易和其他金融服务。然后JST将演变成一个授权的来源，并成为整个TRON DeFi生态系统的重要标志。
我们在DeFi的地位说明了波场TRON的演变，从小规模成功到成为行业领导者和创新者。DeFi将在2021年继续增长，因为它使许多“无银行账户”的人和企业都可以使用金融服务。
我们将继续在TRON上发展稳定币生态系统，并邀请更多受监管的稳定币进入。人们对区块链技术的兴趣持续增长，如今，大型机构比以往任何时候都要多的在对区块链解决方案进行大量投资。
Dirk Lueth – Upland的首席执行官
NFT开始成为主流。2020年还不是NFT的一年。直到今年年底，我们才开始看到这种想法的成熟，NFT产品变得更加复杂，我们看到了非加密爱好者开始关注的早期迹象。尽管有一些NFT已经卖到了几千美元，但这并不能代表大众市场广泛认同的意思。我们可以说，当区块链的日活跃用户达到10万以上时，它就开始成为主流。
2021年，第一批公司将打破这一障碍。然而，最大的问题仍然是，这些新玩家到底是从一开始就拥有区块链“基因”的，还是来自于那些在现有游戏中添加了区块链功能的老牌公司。我相信区块链市场的交易，例如数字艺术品、收藏品和其他资产，将开始转移到多重世界中，因为后者可以创造更好的内容、用户和交易体验。
最后，NFTs的世界将因来自现实世界的数字资产而丰富，例如毕加索的一件作品，模糊了数字世界和现实世界之间的界限。
Dr. Jesse ” aggroed ” Reich – Splinterlands的首席执行官和联合创始人
Splinterlands做得很好。我们在9月份首次达到每月1万活跃用户。我们的新用户以每月10%的速度增长，我们在社交媒体上的影响力也在不断扩大。所有这些都为我们的土地销售成功做出了贡献，其中第一桩土地在21秒内售罄，第二桩土地在30分钟内售罄。我们增加了新的功能，玩家可以在游戏里看到对局、道具等。
为了达到这个目的，我们必须出售游戏道具等资产，最终我们把游戏资产的铸造权交给玩家。土地拥有者将收获资源，建造建筑物、杀死怪物并利用所有这些来制作可用于在市场上出租或出售的战斗中使用的物品和法术。我认为2021年将是比特币和加密货币的牛市，因为我看到加密货币中的每种类型的业务都表现出色。
