ANNUAL SUMMARY: DEFI HIGHLIGHTS

2021 had witnessed an impressive growth in the value of BTC and altcoins, and the total capitalization of Crypto market once reached an ATH threshold of $2,500 billion in November.

THREE REMARKABLE RECORDS (according to Coingecko statistics)

• Total DeFi market capitalization has increased by 7.5 times, from $20 billion to $150 billion (ATH: $174 billion in November 2021).
• DeFi's market share has doubled from 2.8% to an ATH of 6.5%.
• Total Value Locked (TVL) in Defi has increased by 13 times, from 18.7 billion USD in January to nearly 250 billion USD in December.
• The emergence of new EVMs (Ethereum Virtual Machines) - such as Cronos (CRO), Aurora (AURORA), and Boba (BOBA) - has rapidly increased demand for DeFi tokens on these Blockchains.

HUGE CYBER ATTACKS

2021 was also a tumultuous year for the DeFi market, with a total loss of approximately 14 billion USD to cyber attacks targeting security holes of DeFi projects.

• The biggest attack occurred in August 2021 on Poly Network, causing up to 611 million USD in total damage. This is also regarded as the largest DeFi hack ever in cryptocurrency history.
• The platform based on Ethereum Blockchain - Compound ($COMP) - was also a victim of these hackers with 147 million USD worth of token $Comp stolen before the error in the reward contract was discovered.
• Polygon also lost $1.6 million as a result of a technical bug discovered in the Genesis Proof-of-Stake (PoS) contract, which used to put $9 billion in $MATIC at risk.
• Other platforms have faced consecutive attacks in 2021 includes: Cream Finance ($CREAM) with 3 attacks & THORChain ($RUNE) with 2 attacks being exploited via security loopholes.

THE RISE OF ALTCHAINS

• In 2021, users flocked to alternative Blockchains because of the outstanding advantages they offer, such as low transaction fees & fast transaction processing speed which can reach thousands of TPS.
• Incredible growth rate: 10,000% in just 1 year of 4 following coins: Fantom ($FTM), Terra ($LUNA), Solana ($SOL), and Polygon ($MATIC). Fantom marked the highest YTD level among all, with a total of 14,279%.