The gulf between the top projects in the crypto industry and their competitors is increasing

Author: Arthur_0x Translation: Good Oppa, Golden Finance

DeFiance Capital CEO @Arthur_0x, published his insights on the current different tracks of the crypto industry on X (formerly Twitter):

For an industry that resembles a completely free market and most of the content is open source, we observe that the top projects in the crypto market are becoming more and more distant from their competitors than narrowing the gap.

Cryptocurrencies:**

Bitcoin continues to maintain its reign as king, all other cryptocurrencies have become less important, and their market capitalization is now significantly smaller, such as Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Big Zero Coin (ZEC).

Smart contract L1:**

Ethereum continues to lead, while the total valuation of all Ethereum-related tier 1 (such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Linea, Starkware, zkSync, and Mantle) is now higher than all other alternative tier 1 (except Binance Coin (BNB)). Builders generally prefer to build on Ethereum Layer 2 rather than other alternative Layer 1, except for Solana and some Cosmos App chains.

Centralized Exchange:**

For overseas exchanges, Binance is still the leader, but recently lost market share due to legal and regulatory issues, OKX has gradually taken more market share, providing a better product for most traders in addition to liquidity. Coinbase cemented its position as the number one U.S. dollar exchange, gaining more market share than other exchanges such as Kraken, Gemini and Bitstamp.

Decentralized Exchange:

Uniswap continued to maintain its dominance with a market share of more than 70%, and Curve gradually lost market share because there had been a breach that took a while to restore trust. Maverick is the only new DEX that has recently gained some relevance.

Liquidity Collateral:**

Lido continues to maintain and expand its dominance and sees no signs of other liquid proof-of-stake solutions taking away significant market share.

Lending without permission:

Aave and Compound continue to be the two leaders, with Aave’s Total Lock-up Value (TVL) twice as large as Compound’s. Radiant is also interesting, but still attracts less than 15% of Compound TVL. I exclude JustLend because it’s essentially a one-man bank.

Fiat Supported Stablecoins:

USDT continues to maintain its dominance, and the supply of USDC continues to decline and is likely to continue to decline, as USDT is the easiest to convert, and its holders can easily convert it into T-bill earnings. pyUSD is interesting due to PayPal distribution network, but it is still in its early stages, and historically, all successful stablecoins have required a Tier 1 centralized exchange (CEX) as a distribution partner.

Decentralized Stablecoins:**

MakerDAO is the recognized leader here, and the supply of DAI reversed the trend after the DSR (Stablecoin Deposit Rate) increased to 8% and now 5%, and is one of the few DeFi protocols to show growth in this market. Overall, I think other decentralized stablecoins are unlikely to challenge DAI.

Decentralized Derivatives:**

dYdX continues to be the leader with a market share of over 50%, although v3 has not launched new trading pairs and features for over a year. The launch of V4 may widen the gap between it and its competitors. SNX and GMX are the other two leading perpetual contract DEXs with an LP pool architecture.

NFT Marketplace:**

This is an exception compared to other tracks, where Blur managed to take away a lot of OpenSea’s market share and now has more than 60%. This is thanks to Blur’s token incentives, and it is expected how Blur will evolve after the token incentive transaction ends.