DeFi – Reflections on 2021 and the Road Ahead. It's fair to say that crypto has brought us many surprises over the last year.
23 Jan 2022, 08:00
DeFi – Reflections on 2021 and the Road Ahead
It’s fair to say that crypto has brought us many surprises over the last year. Many expected DeFi to go mainstream in 2021, and while major corporations and institutions started to take an interest in Ethereum and the DeFi ecosystem running on top of it, there’s little doubt that NFTs stole the spotlight.
In fact, while NFTs pervaded mainstream culture for the first time, many of the earliest DeFi protocols stalled and entered their own bear market even as other crypto assets soared to record highs. One factor behind this might be the rising gas fees on Ethereum, as well as traders seeking exposure to ETH over application-level governance tokens. Nonetheless, while many DeFi tokens traded sideways, the total value locked in the industry surpassed $100 billion on Ethereum and $250 billion across the broader ecosystem.