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If you’ve been following the crypto news closely this year, you couldn’t miss the myriad of twists and turns related to Ethereum. Decentralized finance, launch of Ethereum 2.0, and thousands of new users. The year has been rich in emotions for the prince of cryptocurrencies.
The DeFi movement was not, strictly speaking, initiated in 2020. In fact, it slowly began to make a name for itself throughout 2019. As a reminder, DeFi represents all applications that offer financial services in a decentralized manner (dApps).
Despite a timid start in 2019, the craze accelerated in 2020, with the multiplication of the number of protocols and the influx of funds on these protocols.
Thus, in the space of 12 months, the funds involved in the DeFi ecosystem increased by a staggering 2,200%, from $600 million to $13.74 billion at the time of writing.
Among the DeFi protocols that have been the most talked about, we find MakerDAO, Uniswap, Compound, Aave or Synthetix. In parallel with the growth of DeFi, the number of dApps users on Ethereum has also exploded.
A striking example is the MetaMask wallet, which passed the one million monthly users mark. A figure that gives a foretaste of the number of Ethereum dApps users.
According to data provided by State of the Dapps, the number of users on Ethereum has almost tripled this year. Indeed, in April 2020, Ethereum had approximately 31,000 daily users, compared to 86,000 at the time of writing.
Over the last few years, we have seen the emergence of numerous projects presented as “Ethereum killers”. These new blockchains with smart contracts promise to surpass Ethereum on all levels.
However, the year 2020 was finally the year of consecration for Ethereum. Indeed, still according to State of the Dapps, Ethereum is by far THE most used smart contract blockchain, far ahead of EOS or Tron.
Whether it is for the number of applications, users or transaction volume, Ethereum is ahead of the competition on almost all fronts.
2020 also saw the launch of the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 update. Planned for many years and postponed many times, it was finally launched on December 1, 2020.
However, this event only marks the launch of the first phase: the beacon chain. As a reminder, Ethereum 2.0 is an update in 3 steps, which should take place over the next 2 to 3 years.
Nevertheless, the launch of this first phase remains a major step for the Ethereum community and augurs a bright future for those to come.
As we have seen, 2020 has been an eventful year for Ethereum. If the DeFi continues its growth and that phases 1 and 2 of Ethereum 2.0 are not postponed, the year 2021 could be just as prolific for the network.