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2022 Q1 Encryption industry report: DeFi plate TVL decreased by 16%; NFT quarterly turnover hit a record high

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In addition to cross-chain and interoperability expansion, the report points out that the future of DeFi innovation may lie in the derivatives track.

OKLink Insights | 2022 Q1 Crypto Industry Report

原文来源：欧科云链

TL; DR

Macro & amp; BTC

2022 Q1 Crypto is mainly influenced by two external factors: monetary policy & AMP; Geopolitical, increased risk of uncertainty caused bitcoin prices to dip twice. The overall market value of Crypto decreased month-on-month, Stablecoin accounted for a small expansion. Despite the price drop, institutions and public companies have not stopped increasing their holdings of bitcoin. Short signals appear, trading platform Stablecoin net outflow.

The etheric lane & amp; The male chain

Many indicators of ETH are lower than BTC in Q1, and ETH/BTC=0.1 is still a goal that needs to be continued efforts. The monthly destruction of ETH continued to decline after hitting a record high in January, as the annual rate of inflation dropped by 64% due to the implementation of EIP-1559. On-chain activity fell, ETH miners' revenues fell 30 per cent month-on-month and Gas prices fell to an eight-month low. 2022 is a key year for ethereum's transition to PoS, with the number of ETH 2.0 deposit contracts pledged exceeding 10 million. Non-evm public chains are competing to launch EVM compatible versions, accelerating the multi-chain ecological prosperity, and ethereum TVL's dominant position continues to decline.

DeFi

The total TVL of the DeFi sector closed at $181.8 billion, down 16% quarter-on-quarter from 2021 Q4, far more than the declines in bitcoin (-1.23%), Ethereum (-1.17%) and Crypto's overall market cap (-2.27%). Lido performed well and Aave V3 made important innovations. Compared with the overall decline of DeFi lock-up volume, Layer2 showed a trend of rising against the trend.

NFT

NFT Q1 hit a record high of more than $11 billion, up 40% month-on-month. BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, CryptoPunks and CLONE X are the Top5 in Q1 NFT transaction volume in 2022. NFT market gameplay is complicated, integrating meta-universe, GameFi, DeFi into a new trend. From airdropping NFT to airdropping 20 Token, Yuga Labs continues to lead the NFT market boom. OpenSea is still the leader, but more competitors want a piece of the giant's pie, and the NFT market landscape is changing dramatically, with aggregators gaining popularity.

I. Macro market overview

In "Indicator Framework for Bitcoin's Future Direction", we list the "outside factors" that influence Bitcoin: inflation, fiscal policy, regulation, etc. To varying degrees, these factors continue to influence bitcoin's performance this quarter.

In the first quarter of 2022, Crypto was mainly affected by two external factors: monetary policy & AMP; Geopolitics, as a result of both, sent bitcoin prices bottoming on January 24 and February 24.

Data Source:OKLink

Monetary policy mainly refers to the interest rate hikes and balance sheet adjustment actions of the Federal Reserve and other central banks from the end of 2021. Bitcoin Q1 bottomed out at $32,989, down 20.86% from January 1, due to negative sentiment in the market ahead of the Fed meeting (January 26).

Another factor was the outbreak of military conflict between Russia and Ukraine on February 20. Since the outbreak of the conflict, NATO countries have adopted a series of sanctions against Russia, and Russia is a big exporter of natural resources and agriculture, resulting in the supply shortage of crude oil, wheat, natural gas and other commodities, and the price of oil in Italy and other European countries is more than 2.2 euros /L.

Soaring energy and agricultural prices feed into higher costs for other products in the supply chain, which are ultimately reflected in the consumer price index. In January and February, the YEAR-ON-YEAR growth rate of THE CPI index in the US hit a new high of 7.5% and 7.9% respectively. The increased risk of uncertainty caused bitcoin to dip for a second time in late February, to $34,322.

With the interest rate hike is certain, the situation between Russia and Ukraine tends to negotiate, and the negative sentiment is gradually digestion. Finally, the monetary policy meets market expectations. Bitcoin price of 2022 Q1 begins to rebound after two bottomed out, reaching the highest level of $48,200, and finally closes down 3.33% at the end of the first quarter of 2022.

, & have spent Do Crypto assets outperform the stock market?

In Q1 of 2022, both Crypto and the traditional stock market fell first, then rose and finally closed down. The S&P 500 fell 5.5% and the Nasdaq fell 9.07% in the first quarter, while Bitcoin fell 3.3% and Ethereum dropped 12.9%. The markets were very similar.

Since the start of the bull market in 2021, bitcoin prices have shown some correlation with the performance of U.S. stocks. Q1 in 2021, Q1 in 2022 S&P 500 (S& The correlation coefficient between P500 and BTC was higher, reaching 0.96 at one time, and maintained a high correlation in most of the time.

2022 Q1 BTC Price vs S&P 500, Tradingview

2021 Q1 BTC Price vs S&P 500, Tradingview

Bitcoin & NBSP;

1. The overall market value of Crypto decreased month-on-month, Stablecoin accounted for a small expansion

We divided the assets in Crypto into Bitcoin, Ethereum, Stablecoin, and altcoins, and calculated their market capitalization as a percentage of the total Crypto market capitalization. For Stablecoin, we selected the top five tokens in terms of market capitalization and trading volume: USDT, USDC, BUSD, UST and DAI, which together account for more than 95% of the total market capitalization of Stablecoin.

Data source: OKLink

As the market weakened, the overall market value of Crypto decreased from 2021 Q4, down 2.27%. But Stablecoin's market value is rising steadily due to high demand for Stablecoin.

The bull market started at the end of 2020. After the bull market peaked in May 2021, the market value of Bitcoin dropped from 68% to 40% in September 2021. Subsequently, the market capitalization of several major digital currencies remained relatively stable, which continued from Q4 in 2021 to Q1 in 2022. However, in this relatively balanced situation, we observe two changes:

1）随着 1 月币价触底回升，几种主流 Token 集体回涨，产生吸血效应，Altcoin 的市场份额被挤占；

2) Stablecoin market share has increased relative to 2021 Q4 (especially after price peaks).

Data source: OKLink

2. Institutions continue to add to their bitcoin holdings

While bitcoin prices fell in early 2022, that hasn't stopped institutions and public companies from adding to their holdings. It can be seen that the value of bitcoin is not only optimistic by the mainstream in the long term, but also can be used as an important asset composition of the company's balance sheet. The largest holder of bitcoins among public companies is MicroStrategy, which started hoarding bitcoins in August 2020 and held 129,218 BTC worth $5.8 billion as of Q1 2022, which even exceeds MicroStrategy's market capitalization. That's three times the number two tesla.

Data source: OKLink

Not only listed companies, but also Terra's Luna Foundation Guard, an important public chain in the Crypto community, is also stockpiling bitcoin. LFG bought 35,000 BTC in just one month, worth $1.6 billion. LFG hopes that by incorporating Bitcoin into UST's endorsement system, it will become an important support for UST's market value.

Data Source:OKLink

3. Short signal: trading platform Stablecoin net outflow

Stablecoin, as the funds in the Crypto circle, flows into the trading platform as buying, while bitcoin flows into the trading platform can be understood as selling. The comparison of the two trends can be seen as the current long-short situation in the chain of the market.

The amount of funds is one of the most important indicators to judge the heat of a market. The increase of admission funds indicates that the assets in the market are sought after, and the withdrawal of funds indicates that market participants are bearish or think that the risks brought by uncertainty are higher than the potential benefits. OTC is the gateway for Crypto market to exchange with external capital. However, due to the restrictions of policies, regulations and confidentiality agreements, it is difficult to obtain the list and address of OTC brokers, resulting in the actual volume of OTC transactions cannot be counted. Therefore, we turn our attention to data transparency on the chain, from stablecoins in centralized trading platforms with large pricing power to estimate the amount of bitcoin and Ethereum funds.

In the Crypto circle, we can buy other Crypto assets through USDT and other stablecoins, that is, USDT and USDC and other stablecoins mark the price of other assets with their own value (DOLLARS), So Stablecoin is a source of funding for other crypto assets.

USDT+USDC+BUSD together account for 80% of the Stablecoin market, and the three account for more than 90% of the total circulation on ethereum, TRON, and BSC chains. Therefore, the statistics of the inbound and outbound volume of USDT, USDC and BUSD trading platform addresses on the three chains are of great reference significance for the estimation of bitcoin and Ethereum funds.

Data source: OKLink

根据 OKLink 链上大师后台数据统计，从 2021 年 1 月 1 日至 2022 年 3 月 31 日，交易平台地址 USDT、USDC、BUSD 净流入 185.67 亿美元，峰值为 240.22 亿美元，占到它们新增供应量的 19.3%。

2021 年 11 月 11 日比特币第二次到达牛市高点，而后上涨无力转为放量下跌。从链上数据我们发现，在这之前交易平台中的 Stablecoin 余量逐步走低，连日出现净流出的情况，这也许就是拐点来临前的信号。

进入 2022 年 1 月，交易平台内 Stablecoin 数量开始减少，资金短缺、购买力减弱，并在 1 月 23 日到达 Stablecoin 在交易平台存量的低谷，币价也在之后一天达到 Q1 最低点。此后，Stablecoin 开始快速流入交易平台地址，7 日增幅达到 13.2%。主流 Token 的价格也随即出现反弹，比特币和以太坊的 7 日增幅分别为 10% 和 9%。

After the middle of February, Stablecoin in the trading platform again showed net outflow of Stablecoin for several consecutive days, resulting in a shortage of funds. Therefore, attention should be paid to risk prevention.

4. Bitcoin outflows from trading platforms slowed

自 2021 年牛市第一轮顶端出现后，中心化交易平台地址中的比特币一直在向其它钱包地址转移。2022 Q1 从交易平台地址累计转移了 38.93 亿美元的比特币，相比 2021 Q4 的 83.21 亿美元净流出节奏有所放缓。另外，2021 年 11 月 11 日牛市顶端和 2022 年 2 月 11 日阶段顶端，这两个时间点前比特币加速从交易平台流出。我们猜测这些「Smart BTC」一部分是通过线下 OTC 的方式转走套现的。

Data source: OKLink

5. ASOL: Pay attention to the shipping trend of long-term holders

The ASOL(Average Spent Output Lifespan) measures the Average Lifespan Spent over a single day. Although ASOL reflects the balance between short-term and long-term chip consumption over a period of time, we are more concerned with the change in the attitude of the holders behind long-term chips towards the market. The higher the value of ASOL, the longer the long-term holders are handing over their chips, which may be a profit selling behavior, and the market has the risk of peak. For example, from April 2021 to August 2021, ASOL showed an obvious upward trend, indicating that more and more medium - and long-term chips were quietly transferred.

Data source: OKLink

宏观层面，在货币政策&地缘政治两个圈外因素带来的不确定性风险的作用下，BTC 在 2022 Q1 出现了两次放量下跌。然而短期的下跌并没有动摇机构对比特币长期看好的判断，他们仍在继续增持。链上数据方面，一季度比特币流出交易平台的速度放缓，Stablecoin 的流入拉动了币价的回升。接下来的 Q2 我们仍将关注买盘和卖盘的力度，以及通过 ASOL 来观察长期持有者的出货动向。

3. Ethereum & AMP; The male chain

1. Ethereum vs Bitcoin

2022 is the year ethereum plans to transition to PoS, and this new upgrade represents a key step forward for Ethereum to become a world-class financial settlement layer and DApp infrastructure.

However, as the blockchain with the highest "actual usage potential", it fell over 10.74% to close at $3,282 in Q1 2022, mainly due to the macro environment and the failure of Ethereum itself to move out of its own market.

Ethereum's total market capitalization reached $402.3 billion as of Q1, down 7.80% from the start of the year. Still, Ethereum is worth more than the precious metal palladium, as well as global names like Samsung, Procter & Gamble and LVMH.

Data Source:OKLink

ETH/BTC fell to 0.072, down 9.39% from the start of the year. Compared with the recent high of 0.088 on December 9 last year, ETH/BTC is down 18.18%. It seems that ETH/BTC to 0.1 is still a goal that needs to be worked on.

Ethereum's total network computing power continued to rise, reaching 960.23 TH/s, up 7.32% from the beginning of the year, compared with bitcoin's 15.75% growth over the same period, which is related to ethereum's upcoming transition to PoS.

Data Source:OKLink

2. Monthly destruction of Ethereum is down, and the annual rate of inflation is down 64%

As of Q1, Ethereum has destroyed 2.0480 million ETH, or about $6.7 billion, since the implementation of IP-1559.

Data Source:OKLink

Without the implementation of EIP-1559, the annual additional issuance of Ethereum is expected to be 4,916,600, and the annual inflation rate is 4.20%. Thanks to EIP-1559, the annual additional issuance of Ethereum is reduced to 1,781,100, and the annual inflation rate is 1.52%. This means that the implementation of IP-1559 has slowed ethereum's inflation rate by nearly 64%.

Data Source:OKLink

Ethereum set a new monthly record of 398,100 in January 2022, surpassing the previous high of 361,800 in November last year, which may be related to the NFT boom in January, when OpenSea transactions hit a record high of nearly $5 billion. It is up 45.21% from the previous high.

The increase in destruction brought ethereum's net issuance down to 22,900 in January, before monthly net new additions picked up in February and March as on-chain activity declined.

Only 118,600 pieces were destroyed in March, down 70.21% from January, while the monthly net circulation reached 309,000 pieces.

Data source: OKLink

OpenSea's NFT transaction took the lead with more than 230,000 ethereum destroyed, followed by Uniswap with 128,200 and Stablecoin USDT with 94,100.

Data Source:OKLink

3. Miners' revenues fell 30 per cent month-on-month and Gas prices fell to a near eight-month low

The decline in on-chain activity can also be seen in miner revenues, fees and Gas charges.

Q1 Ethereum miners earned $3.896 billion in 2022, down 30% from last year's Q4 quarter. Still, Q1 Ethereum miners earned more than bitcoin miners, who earned $3.487 billion.

Data source: OKLink

We can further observe the impact of fee income on miner income through FRM, i.e., "total miner income/miner fee".

In the past Q1, ethereum's average FRM was 15.24, meaning that fee income accounted for only 6.56% of ethereum miners' income. Last year, the average FRM was 6.45, meaning fee income accounted for 15.50% of ethereum miners' annual income, which means less on-chain activity. The miners' fee income plummeted.

Data Source:OKLink

The average FRM for Q1 was 89.64, meaning that fee income accounted for only 1.12% of miners' total revenue, compared with 2.52% last year, suggesting that block rewards are critical to bitcoin's security at this stage.

Ethereum Q1's on-chain transaction fees were $2.482 billion, down 42.79% from last year's Q4, but up 48.01% from last year's Q1.

Data Source:OKLink

Ethereum Gas prices continued to fall during Q1, with the lowest daily average Gas price falling to 27.16 Gwei, and Gas prices for March fell back to late July-early August 2021 levels.

Data Source:OKLink

4. Big things to look forward to in 2022: ETH 2.0

Google Trends data recently showed that searches for "Ethereum Merge" hit a record high, as well as "proof of stake (PoS)" and "Ethereum 2.0 release date", which also saw a spike in searches recently. ETH 2.0 (now known as Consensus Layer), which revolutionized the Ethereum network, is tugging at the heart of the market.

As of March 31, ETH 2.0 had received 10,989,186 ETH, accounting for 9.30% of ethereum flux, according to OKLink.

Data Source:OKLink

In Q1 2022, the number of newly pledged ETH is 2,154,448, which is the third highest quarter of newly pledged ETH. Compared with 1,017,200 of Q4 last year, the number of newly pledged ETH is 111.80% quarter-on-quarter, but only 48.31% year-on-year, which is similar to the strong development of Ethereum in Q1 last year. Quarterly gains of more than 160%.

Data Source:OKLink

Currently, 346,587 addresses have been pledged, and the total number of verifiers has reached 341,123. Q1 has increased by 68,350 and 70,757, respectively.

In terms of beacon chain node distribution, according to Eth2 Nodewatch data, among 9,230 beacon chain nodes, The United States ranks first, accounting for 30.59%, Germany ranks second, accounting for 17.56%, and France ranks third, accounting for 9.97%.

As of December 3, 2021, we have given the node data for the first anniversary of the Ethereum Beacon chain, and the concentration of nodes is much higher than at that time.

If no major accident cause delay, we will soon have a sharply in scalability, security, and sustainable development ability to upgrade the etheric, and decentralized staking service launched liquidity scheme based on ETH 2.0 can be applied to DeFi, NFT scenario, both reduced the threshold of the little user participation, It also solves the need for liquidity, so the pledge market is considered to be a market with unlimited potential.

Lido and Rocket Pool, as an Ethereum 2.0 pledge protocol platform, can meet the needs of small users to participate in pledge with any ETH, without building a node to gain profits.

At present, Lido's TVL has exceeded $18 billion, ranking the second among all DeFi agreements, with a total increase of 222% in the past 30 days, narrowing the gap with the no.1 Curve. Rocket Pool has more than 1,000 verified nodes for ETH 2.0.

5. Non-evm public chains accelerate to embrace EVM, and ethereum'S TVL dominance continues to decline

Ethereum successfully broke out in the face of a number of "Ethereum killers". With the rise of DeFi Summer, its on-chain ecosystem developed rapidly, but was limited by high gas fees and congested networks. Low cost public chains running Ethereum EVM, such as Polygon, BSC and Fantom, became very popular.

Non-evm chains that used to be challengers to Ethereum are racing to release EVM-compatible versions, such as Polkadot's addition of Moonbeam in January. Near launched Aurora last May; Cosmos Ecology's EVM network, Evmos, which was due to launch in mid-January, may now be delayed to April; And Neon Labs, Solana'S EVM project, which is scheduled for phased release on the main network in Q1 and Q2.

It is not hard to see these public chains changing their original vision, on the one hand, by adding EVM compatibility, providing a new entry channel for users and assets; On the other hand, integrating a widely accepted standard also brings more composability, accelerating the prosperity of the multi-chain era.

While Ethereum still holds the majority of the market share in DeFi and NFT, it has been shrinking over time since May last year as challengers have emerged.

Data source: DeFiLlama, OKLink Mapping

In Q1, Ethereum's TVL dropped from 62.34% to 55.37%, to $124.77 billion as of March 31. Terra, Fantom, And Near were the beneficiaries of Q1 ethereum value spillover, with TVL growth of 60.32%, 46.12% and 64.29%, respectively.

Data source: DeFiLlama, OKLink Mapping

1) Fantom

Fantom's current popularity is inseparable from AC, which has repeatedly posted content related to Fantom's public chain on Twitter. Inspired by the Curve phenomenon, AC saw the potential of having a liquidity model combined with veToken and protocol, and launched Solidly on Fantom in January.

In order to better channel Fantom, AC says Solidly's native Token cannot be purchased on the open market and it will be allocated to the top 20 agreements based on TVL on Fantom's public chain. This means that regular users need to hold tokens for FTM as well as FTM's top 20 items.

Affected by this, the top projects on the Fantom chain began to fight for governance, and TVL soared during this period. Between January 1 and January 25, Fantom's TVL climbed 161% from $4.9 billion to $12.8 billion.

But Fantom's TVL dropped $3.35 billion, or more than 27%, in three days as AC announced its exit from crypto. The top three projects in the chain, Multichain, Solidly and Solidex, saw their TVL drop by 12%, 46% and 48% respectively.

By the end of March, the number of unique addresses on the Fantom network totaled 2,658,320, up 76.94% from the previous month. In the same period last year, there were only 43,954 unique addresses.

Recently, Fantom is still trying to eliminate the impact caused by AC's departure. It can be seen that since AC's withdrawal in early March, Fantom's TVL has decreased by 45.57% to $6.57 billion at the end of March.

2) Cosmos& Terra

Influenced by Web3 and the multi-chain trend, cross-chain technologies or interoperability protocols, such as Cosmos, which had been pseudo-requirements in the last year or two, are finally enjoying a second life by improving infrastructure through technological innovation and supporting ecological development.

Cosmos-based Terra, whose eco-Stablecoin UST market cap has surpassed $16 billion, is 14th in the network, jumping eight places in a quarter.

The Cosmos ecosystem app chain has taken shape, with 28 IBC linked app networks and a market value of $85.05 billion.

而搭建在 Cosmos 生态上的项目达到了 263 个，涉及基础设施、DeFi、NFT、Web3、社交、隐私、跨链、交易平台等多个细分领域，其中发行了 Token 的 49 个 App 和服务的总市值为 1,694 亿美元。

The top three projects in Cosmos ecology are Terra ($40.29 billion), TerraUSD ($16.61 billion) and Crypto.com& NBSP; Coin ($12.11 billion).

For now, most of the projects on Cosmos are still in the early stages of development, and their own EVM compatibility center, Evmos, needs to be launched soon, which could take the multi-chain ecosystem to the next level, and we'll be keeping a close eye on Cosmos ecology.

3) Near

Near has been courting developer construction over the past year and is reported to be the third fastest growing smart contract platform for developers in 2021, behind Terra and Solana. Over the past 3 months, Near ranked 16th in code update frequency.

Near's native DeFi TVL has seen lock-ups of over $220 million, up 64.29% in Q1, while Aurora, a near-based EVM expansion network, saw its TVL grow 28.38% in Q1.

During Q1, Near's new accounts reached 3,067,882 and the number of new contracts reached 11,408.

It should be mentioned that Near ecology also suffers from unbalanced development. The DeFi project funds of its main network are mainly concentrated in Ref Finance and Meta Pool. Its EVM compatibility program, which has only grown in recent months, has surpassed Near mainnet ($229 million) on TVL ($787 million).

4) Waves

Additionally, TVL from Waves, a veteran Russian public chain, has entered the top 10 of the public chain charts with over $4.5 billion.

As the largest indigenous blockchain network in Russia, Waves is an open blockchain protocol and development tool set that brings together Web3.0 applications and decentralized solutions based on proof-of-interest consensus.

The initial catalyst was the narrative around "Russian Ethereum". Far from being affected throughout the russia-Ukraine conflict, Waves has had a stellar record. Throughout Q1, Waves' TVL increased 245.04% and its coin price increased 275% in Q1.

According to the Waves developers, the growth of the Waves chain is not due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but rather its public chain itself has been upgraded from 1.0 to 2.0 with significant functional improvements, including compatibility with Ethereum EVM and support for one-click migration of smart contracts on the Ethereum chain, resulting in ecological openness. Enhanced interactions with Ethereum and the EVM compatible chain have given Waves a new dimension to its growth. As TVL grew, the app on Waves began to attract more liquidity and developers.

Of course, the imbalance in the Waves ecosystem is also prominent, with TVL's no. 1 (Neutrino) and No. 2 (Vires Finance) projects accounting for 67% of Waves TVL.

Four, DeFi

Since entering the 2022 Q1, considering the increasing uncertainty of the external environment of the Crypto circle, Crypto's overall market value has declined, and DeFi's TVL has declined. As of March 31, the total TVL of DeFi plate closed at $181.75 billion. The 16.4% quarter-on-quarter decline from 2021 Q4 is much larger than the decline in bitcoin (-1.23%), Ethereum (-1.17%) and Crypto's overall market value (-2.27%).

The top three DeFi lock-up protocols are Curve ($19.54 billion), Lido ($18.84 billion) and Convex Finance ($15.05 billion), accounting for 10.8%, 10.3% and 8.3% of the total TVL, respectively.

Data Source:OKLink

1. Hot projects: Lido performs well, Aave V3 makes important innovations

受市场整体行情影响，锁仓量排名前 10 的 DeFi 项目的原生 Token 价格和 TVL 在 2022 Q1 整体出现下跌，它们中只有 Lido 和 2022 年的新项目 Stargate 的 Token 价格上涨，跑赢了以太坊，而锁仓量方面以太坊链整体锁仓量下降了 19.3%，但 Lido、Pancake、Stargate、AnySwap 出现上涨。

Data Source:OKLink

Note: * represents the new project of 2022 Q1

Next, we'll take a closer look at Lido and Aave V3, two of the most notable projects in Q1 2022.

1) the Lido

Lido is a platform built on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain. Users do not need to lock in ETH, but can also get pledged rewards and 11 tokens stETH to participate in other services in the DeFi market. In a short span of & have spent 3 Within months, Lido In order to & have spent 180.6 & have spent $100 million. Total lock-up volume (TVL) hit a record high and exceeded NBSP; AAVE, Convex Finance, etc., at & NBSP; DeFi Ranked the second in the project, close to Curve.

Data Source:OKLink

Lido stands out because of four characteristics:

(a) Ethereum 2.0 approaching, flexible way to invest

As Ethereum 2.0 approaches, the total amount of ETH pledged by ETH 2.0 increases significantly. During Q1 2022, total pledges rose by nearly 20%. As a result, retail friendly Lido, which participates in ETH2.0, gets a piece of the action.

Users who want to participate independently in the Ethereum 2.0 pledge need to pledge 32 integer multiples of ETH, which is very unfriendly to retail investors. Lido, on the other hand, is more user-friendly in terms of the amount of ETH pledged. Users can pledge any amount of ETH to participate in Ethereum 2.0.

Data Source:OKLink

(b) Support more public chains

By supporting Ethereum 2.0, Terra, Solana and Kusama, Lido can integrate many header protocols and issue Token derivatives corresponding to the public chain to provide liquidity for equity holders' assets.

(c) Flexible exit mechanisms

Due to the better depth of SteTH-ETH liquidity pool and fewer sliding points, the interest-bearing stETH asset certificate can be converted into liquidity (ETH) at a lower cost in Lido.

(D) Staking+DeFi

The user does not need to lock ETH, but can also receive the pledge reward, obtain the Token stETH, and then use stETH to participate in other DeFi protocols (such as Curve, AAVE, and Convex Finance) to earn more benefits.

2) Aave V3

As an established project in DeFi, Aave has its unique highlights. One of them is the "lightning loan", which is the first unsecured loan option in DeFi and allows users to borrow and loan with 20 cryptoassets, giving users more choices. The second option is to borrow through Aave, which allows users to switch between fixed and variable rates.

Aave launched the V3 upgrade on March 16, focusing on improvements in user experience, risk management and capital efficiency to consolidate Aave's leading position.

The biggest innovations of Aave V3 lie in :(a) the online Portals function to realize cross-chain interoperability, and the cross-chain lending can be realized through access to third-party cross-chain Bridges, and liquidity on different chains can be easily and effectively integrated; (b) eMode efficient mode was launched to reduce mortgage rate and improve asset efficiency for assets with strong price correlation; (c) The introduction of segregated markets to facilitate the coming online of new collateral, allowing for risk isolation while lowering barriers to entry; (d) Introduce new functions for clearing, governance, gas optimization, multi-token incentive, etc.

这次 V3 升级在 Avalanche、Ethereum 和 Polygon 部署外，Aave 还在 Arbitrum、Fantom、Harmony 和 Optimism 4 个不同的区块链上推出。自 V3 升级以来，DeFi 借贷协议 Aave 的治理 Token AAVE 上涨了 65%，总锁仓量（TVL）增长了 15.3%。

Data Source:OKLink

2. Layer 2: Goes against the trend

According to statistics, in 2022Q1, the total TVL of Layer 2 increased from 5.77 billion DOLLARS to 7.31 billion dollars, with an increase of 26.6%. Compared with the overall decline of DeFi lock-up volume, Layer2 showed a trend of rising against the trend. The rapid growth of Layer 2 is closely related to the influx of capital and the adjustment of technical solutions behind it.

Currently, there are four major technical solutions: Optimistic Rollup, ZK Rollup, Plasma and Validium. Among them, ZK Rollup was the most adopted expansion solution, while Optimistic Rollup was the most favored by funds.

OKLink finishing & amp; drawing

3. The bridge across the chain

随着越来越多新公链的上线，用户进行资产跨链的需求也同步增长。如何能够快速、安全且低成本地将 Token 从一个区块链转移到另一个区块链，这种最基础也是最重要的功能需求就可以通过桥来满足。

顾名思义，跨链桥是允许将 Token 或任意数据从一个链传输到另一个链的而建立的连结，从而实现网络之间的互操作，而资产跨链本质上是跨越不同记账体系的价值转移过程。

The cross-chain mechanism is mainly divided into locked casting mode, two-way capital pool mode and comprehensive mode. The differences between subdivisions and cross-chains mainly lie in the different verification logic, consensus mechanism and degree of decentralization.

1) Lock casting mode

The lock casting mode is also known as BURN& Mint mode -- Cross-chain bridge locks assets in the original chain and issues "redeemable certificates" of assets in the original chain in the transfer chain, that is, cross-chain assets, thus completing the cross-chain transfer of asset value. Such cross-chain Bridges are also often supported or directly developed by new chain officials, so they are often referred to as official Bridges.

Wormhole has become a major cross-chain bridge in the Solana ecosystem and has expanded its business to Terra and BSC chains in addition to Ethereum and Solana. It relies on a set of trusted verifiers to ensure that the assets locked on the original chain match the encapsulated assets on the target chain, which is known as lock-casting. However, the cross-chain generated Wormhole encapsulated assets, rather than Solana native assets, are highly centralized and pose security risks.

Source: DeFiLlama

2) Two-way capital pool mode

The third party (acceptor) bridge chooses to set up capital pools on both sides of the bridge in advance. One side collects a large number of original assets of the original chain, while the other side collects cross-chain assets that have been issued by the official bridge.

When users cross the chain through the third-party bridge, they only need to deposit the original assets on one side and directly take out the cross-chain assets cast by the official bridge in advance on the other side, so that the cross-chain work can be completed immediately. This mode is mainly to bypass the locking casting process and improve the efficiency of cross-chain.

Stargate, developed by cross-chain INTEROPERABILITY protocol development team LayerZero Labs, is a two-way pool model that maximizes capital efficiency by providing a "unified pool of liquidity for native assets." Instead of using separate, fragmented pools of liquidity for specific networks and trading pairs, Stargate shares liquidity across chains, with all chains sharing access to each other's liquidity.

Data Source:OKLink

3) Comprehensive mode

Comprehensive mode is compatible with the two-way capital pool mode and locked casting mode. For example, the decentralized asset cross-chain bridge Multichain(formerly Anyswap) first uses the flow pool to exchange anyToken, and after the Router contract tranlinks anyToken to the target chain through lock casting, Finally, the anyToken of Mint on the target chain is converted into the original asset on the target chain to achieve cross-chain.

Data source: OKLink

However, as the scale of cross-chain assets has grown, there have been numerous incidents of security at cross-chain Bridges: $624 million stolen from Ronin, $611 million stolen from Poly Network, $326 million stolen from Wormhole, and so on. Therefore, storing huge wealth in a single cross-chain bridge contract is not a good solution, which not only leads to a single point of failure, but also introduces great risk to the target chain.

Five, the NFT

1. NFT quarterly turnover hit a record high

The total NFT transaction volume of Q1 2022 has a significant increase, reaching 11.397 billion USD, compared with 8.143 billion USD of Q4 last year, up by nearly 40% quarter-over-quarter, and 2,156% year-on-year increase compared with 505 million USD of Q1 last year.

Data Source:OKLink

Over the past three months, NFT's average daily transaction price was $1,785, down 26% month-on-month and 48% year-over-year, respectively. In terms of the average number of daily transactions, NFT transactions in Q1 this year were frequent, reaching an average of 70,569 transactions per day, an increase of 83% compared with Q4, and a staggering 3,178% year-on-year increase.

2. Top 20 NFT Overview

OKLink NFT chart data shows Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) tops the list with $567 million in quarterly transactions, followed by Yuga Labs' IP, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), The total deal was $430 million.

A second dimensional wind with Asian ancestry. Azuki, as a new project launched on January 12, succeeded in filling the gap of Oriental aesthetic style in the market after the fashion brand fire in Europe and the United States, jumped to the third position in the ranking, with a quarterly transaction volume of 421 million DOLLARS.

CryptoPunks, a veteran NFT project, ranked fourth with $299 million in total transaction value. CLONE X, the first NFT avatar for Nike's RTFKT hair brand, ranked fifth with $296 million in quarterly sales.

In the 2022 Q1 NFT Top 20 list, 7 projects are new releases in 2022 Q1, accounting for 35%. The first of the seven is PhantaBear, which launched on January 1, 2022, and the latest is Invisible Friends, whose Mint date is February 23.

Based on OKLink's NFT average daily price data, we found that the average daily price ring comparison as of December 31, 2021 (if Q1 is new in 2022, The top five gainers were MFERS (2,772%), Azuki (1,019%), Creepz Genesis (515%), NFT Worlds (466%) and CLONE X (334%), and seven items with negative average price increases.

Data source: OKLink

3. Popular project

1) Bored Ape Yacht Club continues to set the trend

In the whole quarter, the average transaction price of BAYC, the star project of Yuga Labs, changed from horizontal to rising. Since the launch of BAYC, its Web 3.0 "Ape Universe" has undergone three stage changes.

Data Source:OKLink

The first was the introduction of MAYC, the Mutant Ape. Officials set about creating 20,000 mutants, 10,000 of which were airdropped to BAYC holders and another 10,000 were designed as a mechanism to introduce new people into the boring ape ecosystem.

The second was when BAYC parent Company Yuga Labs announced the acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP and part of NFT. CryptoPunks, as the OG of NFT, has its unique historical position. Yuga Labs' move is also a successful acquisition of "arch-rival" to further expand its kingdom.

The third was $APE. After all, the price of apes is too high for ordinary users, and the fragmented NFT is easy to decouple from the actual price. If market participants are optimistic about the follow-up development of apes, they can choose to buy $APE, and they can also enter the APE community through $APE to achieve the goal of growing and benefiting together with the project.

In addition, Yuga Labs plans to start virtual land sales and launch a game called MetaRPG this year to jointly build Yuga Labs' metasurverse plan, in which $APE will act as a medium.

From BAYC, BAKC, MAYC and Benji Bananas to the deployment of P2E games, Yuga LABS has initially completed the transition from simple PFP to more complex ecological governance. Instead of expecting a Web 2.0 culture and the arrival of trendsetting giants to change the status quo, Yuga Labs shows us the potential and power of native crypto culture and the strong cohesion that comes from deep community engagement throughout.

BAYC Celebrity Holders list, Yuga Labs Deck

2) Azuki airdrop new NFT

Azuki is a new project launched on January 12, but its Q1 transaction volume reached $421 million, ranking third in OKLink NFT transaction list, and it is known as the "Boring ape of the East". Since the launch, the floor price of Azuki has also climbed all the way up to 18.48 ETH on March 31, up 1,748% from 1 ETH in Mint.

Data Source:OKLink

Azuki has an obvious Japanese style, and the powerful art team behind it has integrated almost all the elements of anime characters beloved by anime fans into Azuki. Its emergence broke the monopoly of European and American fashion brands and filled the gap of Asian aesthetics in the NFT market.

Azuki's goal is to "create the largest decentralized meta-universe brand built and owned by the Azuki community," so it plans to launch fashion casual wear, Azuki 3D, and a wider audience of Azuki games centered on the trendy brand.

Based on Azuki's metasurnal goals, the Official Beanz Official (Something Official) NFT series was airdropped on March 31st, and its floor price has increased to 3.15 ETH, with a 24-hour transaction volume of 3,245 ETH, Jump to number one in OpenSea.

As of April 5, 4,812 Azuki holders held 17,208 Beanz Official NFT, which exceeded the ratio of two for one Azuki that was officially set at the time of the airdrop, Whether Azuki's big players continue to stock up on Beanz, or the blue-chip Web3 players who have long favored this one acquire and hold it, it can be seen that the market continues to be optimistic about Beanz and Azuki.

3) GameFi + SocialFi = STEPN?

STEPN is a GameFi/SocialFi hybrid, and its Move to Earn model has quickly gained a large audience both inside and outside the community.

STEPN's explosion is inseparable from first-mover advantage and price inflation. From Axie (Play to Earn) to Monaco (Write to Earn) and STEPN (Move to Earn), there is no essential difference inside, but switching track format always brings freshness and attracts a lot of eyeball in a short time.

与 Axie Infinity 一样，STEPN 也同样拥有两种 Token ，应用内置 Token GST 和治理 Token GMT。GST 无限供应，主要通过玩家在单人或后台模式下运动时产生；GMT 总量 60 亿枚，在运动鞋达到最高等级（30 级）后，玩家可以获得。入场需先花费 SOL 买 NFT，再由 NFT 产出 GST。

拉盘是最好的宣传方式，STEPN 的治理 Token GMT 的暴涨，也是 STEPN 爆火的助推器。从上线交易平台的 0.14 美元开始，GMT 一路飙升至 3 月 31 日的 2.04 美元，涨幅达到了 1,357%，总市值近 12 亿美元。另外，其背后强大的投资方，如红杉资本、Alameda Research 等也是众多投资者跑步入场的原因。

Total official App downloads have exceeded 1 million, and daily NFT transactions have exceeded $10 million. In addition, according to the official disclosure of STEPN, the total trading volume of Q1 is about 446 million USD, and the profit exceeds 26 million USD. The profit will be used for the buyback and destruction of GMT in the secondary market. In order to avoid price fluctuations, this process is expected to take one month.

4. OpenSea is still the leader, but a new challenger is coming

In the first month of 2022, OpenSea recorded nearly $5 billion in monthly transactions, surpassing its previous high of $3.4 billion in August last year, with 540,000 monthly transactions, also a record high.

February was worse than January, with nearly $3.6 billion in deals, but it was still the second highest month on record after January. By early March, however, the world's turmoil was starting to filter through to the NFT market, where trading volume plunged to $2.489 billion, down 50 percent from January.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

1 月 10 日，LooksRare 上线，以治理 Token LOOKS 和交易手续费为诱饵，向 OpenSea 发起用户和交易争夺战。1 月 LooksRare 的交易额达到了 111.02 亿美元，占全球主流 NFT 市场 65%，但其交易量却不足 OpenSea 的 2%。

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

In terms of monthly transaction users, OpenSea's monthly transaction users topped 540,000 in January, while LooksRare's monthly transaction users were 40,300, 8% of OpenSea's.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

It turned out to be a game of "cleaning trades" because LooksRare gave $LOOKS to traders who bought eligible NFT, known as "trade mining". This can be seen from the comparison of transaction volume and transaction number of users, which is inflated per capita, which is also a feature of LooksRare's false prosperity.

As the market expansion heated up, LooksRare's vampire deal with OpenSea exploded the market, but the team's late-stage cash out drew a lot of attention, and the churn resulted in a backlash, which was directly reflected in the $LOOKS price.

This trend can also be seen in the market share changes of NFT's major platforms. In October-December last year, OpenSea accounted for more than 90% of transactions on the major platforms, but since January of this year, thanks to the emergence of LooksRare, OpenSea's share of the market quickly fell below 40%, but after February and March, due to problems with new challengers and a gradual downturn in the market, OpenSea regained some of its lost ground in March and regained more than 50% of the market by volume.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

In February, another NFT trading platform, X2Y2, was launched, abandoning "trading mining" and replacing it with "mining as it hits the shelves". X2Y2's total trading volume as of March 31 was $25.96 million, a big gap between OpenSea and LooksRare.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

From Feb. 16 to March 31, X2Y2 averaged 796 daily traders, LooksRare 1,050 and OpenSea 55,514. It can be seen that X2Y2 is still a low challenger and does not pose a threat to OpenSea in the short term. Most users still choose OpenSea as their preferred platform, but X2Y2 has a certain impact on LooksRare, which is also a new platform.

However, in Q1 2022 alone, OpenSea faced two fierce challengers, and it is expected that in the coming quarters, more competitors will try to take market share from the giant, and the competitive landscape of the NFT market will change dramatically.

, & have spent The new trend under the upsurge -- NFT aggregator

OpenSea and LooksRare only allow users to buy one NFT at a time, and if users want to buy some quality items in bulk, they need to order them one by one, which means "scanning" can be tedious.

If you want to buy 100 NFT, you have to execute 100 transactions, which not only consumes a lot of Gas, but is also slow, and once someone notices you are scanning, they may also "steal" your favorite item in the process.

With the birth of the new NFT trading platform, the NFT market has also appeared a split, how to buy multiple NFT on multiple platforms has become a strong demand of the market, so NFT aggregators emerged, among which Gem and Genie are the two leading aggregators.

In general, GEM is more in line with the characteristics of NFT trading platform. It combines OpenSea, Larva Labs' CryptoPunks market, Rarible, LooksRare, NFTX, NFT20 platforms, Users can browse the NFT series according to transaction volume, transaction volume change and floor price. They can view more specific data, such as real-time trading, casting activity, large holdings, distribution of holdings, etc. They can also get a better experience than a single NFT platform. If no platform fee is charged, up to 39% Gas fee can be saved. Add desired NFT to shopping cart for checkout, etc.

In terms of update speed, Gem will take appropriate reference to users' requests and feedback on the official website for iteration products, such as bulk sale NFT, safe mode (protect users from losing money due to transaction failure), scan mode, rarity, etc., are already online, and are currently working on adding "transfer" features, casting prices, etc.

In contrast, Genie does not have access to the entire NFT market, nor does it display basic NFT data, and you still need to review data from other NFT markets from time to time when you use Genie. Genie features NFT bulk sale and purchase functions, and currently supports five platforms, namely OpenSea, Larva Labs' CryptoPunks market, Rarible, as well as NFTX and NFT20, one less than Gem.

Although Gem was introduced later than Genie, its sales volume is already significantly higher. Gem's transaction volume was $506 million and Genie's $376 million.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

The number of new daily users of Gem has also increased since its launch in January, and the number of users has been higher than Genie since February.

Source: Dune Analytics, OKLink Mapping

Recent on-chain data shows that big players also prefer to use Gem to buy NFT in a cluster. For example, an anonymous buyer buys 10 MAYC series NFT on Gem platform for 235 ETH. Shenyu purchased 20 Azuki NFT at 374.9 ETH through Gem platform...

Six, outlook

The Minutes of the Fed's March meeting also sent a strong hawkish signal that a 50 basis point hike would be more appropriate in the future, after a number of senior Fed officials, including Chairman Jerome Powell, were "on the edge".

In addition, the pace of the current shrinking of the balance sheet will be faster than that of the previous one. It may start as early as May, and it plans to reduce the balance sheet by as much as us $60 billion and US $35 billion of MBS per month, paving the way for us $1.1 trillion in a year.

In addition, the new round of sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia may cause global financial markets including digital currencies to show a volatile situation in the next few months, in order to absorb the impact of "interest rate hike, shrinking balance sheet + sanctions".

It is also reflected in the on-chain data: since the end of March, the trading platform Stablecoin has shown a net outflow trend, indicating that investors in the coin circle have made a prediction of bad news.

Data source: OKLink

Heterogeneous chain competition, ethereum dominated, multi-chain ecological parallel has become a foregone conclusion, not only DeFi, GameFi, NFT and so on. Therefore, as the carrier of value flow, cross-chain bridge is definitely a market demand. Although there is no optimal solution at present, cross-chain connectivity is still facing an impossible triangle -- namely expansion, security and decentralization, but we firmly believe that more excellent projects will continue to emerge. IBC, Stargate, and the unreleased Chainlink CCIP are all worth looking forward to.

At present, DeFi protocols such as DEX and Lending only achieve multi-chain deployment, but in essence, the liquidity and capital pool between different chains are fragmented. In the future, it is expected to see cross-chain combination play, cross-chain DEX and cross-chain Lending, and optimize towards capital efficiency and user experience. Users no longer need to switch back and forth between different RPCS. We think AAVE V3 [cross-chain lending] is a breakthrough.

In addition to cross-chain and interoperability expansion, we expect the future innovation of DeFi to be on the derivatives track. Spot trading has been basically perfect, mainly AMM, supplemented by order book mode, and combined with Dex aggregator, forming a stable tripartit. However, derivatives, as an indispensable part of Finance, are only dYdX and Perpetual contracts, and other structured products. Ribbon Finance and Friktion, for example, are still relatively small and need to be further expanded.

7. Progress of OKLinK's important products & NBSP;

1. The browser

1）上线 BSC 浏览器，支持搜索、区块、地址、BEP20/721/1155 Token ，支持合约认证；

2) Online USDT aggregation browser, supporting ETH, TRX, Omni three chains;

3) Multi-dimensional label display of online address, users can know the entity to which the address belongs with one click, whether there are risks, position transactions and so on, which is more convenient for users to read on-chain transactions;

4) Transaction Action of ETH browser address details page is launched to facilitate users to directly read Transaction information;

5）ETH、OEC、BSC 浏览器支持一键添加链/ Token 至 MetaMask、MetaX；

6）ETH、OEC、BSC 浏览器 Token 详情页已实现解析并展示 NFT 存储方式。

2. Chain on the master

1) Launched the "workbench" function, and achieved a breakthrough in data services from closed to open, from "read only" to "read and write". With the help of [Workbench], users can not only realize value discovery through function calculation of existing indicators and create countless indicators suitable for personal ideas, but also create charts to make horizontal comparison of existing indicators and find the mutual relationship and market influence of different indicators.

2) Upgrade the function of "Custom Kanban" to independently establish data kanban in line with personal data needs and analysis habits, saving the time for users to find data indicators. Every time you open the master "Custom Kanban" on oko Cloud chain, users will see the latest real-time data concerned with indicators;

3) The function of "data broadcast" was launched, which became the "on-chain alarm" for users through 7*24 hours non-stop push of on-chain data, which greatly saved users' time and energy, and helped users grasp on-chain changes and market dynamics in the first time;

4) 79 new indicators have been launched, covering 133 independent indicator types and 6 public chains.

3. Chain on the eye

On-chain Tianyan Pro2.0 hit the line on January 10, aiming at the "four difficulties" of blockchain crime, the on-chain Tianyan Pro2.0 has achieved "three innovative breakthroughs".

Technological innovation -- for the first time, block chain + big data technology is integrated to integrate tens of billions of addresses and transaction records on the chain. Key technologies such as machine learning, data modeling, similarity algorithm and feature engineering are used to bring reliable data information to the police through scientific and technological innovation, greatly saving time and police cost. Function innovation, build chain data monitoring, analysis, through the service and governance, to achieve the "data visualization", "real-time monitoring 24 hours a day", to "intelligent analysis", "a key card call service", "database", and other functions, greatly reduces the difficulty of probing when police deal with cases of digital currency, help police quickly learn to solve cases; Investigation innovation -- Summarize the actual combat experience of version 1.0. Pro2.0 combines the analysis and judgment experience of hundreds of previous cases, integrates technical investigation and combat method and blockchain big data, accurately tracks the "address involved", "transaction characteristics" and other information, so that the data can make a professional voice. It has realized intelligent tracking, one-stop analysis and forensics of digital currency cases.