Crypto Industry Maintained Activity in February Despite Geopolitical Tension (Report)

Dappradar just released its February 2022 Dapp industry report and found steady activity across the blockchain and DeFi space in the face of bearish market conditions. Meanwhile, the NFT market appears to have entered a consolidation phase.

A Quietly Growing Industry

According to the report from DappRadar, interest from governments and financial institutions in web 3 technologies is on the rise. They are finding increasing use-cases for blockchain and various ways to embed it into today’s society.

Specifically, dApp usage is up 385% since February 2021 and is attracting 2.35 million unique active wallets (UAW) per day. Though usage is still technically down 5% from January, it holds remarkably steady given that crypto prices have been falling consistently since November. Last week, Bitcoin fell as low as $34k.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th provided additional cause for concern. However, after a brief drawback, crypto actually appears to be thriving during the conflict. Bitcoin is now trading above $43k, making it more valuable than the crashing Russian ruble.

Regarding NFTs, adoption remains on the rise even though trading volume is trending downwards. On-chain data suggests that unique traders and NFT sales counts have increased by 8% and 2% respectively, month over month. This indicates a growing user base, even though NFT sales shrunk by 28% to just $4 billion from the previous month.

Finally, DeFi adoption trends have seen some of the most significant changes since November’s market peak. Custodial and investment banks including NBY Mellon, JP Morgan, and Mitsubishi UFG have all confirmed interest in both crypto and DeFi applications.

Dappradar even named Canada’s freezing of bank accounts in February as a marketer for a more “decentralized ecosystem”.

“While the potential mass adoption of DeFi might seem far compared to games and NFTs, this type of macroeconomic implications, along with a more mature DeFi ecosystem, can quickly change the narrative,” stated the report.

Moving Away From Ethereum?

The report also highlighted the growth of NFTs, DeFi and Web 3 in ecosystems besides Ethereum. Though Ethereum continues to dominate these domains, alternative chains apparently “attract more users into their networks.” For example, Binance Smart Chain sees an average of 608,000 UAW connected to its network every day. Though impressive, that number is still down 17% from January.

Furthermore, some of the most valuable and well traded NFT collections are traded outside of Ethereum. These include Ronin’s Axie Infinity collection, and NFTs from Crabada – a play to earn dapp on Avalanche. The Avalanche chain saw NFT volume grow 25% MoM.