Crypto lender Celsius Network said Monday that it needs more time to resume its operation by stabilizing its liquidity and further pausing activities on Twitter.
The company’s announcement came one week after the suspension of withdrawals, swaps and transfers, citing extreme market conditions, which resulted in rumours of insolvency.
Celsius Network shared its updates on its blog, saying the company would continue “working with regulators and officials regarding this pause and our company’s determination to find a resolution” as a priority since its inception.
In addition, the network said it would focus on tackling challenges by further pausing its activities on Twitter and AMAs so that the platform can fulfil its responsibilities to its community.
Switzerland-based Nexo AG has shown its intention by offering a package to Celsius to acquire “certain remaining qualifying assets, mainly collateralized loan receivables secured by corresponding collateral assets, brand assets and customer database of the business” due on Jun 20 at 4:30 a.m.
Crypto institutions are facing headwinds from crypto winter and the stock market’s poor performance over the past weeks. Hong Kong-based crypto lender Babel Finance was the latest lending platform to acknowledge it was suffering from volatility.
Major tokens were also performing unstable over the weekend. The price of Bitcoin, the largest crypto, fell below $20,000 for the first time since November 2020.
Bitcoin was trading at around $20,521, up over 10% against the dollar during the Asia trading on Monday, bouncing above the $20,000 level, while Ethereum was trading at above $1,117 during the intraday, up more than 15%.
Hong Kong-based start-up PANGU, a metaverse agency appointed by Sandbox, is helping clients to enter into the metaverse by providing asset creation and branding consultation services. The company said it is building various business models, including the play-to-earn (P2E) model for clients to support its growth.
Kenny Ng, the founder of PANGU by Kenal (left) believes the Metaverse would be the tendency of the future; and Zero Chung (right) thinks that providing customied solutions to clients is key advantages of the company.
Interior designer in the Metaverse
Stepping into the office located at Kowloon Bay, Eastern Kowloon in Hong Kong, a mini botanical garden has been set up at the base’s main entrance. Agave americana, more commonly known as Century Plant, and other various potted plants are growing under the care of the owner. The vibe of the working environment and its inspirations also come from the green belief.
PANGU, the visual design production company established as its affiliate of the Kenal Group, has hired over 20 staff and still rapidly expanding. Kenny Ng, Founder of PANGU by Kenal, established his team around eight months ago. Ng shared his experience with Blockchain.News, “just like other start-up companies, we are gradually expanding our scale, starting from building up our products with designers, then developing business and marketing teams at the following stage.”
Furthermore, the company plans to establish community management in the long term, PANGU’s Ng shared his ongoing business plans to Blockchain.News.
This company has connected with the Sandbox since last November in 2021 and was just appointed as the official TSB Metaverse agency in April, which is rare for HK-based startups in the global market. According to PANGU, the agency raised its capital independently followed by grants from Sandbox’s “game maker fund”, which aims at connecting with the next generation and the tendency of web 3.
These services support its business growth by providing a one-stop solution, including land purchase with development, offering marketing strategy, digital assets creation and branding collaboration for clients from online to offline.
Kenny Ng, Founder of PANGU said:
“As an agency of (the Sandbox), we wish we are able to provide complete solid service with own our resources, instead of outsourcing works to other parties, which is not practical. So, that would be our direction in practice.”
“Our partnership (between Sandbox and clients) is more like property developers, and we play our role as the builder and property management unit as a contractor, offering consultations for clients on how to develop their own lands and promote their branding through online and offline activities,” Chung added.
Projects such as Metagreenor clients from Standard Character are part of their key clients, these corporate firms have entered into the Metaverse through the Sandbox. In the project of Metagreen, PANGU said they are mainly responsible for purchasing land and its development, non-fungible token (NFT) creation, but also partnerships from online to offline, including partnerships with NFT gallery, NGOs and running other community channel management, such as Discord.
The founder told Blockchain.News that “in this early stage of the Metaverse, most clients are still discovering and exploring what they can do after investing in these virtual lands. Some clients prefer to shape a revolutionized image and identity in the virtual space, while some clients prefer to promote their branding traditionally,” adding that “we are working together with clients to find out a potential and possible (virtual) identity by helping them to build its ecosystem in this space.”
The Chief strategist suggests customized design and creative solutions for various clients would be one of the advantages for the company to remain competitive in the industry, as the company is not just serving local customers but serving globally.
P2E Development
Meanwhile, inspired by environmentally sustainable beliefs, the company also transformed itself into a game developer, trying to bring different scenarios to this virtual space.
Earlier this month, the game developer virtually launchedan NFT drop project, connecting with a gamification-based metaverse space. Featuring ecology conservation and environmental sustainability, the company is introducing a gamification-based platform for players to explore another virtual world– Ecoland.
The Ecoland is a diversified ecosystem, featuring environmental and educational theme interaction for players, according to PANGU. The company said its assets creation is fully designed from scratch by itself. Their voxel characters are unique with high quality.
Operating through the Play-to-Earn (P2E) model, the platform has associated with the Sandbox, players can earn SAND tokens or win some exclusive NFTs after completing several missions in the game in exchange for upgrading their equipment and tradings.
In addition, the gaming platform also wishes to escalate its landscape in the Metaverse, bringing more interactive ways in different scenarios, such as “Play to learn”, to deliver educational messages to players by completing some mini-games in the space. “We are also cooperating with several environmental NGOs, so we will donate serval amount to NGOs we cooperate with when customers buy specific NFTs from them. These objectives would help us fulfil social responsibility obligations,” Chung added.
Regarding crypto adoptions, PANGU said currently it would only use tokens for necessary transactions or trading among campaigns during the execution stage, such as paying gas fees during the minting of NFTs. “The company might use tokens in the future as the incentive for staff, encouraging them to stay tuned in the crypto space,” Ng added.
Previously, the company participated in the event the Artaverse, to increase its exposure to the industry.
PANGU discloses the company is expanding regional and overseas markets during Q3 and Q4 this year.
Promising Potential Value in the Metaverse
According to the latest researchfrom McKinsey & Company, the study suggests the preliminary value of the Metaverse it creates in the space could grow up to $5 trillion by 2030.
E-commerce would be the largest driving force, which takes up to $2.6 trillion, followed by virtual learning ($270 billion), advertising ($206 billion) and gaming ($125 billion) sector.
Meanwhile, the blockchain-related application and scenarios on the Metaverse are still expanding.
Author of “Snow Crash”, Neal Stephenson, who created the term “the Metaverse” nearly 30 years ago, has recently announced a new project named LAMINA1, according to online media outlet Decrypt.
The project was described as a “free metaverse”, a blockchain-based network for building the open Metaverse. “We’re going to have all the facilities of a full layer one (blockchain) to help support and encourage the creators who want to build with us. That is my and Neal’s strategy—align everything around getting the best thing built and getting everybody all the tools they need to build what they want,” Vessenes explained.
Imagination of Virtual Land
The land issue in Hong Kong remains one of the most challenging issues in the city. With limited space and high demand, physical land has become one of the rarest resources for housing, real estate and other property developments.
Since the arrival of Metaverse and virtual lands in recent years, the bond and chemistry between these two topics have the caught attention of investors who wish to join the virtual space instead of trading physical land. More local entities or corporate firms in Hong Kong, as a result, foresee the potential benefit and investment opportunities in the Metaverse. However, these firms still need a builder’s help to construct the Metaverse infrastructure.
Apart from projects coordinated by PANGU, more local firms, such as Telcom operator PCCW and local railway operator MTR, also shared optimistic views by joining the Metaverse space, aiming at raising their awareness and exposure in the virtual space. Meanwhile, Yahoo and Meta, formerly named Facebook, have also announced to launch of a metaverse connection in the city in the hope that to reserve the old style and image of the city.
United Arab Emirates-based cryptocurrency exchange BitOasis announced on Sunday that it has laid off nine employees as part of its cost-cutting plan.
Ola Doudin, the CEO of Middle East-focused crypto exchange BitOasis, commented: “Earlier this week, nine employees were made redundant across offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Amman.”
The firm stated that the job cut represented about 5% of the company’s workforce.
Founded in Dubai in 2015, BitOasis has continued to serve English and Arabic-speaking users in the Gulf region.
In 2021, the Financial Intelligence Unit of the UAE Central Bank approved BitOasis to operate a Multilateral Trading Facility at the Abu Dhabi Global Market – an international financial centre (IFC) located in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates – and was registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider. The firm is the leading Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) by traded volume in the UAE.
In March this year, BitOasis obtained provisional approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to operate its business.
BitOasis has become the latest firm in the sector to announce massive layoffs amid the ongoing downturn and market turmoil. In recent months, the job market has been rough, especially crypto firms have experienced many struggles to sail through a winter that has witnessed prices plunge drastically.
Overall economic inflation and staked Ethereum have contributed to the latest crash while lending platform Celsius Network pointed to have triggered the mess.
Last week on Monday, June 13, Bitcoin price dropped below $24,000, a harsh incident that prompted crypto firm Celsius to halt withdrawals and transfers. The woes facing Celsius contributed to more pain to a market that was already adversely affected after the collapse of the $60 billion stablecoin venture Terra. Celsius was an investor in Terra and was affected by the TerraUSD and Luna crash.
Last week saw a massive fall in crypto prices and fear among investors who started selling off their assets in masses.
The prices of major crypto like Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped by over 70% from their peak values. The total crypto market valuation plunged below $1 trillion, a massive drop from its peak valuation of over $3 trillion.
The recent crypto crash has led several firms to slash their payrolls, while a small few others are focusing on increasing their investments.
Last week, Coinbase announced that it was laying off 18% of its staff, which means the firm fired about 1,100 employees from full-time roles. Crypto firms like BlockFi, Robinhood, Crypto.com, and many others also recently announced significant layoffs.
The current job cuts envision another extended crypto dip and lead to fundamental shifts. A rebound could take several months or years.
Cryptocurrencies are witnessing a dramatic market crash and the Federal Reserve is responsible for this downturn, said Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the FTX platform.
“The core driver of this has been the Fed,” Bankman-Fried said.
In an interview with NPR media, the FTX boss stated that the Fed is hiking interest rates aggressively to fight high inflation, which has led to a “recalibration” of risk expectations.
Bankman-Fried said he appreciates the difficulty of what the Fed is attempting to do, noting it is “caught between a rock and a hard place.” However, the billionaire stated a lot of his own outlook for his business now depends on decisions the central bank will make in the months ahead.
Last week, the Fed raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point in an effort to combat high inflation. Financial markets have already been highly jittery in recent months and cryptocurrencies have gone into full meltdown mode.
“Literally, markets are scared. People with money are scared.” Bankman-Fried mentioned.
The billionaire suggested the crash could shape crypto regulation, which is being hotly debated in the US. He stated likely there will be increased scrutiny of how leverage and lending activities are used in the crypto industry, and how transparent firms are about potential dangers.
What It Means for Crypto Investors
But what can investors expect and how long will the rising interest rate impact markets? So far, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates three times this year, in March, May, and this month. On June 15th, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points, the third hike this year and the largest since 1994.
That is not likely the last increase for the year, either. The chances are high that the Fed will raise rates several more times this year as it tries to get inflation under control.
The effects of higher rates have already been felt on cryptocurrency, stocks, commodities (such as gold and oil), and several other investments in 2022.
While the Fed has raised rates three times this year, it is easy to spot when capital markets traded higher in the past than currently and took notice that the central bank was serious about tightening monetary policy in November last year.
While so far crypto prices have plunged along with other risky assets, many commodities have spiked higher, including wheat, oil, and nickel.
Cryptos have responded to reduced liquidity as did other risky assets, by dropping when in November the Fed announced it would start tapering its purchases of bonds and signalled higher benchmark interest rates were soon on the way.
While crypto-assets are certainly feeling the adverse impacts of higher rates, their prices are expected to be a net positive towards the end of the year. That is because any short declines driven by an increase in interest rates will be offset by greater retail and institutional active trader adoption of the asset class.
Since prices of some commodities have skyrocketed, that could potentially complicate how fast the Fed raises interest rates. Some of such increases can be tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
With the rising interest rates, investors with a long-term investing view may see it as an ideal time to buy some quality investments at bargain prices.
El Salvador’s bitcoin-friendly President Nayib Bukele has shared an advice to all Bitcoiners as the cryptocurrency ecosystem has continued to take a deep dive down.
Over the weekend, the price of Bitcoin slumped further from its earlier 18-months low to $17,708.62. With the price of Bitcoin going below what was earlier envisaged, altcoins like Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Binance Coin (BNB), and Cardano (ADA) amongst others also saw multi-year lows, signalling a full-blown crypto winter.
With this bearish outlook in place, Nayib Bukele took to Twitter and asked his followers with interests and investments in Bitcoin to forget about the charts and explore other things. Per his words:
“I see that some people are worried or anxious about the #Bitcoin market price. My advice: stop looking at the graph and enjoy life. If you invested in #BTC your investment is safe and its value will immensely grow after the bear market.”
Those who have been following events in the space will recall that El Salvador under Nayib Bukele became the first country to legalize Bitcoin and make it a legal tender on its shores back in 2021. Since then, Bukele has been buying Bitcoin dips, with a lot of other proposed projects anchored on Bitcoin.
While Bukele is amongst those reeling from the current fall in the price of Bitcoin, he added in the tweet that “patience is the key” to getting the most out of any investment that one may have in Bitcoin or other altcoins at the moment.
The current collapse of crypto prices has stirred quite a number of ugly operational incapabilities among crypto entities. Celsius Network, Babel Finance, and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) are amongst the few companies feeling the heat of the ongoing crypto market price slump.
The once lustrous digital currencies are no longer considered such, at least, in the short term considering the nosediving nature of prices and valuation at this time.
With the combined crypto market capital slumping to $858.7 billion at the time of writing, the industry is experiencing a major offset with Ether, the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain coming off as one of the biggest hits.
From its all-time high (ATH) of $4,891.70 attained back in November 2021, Ethereum’s price is now trading at $1,065.35, after slumping to a multi-year low of $896.11 over the weekend. Considering this outlook, Peter Brandt, one of the most vocal analysts in the digital currency ecosystem is not bullish on Ethereum in the near future.
According to a chart posted below, Brandt said the price of Ethereum can drop as low as $300. While investors or Ethereum bulls may consider this a negative call, the analysts said that “targets are not sacred — sometimes they are hit, sometimes not, sometimes exceeded.”
Despite his prediction and his sprinkle of uncertainty, Brandt is not advising anyone to stack up on Ethereum at the moment, noting amongst other things that he would not even use his “Enemy’s Money” to buy Ethereum at this time.
The digital currency ecosystem is not alien to price predictions from experts, most of which do not always hit the bull’s eye. The industry is still in a subtle discovery phase wherein both micro and macroeconomic events can easily alter the progression of events, thus making it difficult for a price call to follow the letter.
Predictions that Bitcoin will hit $500,000 by 2030 as issued by the Winklevoss Twins are still being watched to see if it will come to pass and neither is PlanB’s $100,000 projection looking as though it will come to reality.
Blockchain infrastructure platform Immutable has launched a new $500 million fund for emerging gaming protocols and non-fungible token (NFT) startups in the Web3.0 ecosystem.
As reported by TechCrunch, the new fund will be used to back protocols that are building web3 games and NFT-focused companies on its layer-2 Ethereum-focused platform, Immutable X.
“We see gaming being one of the biggest opportunities in web3 to have ever existed,” said Robbie Ferguson, president, and co-founder of Immutable. “The total addressable market is going to be enormous and much bigger than what gaming is today — a $100 billion industry for in-game items alone,” a figure that emphasizes how important the industry is and why Immutable is all out to support this new niche.
Ferguson noted that the funds came from diverse sources including from its “venture partners who are using their balance sheets and VC allocations to come in on these deals, there’s cash-backed on [Immutable’s] balance sheet and there’s also the foundation’s grants, which are specifically designed for this purpose to incentivize and build the Immutable ecosystem.”
Immutable’s ImmutableX is fast becoming the go-to place for both Web2 and Web3 companies looking to embrace blockchain gaming and NFTs. While the protocol currently plays host to outfits like GameStop, OpenSea, TikTok, and Illuvium, it plans to partner with a couple more brands in the industry in order to bolster its plans to support its chosen startups.
According to the report, the outfit Immutable plans to explore new partnerships with include BITKRAFT, Animoca Brands, Arrington Capital, Double Peak, AirTree, and King River Capital. With its broad-based plans, Immutable is counting on becoming a prominent platform that will help onboard more brands into Web3 in the next couple of years when more names will hope to make a dash into the ecosystem.
The new investment fund mimics those of other major players in the Web3.0 world including Avalanche and Binance Labs, and it shows that Immutable is being properly funded by venture capital firms to achieve its mission.
Frankfurt-based crypto asset management group Iconic Funds announced today that it has expanded the variety of its wrapped crypto exposures available to investors by launching the world’s first ApeCoin exchange-traded product (ETP).
This launch is the company’s fourth product to be physically backed by cryptocurrencies.
The crypto asset manager disclosed that it listed the Iconic Physical ApeCoin ETP on the Boerse Stuttgart on Wednesday with a total expense ratio (TER) of 1.49%.
TheApeCoin ETP tracks the CMBI ApeCoin index (that includes Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin on its basket), therefore offering physical exposure to their underlying assets while being fully collateralized by Coinbase Custody.
State Street, a US-based bank, will perform administrative services to support the issuance of the ApeCoin ETP.
Just like other Iconic Funds crypto funds, investors in the ApeCoin ETP can apply for physical delivery of underlying coins, the company said.
Michael Geister, head of crypto ETPs at Iconic, talked about the development and said: “The ETP will provide exposure to the ecosystem built around the Bored and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs developed by Yuga Labs. BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) is one of the most valuable NFT collections available, made famous by stars like Make Cuban or Serena Williams. Through ApeCoin investors have access to the growing NFT market.”
Besides the launch of the product, the company also disclosed plans to partner with third parties to launch actively managed white-labeled crypto ETP products from its platform.
Patrick Lowry, CEO of Iconic, further elaborated: “We look forward to issuing additional, highly innovative crypto ETPs in the near future, as well as partnering with incumbent financial institutions for white-labelled crypto ETP products.”
Last year, the firm launched its first product (Bitcoin ETP) in the European market. The company then launched a carbon offset Bitcoin ETP, which was followed by Europe’s cheapest Ethereum ETP.
Europe’s Crypto ETPs Seeing High Demand
The latest development by Iconic Funds shows that cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs) continue heating up with a series of new listings in Europe. That is a contrast in the US with the prospects of a physical Bitcoin ETF that is still at a standstill in the region.
In 2020, crypto ETPs in Europe surpassed $1 billion in inflows and since then demands have continued to show no signs of slowing down.
In February this year, European digital asset-linked ETPs witnessed inflows of over $80 million.
Financial providers said that the increase in demand comes as no surprise. The convenience and security of cryptocurrency exposures via a regulated product are attractive to both retail and institutional investors.
In February this year, Fidelity International became the latest issuer of a European ETP with the launch of its Fidelity Physical Bitcoin ETP on Germany’s Deutsche Börse Xetra.
Early that month, 21Shares expanded its crypto exchange-traded products with the launch of three DeFi ETPs. The firm launched DeFi products (including Aave, Chainlink, and Uniswap (UNI) as their underlying assets on the BX Swiss exchange.
Different Layer 1 blockchains are created to serve different goals. Bitcoin was designed to be a currency for simple, trustless transactions with enforced scarcity to preserve its value. However, its relatively simple structure limits what can be built on top of it.
Ethereum was the first mainstream blockchain to incorporate smart contracts, and it hosted the first wave of dApps and tokens that ushered in DeFi and Web3. But its Proof of Work (PoW) mining system and high gas fees have been an impediment to transaction speed and scalability within its DeFi ecosystem.
Since then, many smart contract-enabled Layer 1 blockchains developed were created to address such problems. For instance, Solana and Algorand leverage a Proof of History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, respectively, in order to provide lower fees and faster transaction times.
Other Layer 1 blockchains, such as Avalanche, are built more for interoperability with other chains.
Such developments have made several new Layer 1 blockchains emerge to gain their own place in the growing web3 ecosystem, majorly driven by a demand to address Ethereum’s scalability, speed, and fees problems.
But questions remain. While many of the new Layer 1 blockchains have attracted significant investment and user bases, will any of them surpass Ethereum in adoption? Analysis by Chainalysis, a major blockchain data and analysis firm, tried answering such questions.
Usage Trends
Using blockchain analysis, Chainalysis compared three major Layer 1 blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Algorand) in order to examine how their usage trends differ.
The firm first started examining which blockchain has the most active users. The firm approximated that by comparing the number of unique wallets sending each currency to services over time.
According to the company’s analysis, Bitcoin appears to have led in unique users until March 2020, at which point it was overtaken by Ethereum. That coincided roughly with DeFi growth, as the increase of DeFi prompted the creation of many services that accepted Ethereum and other tokens built on its blockchain.
On the other hand, Algorand showed that it has yet to achieve such comparable adoption. Based on a one-week bull market, Algorand had 103,000 active wallets, compared to 1.7 million for Ethereum, and 916,000 for Bitcoin.
As can be seen above, all three cryptocurrencies saw sometimes coinciding swings in active wallets throughout 2021 and 2022 to date. Overall though, each blockchain’s growth in transaction volume wasn’t correlated with the others for the most part.
As it can be seen during Q3 2021, Algorand saw its transaction volume grow 65%, while Bitcoin and Ethereum saw volumes drop 37% and 45% respectively. This may have reflected Algorand’s growing hype. Having launched in April 2019, Algorand was a relatively new blockchain and reached an all-time price high in September 2021.
Algorand and Bitcoin both grew transaction volumes significantly in Q4, a time when cryptocurrencies across the board were in a bull market. But Ethereum transaction volume grew very little.
All three cryptocurrencies lost significant transaction volume in Q1 2022, but only Bitcoin grew in Q2, which saw steep declines possibly signifying another crypto winter. That may reflect Bitcoin’s perceived status as a relatively safe coin compared to Algorand, given that the latter is a relatively new asset.
Crypto Investors
Analysis by Chainalysis further shows that Ethereum stands out as the cryptocurrency with the most institutional dominance. 40% of its total transaction volume comes from large institutional transactions, compared to just 30% for Bitcoin and 29% for Algorand.
If institutional-sized transactions are grouped with large institutional-sized transactions, then that figure becomes 66% for Ethereum and 64% for Bitcoin. On the other hand, Algorand sees just 49% of transaction volume made up of institutional and large institutional transactions.
From another perspective, 10% of Algorand’s transaction volume comes from retail or large retail transactions, compared to 5% for Bitcoin and 8% for Ethereum. Again, this likely reflects Algorand’s status as a relatively new blockchain. It may also signify that Algorand is succeeding in its goal of enabling a high volume of smaller transactions.
Overall, the level of institutional interest in Bitcoin stays stable, but not so for Ethereum and Algorand. Ethereum witnessed a slight decrease in institutional interest beginning in November 2021, which has yet to recover. On the other hand, Algorand saw a much larger dip beginning in September, which has only seen a modest recovery.
However, the rise of DeFi 2021 appears to have sparked a massive increase in investor sentiment for Ethereum relative to Bitcoin. Ethereum’s price appreciation versus Bitcoin more than doubled over the course of the year, as total transaction volume skyrocketed to $4 trillion, compared to just $454 billion in 2020.
That speaks to the power of web3: Smart contract functionality has created new use cases for Ethereum, leading to significant increases in usage, and investors have taken notice.
Ethereum Still Leading
Many new Layer 1 blockchains perceived to solve Ethereum’s problems have been billed as “ETH killers” and considered to replace the second-most popular cryptocurrency as the go-to for web3 and DeFi, but so far, none have been able to do it.
Ethereum is still far ahead in transaction volume, especially in popular areas of web3 like NFTs. The Ethereum Foundation is working with miners to implement changes to address its issues, such as its upcoming switch to a PoS consensus mechanism.
Its entrenched status as the number two blockchain behind Bitcoin is already allowing Ethereum to fend off competitors. Therefore, no other smart contract-enabled blockchain will challenge it even if the above-highlighted issues are solved.
And if new Layer 1 blockchains can’t challenge Ethereum, questions remain whether they will survive as alternatives in the long term. So far, many new Layer 1 blockchains have attracted investment at least in part by convincing investors they can challenge Ethereum in the long-term, and the bull market of 2021 allowed them to attract new investors as prices rose.
With a possible crypto winter appearing in place along with improvements to Ethereum, it is possible that investment in alternative Layer 1 blockchains will slow down, and that Ethereum remains the dominant player and a winner-takes-all in the web3 market.
