We are here at the end of 2021, this year is considered to be extremely exciting in the crypto industry. In the post-pandemic era, the world’s lifestyles, economic, and thinking models have changed. For example, people in The Philippines generated a good income because of Axie Infinity, while El Salvador recognizes Bitcoin as fiat.
Both NFT and Metaverse exploded in ways that were beyond our imagination. Now, the blockchain industry has entered an era of expansion. In this new phase, it will be helpful to stay open-minded and prepare to face new things to come. Next, we will share with you some of the most outstanding cryptocurrency projects in 2021.
Layer 1 Blockchain
Ethereum (ETH)
With the massive growth of DeFi and NFT, Ethereum is undoubtedly the most adopted public chain project. However, the transaction capability of Ethereum has reached its limit and is unable to suffice the market needs.
On its way to Ethereum 2.0, a PoS consensus system, the London hard fork was upgraded in August 2021; The long-awaited EIP-1559 was launched. EIP-1559 has greatly changed the calculation of transaction fees. Users need to pay basic fees and priority fees – basic fees will be burned rather than paid out to miners; priority fees allow users to prioritize their transactions. However, even when Ethereum is on its way to Ethereum 2.0, the technical capability of Ethereum falls short to meet the current needs of transaction volume. As a result, the focus has been shifted to Layer 2 solution.
Binance Smart Chain (BNB)
The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) accounts for nearly 11% of Total Value Lock (TVL) on DeFi protocols. In September 2021, BSC celebrated its 1-year-old birthday. Currently, most of the GameFi projects were launched on the BSC, so BNB token is considered promising.
Terra (LUNA)
Terra chain is a platform that utilizes fiat-pegged stablecoins to power a global payment system that now has been customized for the Asian e-commerce market. As the native token on the Terra chain, LUNA serves as a governance token and can also be used to create all kinds of stablecoins on Terra Chain to meet the needs of e-commerce.
LUNA surged in price by nearly 17% on 30 November as Terra’s community passed a proposal with a 92% approval rate. This proposal is to “distribute community grants” to developers working under the Rebaz name for TrackTerra’s funds. TrackTerra is a software that allows Terra to import transactions to a taxing system which provides government tax reports. Besides, the TVL on Terra has reached US$12.88 billion (as of 2021/12/06), only to, ranked behind Ethereum and BSC, taking a 3rd place among all layer 1 chains.
Solana (SOL)
When it comes to Solana, everyone will think of Solana as the “Ethereum Killer”. The rich ecosystem on Solana is currently building up, which solves many existing problems of Ethereum. SOL has also reached its all-time high (ATH) recently and is also considered one of the most promising layer 1 chains.
Read more: Solana is raging! Here is why
Polygon(MATIC)
As a layer 2 solution of Ethereum, Polygon solves the problems of long transaction confirmation time and high transaction fees on the Ethereum. We can say that the growth of layer 2 solutions like Polygon is thanks to the massive adoption of Ethereum.
Since its establishment in 2017, Polygon has become one of the best scaling solutions for Ethereum. Recently, many projects launched on Polygon, including the long-existing DeFi project Aave. Aave on Polygon has more than 250,000 transactions in less than two months, and the transaction fees are much cheaper than that on Ethereum. Other DeFi projects such as 1inch is also landed on Polygon. The ecosystem on Polygon has gradually been completed.
Read more: Why Matic is the next token to watch?
Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche was launched in 2020 and is also one of Ethereum’s competitors. Avalanche aims to be faster than Ethereum and has lower transaction fees. Avalanche can process more than 4,500 transactions per second, while Ethereum can only process 13 transactions per second. As a result, the price of AVAX has also risen sharply in a very short time.
NFT
Axie Infinity (AXS)
We cannot argue that the most popular NFT game in 2021 is Axie Infinity. It is believed that the popularity of Axie makes blockchain visible to more people and arouses their interest to understand what blockchain is. The concept of play-to-earn was also started by Axie Infinity. Players in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia earn 1600-2000 USD from this game. The revenues of Axie Infinity surpassed the “Honor of Kings”, reaching 343 million USD in July this year (as of 1 September).
Read more: NFT Tokens – information about ENJ, AXIE, and ALICE
Decentraland (MANA)
Decentraland is a platform based on Ethereum which users can create and experience its in-game content. Decentraland is a dual-token platform, which includes MANA, a fungible token, and LAND, a non-fungible token (NFT). The land owner can create 3D scenes, content, application services, or games in the world of Decentraland. MANA can be used to purchase LAND and virtual in-game items and services.
As the concept of metaverse attracts public attention after Facebook rebranded as Meta, MANA became one of the most popular tokens in 2021, reaching its ATH $4.69 on 3 October. In this year, there was a piece of land sold in Decentraland, at a price of 2.43 million USD, higher than the average real estate price in Manhattan.
THETA (THETA)
Theta Network is the world’s first centralized video network platform that uses blockchain technology to solve the shortcomings of existing streaming platforms. Theta adopts a peer-to-peer network in which everyone can share and utilize their bandwidth and calculations to transmit videos among other users, and they will be rewarded with tokens based on contribution.
The Theta Network mainnet 3.0 was released in June this year. After that, the price of THETA has risen by 358% within a month and the market value has exceeded 13 billion USD. For now, THETA can be traded on centralized exchanges such as Binance and Huobi. It also cooperated with Google and Youtube and received investment from more than 20 investment institutions.
The Sandbox (SAND)
Also benefiting from the popularity of metaverse, the price of SAND has repeatedly hit its ATH. “The Sandbox Alpha”, a new metaverse game, was officially launched on November 29 and will last until December 20. The Sandbox Alpha allows players to make income while playing. According to the announcement, only 5,000 players with “Alpha Pass” can explore 18 different experiences in The Sandbox Alpha and have the opportunity to earn 1,000 SANDs and 3 exclusive NFT rewards.
According to CoinGecko, the price of SAND increased by 757% in November (as of 12/3), which hit $6.51 USD. The potential of the metaverse is considered promising, and The Sandbox will definitely be one of the leaders in this industry.
Read more: Understanding SAND, CHZ, MANA GameFI tokens
DeFi
Aave
Aave is a decentralized lending protocol. Users can borrow, lend, and earn interest on the platform without going through an intermediary. Aave announced on November 5, 2021, that its V3 protocol will support Layer 2 and cross-chain interoperability. This update includes Portal cross-chain operation, allowing users to operate assets among Aave protocols that were deployed on separate chains including Solana, Ethereum, Phantom, and Polygon.
The market cap of AAVE (as of 12/3) is approximately 3.2 billion USD. AAVE reached ATH $632.27 on May 17, 2021. The highlights of this V3 version update are very exciting, and Aave is undoubtedly one of the DeFi projects worthy of attention in 2021.
Uniswap
Uniswap is currently the largest decentralized exchange in terms of trading volume, with a market value of approximately $13.7 billion USD (as of 3 December). Uniswap continues to bring surprises to everyone from V1 to V3. V3 updates include multi-level rates, advanced oracles and also introduce the concept of “Tick”, minimizing the differences between AMM and order book transactions. Compared with Uniswap V2, V3 improved the capital efficiency of liquidity providers.
After the launch of Uniswap V3, the daily trading volume has exceeded other decentralized exchanges. We are convinced that Uniswap will continue to shine next year. According to price forecasts on the Internet, it may reach 61 US dollars at some time between 2021 and 2022. The current price of UNI is $21 USD (as of 3 December).
Curve Finance
Curve Finance is a decentralized stablecoin exchange protocol that adopted an automatic market maker (AMM) model. CRV is the governance token of Curve Finance. The reason why people are bullish about Curve Finance is that it has a better yield when it comes to stablecoins staking programs compared to other DeFi protocols.
Curve Finance is one of the cornerstones of DeFi development. It provides stablecoins liquidity in the entire DeFi ecosystem and offers token holders a lower-risk way to earn passive income.
Chainlink
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network. The purpose of this network is to feed various external data for the blockchain network. Chainlink cooperates with more than 1.4 partners every day in 2021. So far, more than 280 different blockchain projects have integrated with Chainlink, including many GameFi projects such as Infinity Skies.
LINK is the native token of Chainlink, and its price started at $2 USD at the beginning of 2020 and reached $25.26 USD by now (as of 3 December).
With the development of cryptocurrency and metaverse, the emergence of Chainlink is regarded as a fundamental facility of blockchain. Collaboration with Chainlink is almost indispensable for projects that require external data inputs.
Read more: A Brief Introduction to DeFi for Beginners
There are still many projects with great potential that are not mentioned above. Stay optimistic about the development of blockchain in the coming year, stay hungry, and not be foolish, we deeply believe that your hard work in understanding the growth of the crypto industry will eventually pay off.
