A report by Messari researcher Roberto Talamas explores the performance of the most important cryptocurrencies in the “ecosystem wars”. From Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, Binance Smart Chain, DeFi seems to be moving from a “trend” to a relevant sector for any platform looking to take a share of the $55.29 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) on these protocols.
According to Talamas, Polkadot and Cosmos’ assets were amongst the worst performing of the week. With DOT down 27.2% in the 7-day chart and ATOM down 30% in the same period. Cosmos, assets saw losses from 4% to 27% much like Polkadot with 14% to 30% losses in KSM, POLY, AKRO, and other major tokens.
Solana (SOL) was somewhere in the middle like Talamas said. From April 15th to April 18th, SOL saw bullish price action and took 29% gains. At the time of writing, SOL is moving sideways in the 1-hour chart with 8.1% losses during the day following the general market sentiment, but still up 25.2% in a week.
Solana’s ecosystem followed a different trajectory with AUDIO, RAY, HXRO, and others on a downtrend after the crypto market crashed last weekend. AUDIO and KIN have 26% and 28% losses and have the worst performance in this ecosystem.
Binance Smart Chain’s assets saw similar action with PancakeSwap’s native token, CAKE, with 11.3% in profits, at the time of writing and 129% in the 30-day chart. As reported by NewsBTC, CAKE began a migration process and could experience further buying pressure from its updated burn mechanism.
In terms of on-chain activity Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, reported 9 million transactions during yesterday’s trading day. This metric has been increasing at a significant pace since February 2021. Zhao took the opportunity to address Ethereum’s developers.
If you want to target only 10% of the users, then build on E..
If you want 9x more users, then #buidl on #BSC.
Not financial advice. https://t.co/bzyMGlG5WT
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) April 23, 2021
Alpha Finance (Alpha) and Cream (CREAM), as the researcher stated, have underperformed with a 36.7% and 46.9% loss, respectively. As seen below, XVS and BNB represent the contracts in BSC’s ecosystem with a 26% loss and 3% profit respectively.
Ethereum, Still The Undisputed King
Ethereum’s assets in DeFi have poor performance as well. With major assets like UNI, YFI, SNX, SUSHI with up to 28% losses. Only MakerDAO (MKR) was able to stop the bears and yield a 58% return in the same period. This Maker sits at the top of DeFi, closely follow by Compound, with a TVL of $9.03 billion.
Additional data provided by Messari points to an increase in the lending sector during the first quarter of 2021. Lending protocols Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO dominated the sector which stood at an all-time high with $25 billion. However, Compound process the majority of outstanding loans with a 53% market share.
Ethereum reached an all-time high before the crash, as trading volume for the spot and derivatives market was running hot. At the time of writing, ETH sits at $2.377,42 with 5.2% losses in the 24-hour chart and 42% gains in the 30-day chart. Volatility could still have a major role in the coming days’ price action.
