In the first quarter of 2021, we’ve seen lots of excitement from the non-fungible token (NFT) market, creating increased interest in NFT technology, digital art, and virtual worlds. At the same time, the DeFi ecosystem continued to lead the industry. During the first three months of this year, the blockchain industry proved it’s more than just DeFi.
Source: Google Trends
High Ethereum gas prices continued to be an issue for all verticals as multiple DeFi, NFT, and game dapps announced their expansion to other chains. The dominant narrative in the sector remained the emergence of the multichain paradigm.
Ethereum contenders were active as ever. Binance Smart Chain (BSC) proved to be the largest competitor to Ethereum during Q1. Several top DeFi dapps moved or announced an expansion to BSC. NFT and game dapps were more in favor of choosing Polygon or Flow.
The first quarter of 2021 was marked with record-high sales in the NFT market. Both new and existing NFT projects hit unseen sales. While the highest transaction volume was generated by NBA Top Shot, the most memorable was an art piece by Beeple which was sold for more than $69 million.
Finally, the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem remained the largest in terms of total value locked (TVL), doubling its TVL in the first three months of 2021. On the other hand, the BSC DeFi ecosystem TVL grew 30 times during the same timeframe.