Blockchain industry development review 2021

Blockchain has attracted public attention since 2017 when Bitcoin reached a temporary peak of almost $19,500 and experienced a long-time price bubble afterward until the COVID-19 pandemic caused an inevitable economic shift towards the digital world in 2020. Not only cryptocurrencies but also other blockchain-based technologies, such as DeFi, NFT, and GameFi, have been put under the mainstream spotlight and experienced considerable growth. In 2021, the critical turning point of the blockchain industry, the total cryptocurrency market value reaches nearly 3 trillion USD according to CoinMarketCap, and the NFT trading volume has exploded from $1.3 billion in Q2 to $23 billion in Q4 2021 as estimated by DappRadar.

2021 will be remembered as the year that introduced NFTs to the masses.

Investors still bullish on the underlying technology

I believe blockchain-related business will remain a hot topic in the coming years for two simple reasons. First, cryptocurrencies and NFTs serve as necessary infrastructure in the virtual world. As Facebook rebranded itself as Meta last October and committed to building a composite universe melding online, virtual, and augmented worlds, more and more real-life scenarios are going to take place in the ‘Metaverse’, including work, social activities, and entertainment. Blockchain is an essential supporting technology to deploy decentralized networks: cryptocurrencies serve as the digital-native current medium of value exchange and storing, and NFT is a perfect solution to proving ownership of digital assets. Regardless of regulation and compliance issues, the upcoming virtual world will eventually create a parallel digital economy system and boost the demand and growth of blockchain technology.

Secondly, apart from the volatile prices of cryptos, the adoption of decentralization technology among enterprises effectively depicts its sustained potential to improve traditional systems. Research by Blockdata shows that the number of top 100 companies by market capitalization using blockchain grows from 2 in 2014 to 81 in 2021, including market leaders like Amazon, Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, PayPal, etc. The use cases cover transactions and contract privacy, supply chain management, authentication, financing, and so on, accelerating the maturity of the infrastructure and the application in the B2B scenario. Thus, the decentralized blockchain network in the long term is very likely to become the fundamental protocol of the next Web era on which companies operate and provide their services.

Who can win this game

In short, the development of the blockchain sector in 2021 has seen an unprecedented acceleration with the global value of venture investments surging from $3.1 billion in 2020 to $21.3 billion and continuing to grow. However, despite the market potential and growing number of blockchain startups, the founders who can solve the main challenges to this industry, from my point of view, are more likely to survive: (1) lowering entry barriers and bringing in newbies; (2) creating effortless cross-chain user experiences; (3) building the most inclusive and compatible protocol.

What I find interesting recently 👀

• Blocto | startup
  A Taiwan-based company that provides cross-blockchain smart contract wallet service and recently announced funding from Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner and serial investor. (The #StartupReview series in which I will share startups I like and review the company profile from a VC perspective is soon to be published. Stay tuned 🤓)

• Skyweaver | P2E NFT game
  I started to play Skyweaver, a trading card game (can be regarded as blockchain-version Hearthstone), in mid-December and enjoyed the gaming experience very much (even better than Hearthstone). If you are fond of brainstorms as entertainment, join me and perhaps you can win the Silver/Gold cards which are NFTs and can be traded in the marketplace. This game is currently at the 'Soft Launch' stage and an invite code (i.e. access code - provided below) is required for signing up.

Salut! I’m Hung-Ching, a B-school student based in France/part-time co-founder/aspiring venture capitalist. I’m currently working on an in-school startup WOOKALA. If you are an art-lover - definitely go check our website and Instagram. Thanks for reading my blog. I’d love your feedback, feel free to find me on LinkedIn or tweet me @HungChing_HSU.