The second quarter was an absolute rollercoaster but, overall, the positive trend in blockchain continues. Despite the crash in crypto prices, users continue to be involved within the industry, especially in DeFi and NFTs. New trends like the multichain paradigm appear to have a positive impact across networks.
Among blockchain protocols, the competition continued to heat up. During Q1 we saw Binance Smart Chain (BSC) establishing itself as a true DeFi referent thanks to dapps like Pancakeswap which enables yield farming with a very friendly user interface. With the announcement of its own marketplace, Binance will be now looking to replicate the DeFi success story within the NFT space.
It was Polygon who made the bigger strides in terms of adoption during this past quarter. Ethereum DeFi dapps such as Aave, Sushi, Curve, and several others have now been extended to Polygon, thus it isn’t surprising to see the sidechain grow by 13,000% year-over-year.
Ethereum itself continues to be as relevant as ever. Despite the striking drop in the ETH price, the network’s TVL surpassed $53.3 billion which is a 1% increase from the previous quarter. For instance, Aave, Uniswap, and Curve together increased 70.1% quarter over quarter.
On the NFT side, despite a cooldown in popular collections and marketplaces like NBA Top Shot and Rarible (-16.67% and -7.52% unique active wallets from the previous quarter respectively), Ethereum’s new set of NFTs, like the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and VeeFriends, was positively received. The BAYC collection, which launched at the end of April, has attracted more than 100 UAW on average per day with almost $44 million USD in total sales volumes in June alone.
New manners of yielding extra value from NFTs are already in place. Virtual lands and in-game items are helping the NFT market back on track. Play-to-earn games like WAX’s Alien Worlds and Ronin’s Axie Infinity onboarded more than 250,000 unique active wallets each, solely in Q2.
Polygon, the sidechain, did not only make the biggest leap in terms of usage, but it has also reached an important milestone. With more than 73,000 daily unique active wallets, the network has surpassed Ethereum in Q2 2021. The number spiked by 13,000% year-on-year and was 845% higher when compared to the previous quarter.
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Source: DappRadar