• BTC fell near $40,000 level

On Wednesday, Kazakhstan experienced unprecedented political unrest due to protests against a sharp fuel price hike. The country experienced an internet outage, causing Bitcoin network hash rate to tumble 13.4%. (Kazakhstan is the second-largest country in the world regarding Bitcoin mining hash rate). The bad news from Kazakhstan caused fear among investors. It is a possible reason for BTC price to fall.

In addition, the Federal Reserve’s December FOMC session re-confirmed plans to start cutting the amount of bonds it is holding after the central bank begins raising interest rates. Higher interest rates create selling pressure for leveraged investors. Bitcoin shed 6% of its value and crypto’s global market cap fell 6% in the 24 hours after the news. Stock prices also fell more than 3%. 

• Layer-1 competition

$NEAR reached ATH at $17.28 on Tuesday (January 4) then fell back to around $14-$15. What contributes to the increase of $NEAR price is the increase of cross-chain interoperability with UST integration and Synapse Protocol integration.  Other layer-1 joined the rally such as Fantom, Cosmos and Harmony. 

Cosmos Theta upgrade in Q1 2022. One highlight of the upgrade is the NFT Module that enables simple management of NFT identifiers, their owners, and associated data. This would include an extensible base module for extensions, including collectibles, custody, provenance, and marketplaces. Interchain Accounts that allows users to manage accounts across multiple blockchains, provides locking and unlocking mechanisms across IBC-enabled blockchains, and adds support for custody providers to service any IBC connected blockchain through a standard interface on the Hub.

According to the Delphi Digital report, Fantom surpassed Avalanche in daily transactions at the start of 2022. Daniele and Andre Cronje are teaming up to build new projects on Fantom. No detail about this project is available at the moment. But we could expect it is a DeFi project since Andre Cronje is a founder of Yearn.Finance, while Daniele Sestagalli is the person behind  Abracadabra.Money, Wonderland.Money, and Popsicle.Finance.

FUSE is a layer-1 blockchain whose popularity surged recently. FUSE differentiates itself as a mobile-centric blockchain focusing on mass adoption and mobile payment. Early investors such as HsakaTrades (allegedly) market buying $2m worth of $FUSE. 

• DeFi's TVL is on the verge of a new ATH

As 2022 gets underway, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector of the cryptocurrency ecosystem appears to be gaining momentum in what could be an echo of the bullish market seen in early 2021. 

Data from crypto market intelligence firm Messari shows that over the past 30 days, five out of the top 10 DeFi protocols have seen their tokens post double-digit gains. This is in spite of the struggles that Bitcoin has faced, a dynamic that usually places bearish pressure on the wider crypto market.

Top 10 DeFi assets 

Source : Messari 

A deeper dive into the data shows that Aave (AAVE), Curve (CRV) and Spell Token (SPELL) have outperformed a majority of the field. In the case of AAVE, the Dec. 28 introduction of real-world assets (RAW) to the protocol represented the next advance in DeFi capabilities. Users will now be able to borrow against tokenized forms of traditional assets such as real estate, cargo, freight invoices and payment advances. 

Curve and Abracadabra Money's integration of stablecoins across the DeFi ecosystem have elevated their status as integral components of DeFi and this is reflected in the price growth of their native tokens.

Further evidence of the building momentum in the DeFi space can be found by looking at various metrics within the ecosystem. These metrics include active users and total value locked. According to data from Dune Analytics, the number of unique users in DeFi has continued to climb higher over time and is currently at a record high of 4,304,478 unique wallets.

Total DeFi users over time. 

Source: Dune Analytics

• Total Value of ETH in 2.0 Deposit Contract skyrockets to an ATH of 8.9 million ETH

The quantity of Ethereum (ETH) deposited has hit an all-time high of more than 8.9 million ETH. The invested ETH is worth about $28 billion at today's price. On-chain details from the cryptologic company, Glassnode shows 

Source: Glassnode 

The number of the staked ETH despite being at an all-time high is still below its all-time high dollar value. The contract achieved its peak dollar value back in November when Ether also reached an all-time high price of $4,870. According to Etherscan, the highest dollar value of the ETH 2.0 contract is about $39 billion.

With this milestone, however, over seven percent of all Ether in circulation is now staked in the ETH 2.0 contract and waiting for when the network will migrate to proof-of-stake (PoS). The migration to PoS is anticipated to happen this year after the blockchain first started the journey in 2020 with the launch of the Beacon chain.

Vitalik Buterin, the CEO of Ethereum, said the anticipated transfer is roughly 50% done. He stated this when talking of their system's annual goals. He went on to state the coming step of the update. The merger should transition the Ethereum system from a proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake model.

The Ether mainnet will combine with the PoS Lighthouse Chain to signal the union. The system will profit from this since it’s more power-saving. By adopting indexing, the spike, the next update stage will add scalability abilities to the system.