Halfway through 2024, the total crypto market capitalization has continued its upward trajectory, surpassing $2.27 trillion, indicating a 37.3% year-to-date increase following a strong performance in 2023.
The first quarter saw significant gains of 60.2%, while the second quarter witnessed a slight decline of 14.3%, presenting a more challenging environment for crypto investors.
Key developments in the crypto landscape include the launch of the Runes Protocol post the fourth Bitcoin Halving, the approval of U.S. spot ETFs, and the emergence of Layer-1 (“L1”) projects making notable progress. Bitcoin has maintained its dominance, attracting over $14 billion in inflows. Solana made strides in the meme coin sector with the introduction of blockchain links (blinks), BNB Chain continued development on opBNB and Greenfield, and Ethereum experienced a surge in restaking activities with the EIP-4844 upgrade.
In the Layer-2 (“L2”) ecosystem, airdrops have become increasingly common, particularly in zero-knowledge (“zk”) projects, leading to a total value locked in L2s of $43 billion. The total value locked has surged by 90% in the first half of the year, reaching $94.1 billion from $54.4 billion at the start of 2024 due to significant funds flowing into Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
The stablecoin market has rebounded after a downturn, reaching a two-year high market capitalization of $161 billion as of June 30, 2024. While USDT remains prevalent, USDC and USDe have also garnered market share.
The NFT market witnessed volatility in the first half of the year, with varying sales volumes and floor prices for major projects. Lens Protocol’s announcement of Lens Network and developments in SocialFi have sparked interest, alongside projects like Frames, Farcaster, and friend.tech.
Web3 gaming projects experienced a mixed performance, with market capitalization fluctuations in the second quarter. Despite this, projects like Pixels and Hamster Kombat attracted users through token airdrops.
Other notable trends include decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), memecoins, and artificial intelligence (AI), maintaining investor interest throughout the first half of 2024.
Looking ahead, the industry anticipates progress in key areas such as the macro environment, the Bitcoin ecosystem, ownership economy applications, and real-world assets in the second half of 2024. Exciting developments are on the horizon, promising further innovation and growth in the crypto and NFT space.
