2023 Annual Review of the Crypto Market: Public Chain Coins Lead the Rise, Decentralized Finance Develops Steadily, NFT Blue Chip Projects Experience a 50% Slump

At the end of 2023, the crypto market surged after a long period of turbulence, with market hotspots constantly changing and various sub-sectors facing new development opportunities. The craze for inscriptions reignited attention towards public chains; the DeFi market developed steadily, with locked positions fluctuating around $50 billion; the NFT market value shrank by 31%, with several blue-chip projects experiencing a 50% slump; SocialFi became a temporary trend. This article will review the 2023 crypto market from the perspectives of token prices, public chains, Decentralized Finance, NFTs, and DApps.

Token Market Performance

Among the top 100 mainstream tokens by market capitalization, the average rise of the top 30 tokens is 512.75%. INJ has the highest rise, exceeding 2994%, while KAS and RNDR also rose over 1000%. BTC rose by 153%, ranking 28th.

The market capitalization ranking of the top 30 tokens by rise is mostly between 30th and 50th. Among them, 10 belong to the Layer 1 concept, 4 belong to the Layer 2 concept, and 6 belong to Decentralized Finance concept.

Public Chain Data Analysis

The highest average daily active addresses are Tron, BNB Chain, and Bitcoin; the highest average daily transaction counts are Solana, Tron, and Avalanche.

The highest year-on-year increase in active addresses is seen in Avalanche and Solana; the highest year-on-year increase in transaction counts is observed in NEAR, Bitcoin, and Avalanche.

Ethereum remains the public chain with the highest transaction fees for the year, reaching 2.368 billion USD.

Development of Decentralized Finance

Among the top 30 protocols by TVL, Lido ranks first with $20.52 billion, followed by Maker, AAVE, and JustLend.

Protocols with a high TVL rise include new projects like Spark, Blast, EigenLayer, and Jito, as well as Marinade Finance, Benqi, Rocket Pool, and Lido.

Solana and Avalanche occupy a place in the top Decentralized Finance projects.

Overview of the NFT Market

In the top 30 NFT trading volumes, BAYC ranks first with over 1.7 billion dollars, MAYC exceeds 1.2 billion dollars, and Azuki surpasses 900 million dollars.

Among the top 30 projects by NFT transaction price rise, Opepen Edition, OnChainShiba, and Checks all experienced an increase of over 5000%.

The prices of multiple well-known blue-chip projects have slumped by 50%, such as Doodles falling by 74%, MAYC falling by 63%, BAYC falling by 61%, and Azuki falling by 52%.

Development of Gaming and Social DApps

Highly active games and social applications often exhibit short-term explosive growth but lack sustainability.

Most projects completed explosive cold starts at the end of the year, with a significant increase in annual active addresses and transaction counts.

Multiple active applications have appeared on public chains such as Polygon, Ethereum, and BNB Chain.

Overall, in 2023, the crypto market showed characteristics such as public chain coins leading the rise, stable development of Decentralized Finance, a pullback in blue-chip NFTs, and explosive growth in GameFi and SocialFi. Market hotspots are constantly changing, and new growth points are emerging, laying the foundation for development in 2024.