2020 Q2 DEFI INDUSTRY RESEARCH REPORT PART 4: COINDESK
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
2020 Q2 DeFi Industry Research Report Part 4: Asset Management, Infrastructure and Others July 2020 ANALYSTS Johnson Xu, Norah Song, Harper Li, Fanger Chou johnson@tokeninsight.com T I R es ea rch TokenInsight.com bd@tokeninsight.com Find, Create, and Spread Value in Blockchain.
RESEARCH COVID-19 and DeFi Overview Overview The first half of 2020 has been shattered by the global COVID-19 pandemic which turns into a significant economic shock that creates a ripple effect on a global level. Decentralized finance is an exciting aspect of the cryptocurrency industry where it continues its innovation and growth at a significant pace despite the global economic downturn. The decentralized finance ecosystem saw an accelerated growth in the second half of 2019 where we have covered the growth in our 2019 DeFi annual industry report, with leading projects such as MakerDao, Uniswap and Compound Finance taking out solid positions in the DeFi ecosystem. The most depressing moment in the first half of 2020 was the date that global financial market turmoil also spread to the cryptocurrency industry, the Black Thursday on March 12, 2020, at that time the industry saw a market-wide panic and dried up market liquidity which resulting market- wide liquidation and opened the door for system-wide structural risks to be surfaced in the cryptocurrency market, particularly in the DeFi ecosystem. When many people in the industry wishfully think the industry would shine in a big-time during a global economic crisis just like the one we are experiencing right now. The Black Thursday market crash, unfortunately, proved to many people that the cryptocurrency financial market is interconnected with the traditional realm, creating a cascading effect, and impacting every single aspect of the cryptocurrency market. We are still growing fast in this early ecosystem, and a robust, structured decentralized financial system is needed to deliver the next-generation financial system to the world. The Black Thursday event was an early stress test to the DeFi financial system, and the industry held it together and successfully passed the early stress test. Global zero-bound interest rate is potentially re-directing the money flow from the traditional market to the DeFi ecosystem where the interest rate is significantly higher than the one in the traditional system, although attracts higher risks compared to the traditional regime. The purpose of the Q2 2020 DeFi industry report is to shed some lights on this lightning fast moving DeFi ecosystem, and as an organisation to Find, Create and Spread value in the blockchain space. The Q2 2020 DeFi industry report has been broken into multiple parts including trading (DEXs, Derivatives and Prediction Market), Issuance (Stablecoins, Lending, Non-Fungible Token), Asset Management, DeFi Infrastructure and Others, Investment and Ratings where we work with Fundamental Labs to deliver this part. tokeninsight.com 2
RESEARCH ASSET DeFi Asset Management Overview MANAGEMENT The strong growth of the DeFi sector has spurred the development of DeFi asset management projects, with a handful of projects targeting at making life easier for users to interact with the DeFi world. Due to the fragmentation of the DeFi space, there are limited one stop asset management solutions to let users interact with multiple DeFi platforms. Wallets and asset management tools have the ability to connect and integrate different lending and trading platforms. With the development of the DeFi industry, the necessity of such projects has become clearer. At the same time, the influx of capital into the DeFi space has spawned market demand for DeFi funds management and asset management portal solutions. ‣ DeFi Asset Management Landscape Source: TokenInsight TokenInsight Research categorizes Wallets & Asset the DeFi asset management Management Tools sector into mainly 2 sub-sectors, 1: Asset Management Protocols 2: Wallets and Asset Management Tools. We define DeFi wallets as the smart contract, non-custodial wallets. Asset management tools provide a way for users to interact with the fragmented DeFi world in Asset Management a more convenient way. The early solid growth of Protocol Dapper, Monolith and TokenInsight Research selectively Argent led to an analysed some major DeFi wallets extremely high user in the market, including Argent, growth rate in Q2 2019. Mykey, Dharma, etc. ‣ The Growth of DeFi Wallets DeFi Wallets Growth Rate 23.45% Source: Statista, TokenInsight 24% 19% 408.64% 14% 11.77% 120% 8.87% 105.39% 10% 7.25% 96% 5% 0% 70.21% Feb March April May 72% 48% 37.87% 29.83% 24% 15.64% 5.56% 5.48% 5.62% 7.57% 0% 2019 Q2 2019 Q3 2019 Q4 2020 Q1 2020 Q2 tokeninsight.com 3
RESEARCH 1. The selection of the top tier Based on the figure above, DeFi wallets have outgrown other types of projects is based on the wallets in percentage term in 2019 and H1 2020 due to the strong positive number of users, contract growth of the broader DeFi sector. account balance, and the influence of the project in the DeFi ecosystem Compared with the overall cryptocurrency wallet sector, the development of DeFi wallets is still in its early stage. While it has a higher growth rate DeFi TVL ($ Million, Left Axis) than other wallets in the industry, it is also more susceptible to market Argent Growth Rate (Right Axis) Mykey Growth Rate (Right) fluctuations. The user growth of wallets across the industry in the below figure has been relatively stable since the third quarter of 2019, the sharp $1,300 4.0% drop during the Black Thursday negatively impacted the growth of DeFi $1,133 2.7% wallet users in March and April, resulting in a significant decrease in the growth rate of DeFi wallet users in the second quarter of 2020. $967 1.3% At the same time, because the DeFi wallets are specifically focused in the $800 0.0% 1/26 1/29 2/1 2/4 2/7 2/10 2/13 interaction of DeFi ecosystem, allowing users to conveniently interact with DeFi applications such as lending platforms through the integrated service, its growth is closely related to the overall development of the DeFi DeFi TVL ($ Million, Left Axis) Argent Growth Rate (Right Axis) industry. Mykey Growth Rate (Right) $1,600 1.6% It can be seen from the figure below, the number of users of the top tier 1.2% DeFi wallets Argent and Mykey is relatively consistent with the total $1,367 0.8% number of DeFi addresses. At the same time, during the two strong $1,133 0.4% increases in DeFi TVL during February and June 2020, both Argent and $900 0% Mykey user growth rates increased positively. 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ 6/ Among them, the user growth rate for Argent smart wallet surged to 3% on February 4, 2020, and then returned to a stable level. Due to the incentivised liquidity mining activities, Argent’s user growth rate jumped to 1.6% on June 19, 2020. ‣ No. Of Wallet Users for Argent, Mykey Source: TokenInsight Argent Mykey DeFi Total Addresses (Right Axis) 30,000 240,000 22,500 180,000 15,000 120,000 7,500 60,000 0 0 2020/1/1 2020/1/31 2020/3/1 2020/3/31 2020/4/30 2020/5/30 2020/6/29 tokeninsight.com 4
RESEARCH 1. As a third-party asset Mykey has officially supported the Ethereum network on January 15 2020, management tool, InstaDApp leading to an immediate surge in the number of users, then the growth does not require users to directly store assets. The TVL rate returned to a more sustainable level of 1.5% until February. With the here is the value of assets strong growth of the broader DeFi ecosystem, the growth of DeFi TVL also locked on other platforms by led to the growth of Mykey users, the growth rate gradually increased to using InstaDApp 2.9% on February 12. Similarly, the growth rate for Mykey users on June 15 surged from 0.23% the day before to 0.59%. In addition, DeFi wallets are still relatively niche in the current market, with the number of users capped at 30k for the top tier DeFi wallet such as Argent. As of June 29, the balance locked up in the Argent contract account was more than $5 million, compared to the lock-up value of the major lending platforms which has reached more than $600 million. As an asset management tool, InstaDApp has benefited from the hype of the incentivised liquidity mining, with TVL of $123 million, which is 25.7x than Argent and 112.2x than Mykey’s. ‣ DeFi TVL Comparison (Argent & Mykey ETH only) Source: DeFiPulse, TokenInsight Compound 668.0M Maker 619.2M InstaDApp 123.4M Set Protocol 15.9M Argent Argent 4.8M MyKey 0M 1M 2M 3M 4M 5M MyKey 1.1M 0M 140M 280M 420M 560M 700M Liquidity mining brings temporary user traffic to DeFi wallets which helped InstaDApp establishes its market position. The liquidity mining launched by Compound in June gained strong market traction in the DeFi space, resulting in a positive increase in the number of users in the DeFi wallet and No. of transactions. It can be seen from the figure below that the number of transactions from Argent and Mykey surged on June 15, increased from 479 and 109 to 596 and 388 respectively. The number of transactions for Argent wallet broke through 1,000 in the following days. However, subject to factors such as market conditions, the hype on incentivised liquidity mining did not bring a meaningful change to the overall development of DeFi wallets. tokeninsight.com 5
RESEARCH ‣ DeFi TVL Comparison (ETH only) Source: DeFiPulse, TokenInsight Argent Mykey 1,200 800 400 0 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 /6/ 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 29 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /6 /1 /3 /5 /7 /9 /1 /1 /1 /1 /1 /2 /2 /2 /2 /3 1 3 5 7 9 1 3 5 7 0 The market positioning for asset management tools such as InstaDApp tends to focus on professional users, represented by the launch of a leveraged liquidity mining function which can be maxed out at 4x for leveraged liquidity mining, attracted significant interest from the experienced market participants to leverage this tool to amplify the gains. The number of InstaDApp contract addresses has continued to increase after June 15. However, Zapper and Zerion are not smart contract based asset management tools, thus these data can not be a direct comparison with InstaDApp. ‣ No. Of Contract Deployed for InstaDapp Source: TokenInsight InstaDApp Contract Deployed 5,000 3,333 1,667 0 5 /4 4 4 /4 4 4 /3 3 3 /3 /2 /1 /2 /1 /2 /1 /2 /4 /5 /6 /7 /3 /4 /4 /5 /5 /6 /6 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 Asset management protocols projects gained initial traction in 2019 and began to shine in H1 2020. Currently, there are a few such projects on the market such as Set Protocol, Melon, and Betoken. Among them, Set Protocol and Melon are accounted for the majority of the asset management protocols market. tokeninsight.com 6
RESEARCH As can be seen from the figure below, although Set Protocol started later than Melon, its AUM has outgrown Melon’s. At the same time, benefiting from the broader development of the DeFi industry, both platforms grew significantly in H1 2020, with AUM growth of 726.3% and 455.6% respectively. The asset management protocols open the doors to many possibilities in the DeFi industry, its growth can be considered correlated with the overall DeFi industry. However, with the strong growth of the broader DeFi market and the fragmentation of the DeFi platforms, we see a significant demand for asset management protocols in the future to consolidate and create user-friendly decentralised funds platform in order to drive the industry forward. The current industry structure also demonstrates a strong network effect with the top tier projects conquering the most users in the space. The current No. of users on Set Protocol is roughly 10x then Melon Protocol at the beginning of the year. With Melon Protocol launches its V2 platform, TokenInsight Research believes the competition between the top projects alongside with the network effect will create barriers of entry for new players to enter the market. New players must find innovative solutions and strong market fit in order to track and outgrow the broader DeFi market. ‣ AUM & DeFi TVL % For Set Protocol and Melon Source: TokenInsight Set Protocol (Left Axis) Melon (Right Axis) $18M $1.2M $12M $0.8M $6M $0.4M $0M $0.0M /1 20 /26 20 /20 20 15 20 /9 /4 20 /29 20 /23 7 20 /12 20 1/6 1 20 /26 20 /20 20 /14 20 10 /4 20 /29 20 /24 8 /1 2/ /1 /3 /6 /7 /4 / / /3 /4 /5 /7 /8 /9 0 /1 /1 2 /1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6 19 19 19 20 /1 /1 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 19 19 20 20 20 20 20 AUM as a % of TVL for Set Protocol & Melon 2.20% 1.47% 0.73% 0.00% 1 8 15 22 29 5 12 19 26 4 11 18 25 1 8 15 22 29 6 13 20 27 3 10 17 24 1/ 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 4/ 5/ 6/ 1/ 1/ 1/ 2/ 2/ 2/ 3/ 3/ 3/ 4/ 4/ 4/ 5/ 5/ 5/ 6/ 6/ 6/ tokeninsight.com 7
RESEARCH INFRA- ASSET MANAGEMENT SECTION SUMMARY The development of the asset management sector is still in its early stage STRUCTURE and is correlated with the growth of the broader DeFi industry. Despite the strong growth such as InstaDApp, Argent, Set Protocol and Melon Protocol in H1 2020, asset management projects overall have not yet reached widespread usage. However, the characteristics of asset management projects determine their necessity in the DeFi industry. In the future, with the development of the DeFi lending and trading market, users' demand for integrated solutions and asset management tools will inevitably become stronger. Based on the analysis, TokenInsight Research predicts differentiated asset management protocols and tools will begin to surface in the market to capture DeFi market alpha in the near future. Overview of the DeFi Infrastructure Sector Due to the scale of the DeFi infrastructure sector, TokenInsight research decided to limit its focus to price oracles and privacy projects. TokenInsight Research believes that Infrastructure is the cornerstone of the DeFi industry. Events such as the Synthetix oracle attack in H2 2019 and the flash loans attack in H1 2020 all have demonstrated that the stable development of the DeFi industry is inseparable from the development of safe, reliable price oracles that can be used on a large scale. Decentralized oracle projects started relatively early. At present, top tier projects such as Chainlink and Band Protocol have been used by a number of DeFi projects in the ecosystem. DeFi Privacy projects were born in response to the development of the industry, generally starting in 2019, and existing major projects in the market Projects include Tornado, AZTEC Protocol, Incognito, etc. ‣ DeFi Infrastructure Landscape Source: TokenInsight Price oracle sector is dominated by Chainlink and Band Protocol, some DeFi Infrastructure other projects such as Tellor are actively developing and gaining market traction. Judging from the current industry development, Chainlink is still the most recognized project in the space, and its price oracle has been integrated by many projects in the DeFi ecosystem including Aave, Synthetix, Loopring and Set Protocol. tokeninsight.com 8
RESEARCH On the other hand, Band Protocol is committed to providing fast and low- cost price data, in addition to targeting the DeFi market on Ethereum, it also began to deploy to other public chain this year. ‣ Summary of Price Oracle Projects Source: TokenInsight, Data as of July 14, 2020 Chainlink Band Protocol Tellor Nest Protocol Market Leader, early Security and High Value Characteristics Cross-Chain, Decentralized Data Reliability mover Projects Released Date 2017/11 2019/09 2019/10 2020/05 No. Of Supported 36 Any Data 25 — Assets Institutional Partners 24 11 — — No. Of Node 30 54 Any 3rd parties Any 3rd parties The role of the price oracle is indispensable in the DeFi ecosystem, but the number of players in the decentralized oracle market is currently small, and various existing projects are still in the stage of continuous improvement in terms of technology and governance. Nest Protocol is one of the oracle projects that emerged in 2020, which is in its early stage of development. With price oracles form the backbone for the DeFi ecosystem, centralized entities such as Coinbase and OKEx also have launched their respective price oracle in H1 2020, demonstrating a strong market demands to have reliable, decentralized price oracles in order to grow the industry. ‣ Chainlink, Band Protocol, Tellor Market Cap and DeFi TVL Comparison Source: DeFiPulse, TokenInsight DeFi TVL (Left Axis) Chainlink (Left Axis) Band Protocol (Right Axis) Tellor (Right Axis) $1,800M $40M $1,350M $30M $900M $20M $450M $10M $0M $0M /1 6 0 6 0 /5 0 4 /2 /2 /1 /1 /3 /2 /1 /5 /1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 tokeninsight.com 9
RESEARCH Based on the figure above, the market value of the oracle project has increased positively in H1 2020. Band Protocol grew strongly before June 2020 and once surpassed Chainlink in terms of the market cap. The growth of Chainlink's market value is more consistent with the growth trend of the entire DeFi industry, showing that Chainlink is in a more mature stage of development. Comparing to Chainlink and Band Protocol, the growth of Tellor remain steady. TokenInsight Research analyzed the number of transactions on Chainlink, Band Protocol and Tellor since 2020, and we have discovered that there is a certain correlation between the fluctuations of on-chain transactions and their respective market value fluctuations. During the period of high market volatility, the on-chain transactions are also more active. At the same time, as can be seen from the figure below, the magnitude of the positive changes in the number of transactions on Chainlink and Band Protocol 2020 is much greater than the magnitude of the negative changes. Tellor’s number of transactions is less volatile, and the activity on the chain remains steady in H1 2020. ‣ Chainlink, Band Protocol On-Chain Transactions Source: DeFiPulse, TokenInsight Chainlink On-Chain Transactions Daily % Changes Band Protocol On-Chain Transactions Daily % Changes Tellor On-Chain Transactions Daily % Changes 600% 367% 133% 0% -100% 20 3 20 10 20 19 20 24 20 1 20 5 20 10 20 3 20 1 20 6 20 13 20 18 20 23 20 8 20 2 20 7 20 14 20 19 20 24 20 9 20 9 20 14 20 19 20 24 20 9 20 3 20 8 20 13 20 18 20 25 0 20 /1/ 20 1/3 20 /2/ 20 2/2 20 /3/ 20 /3/ 20 3/2 20 /4/ 20 /4/ 20 4/2 20 /5/ 20 5/2 20 /6/ 20 /6/ /3 20 /1/ 20 /1/ 20 /1/ 20 /2/ 20 /3/ 20 /3/ 20 /3/ 20 /4/ 20 /4/ 20 /4/ 20 /5/ 20 /5/ 20 /5/ 20 /6/ 20 /6/ 20 /6/ /6 20 / / / / / 20 tokeninsight.com 10
RESEARCH Privacy projects mainly are building based on the zero- ‣ Privacy Projects knowledge proofs technology, significant milestones Technology Stack Source: TokenInsight have been achieved in H1 2020. Project Tech Ethereum transactions are considered to be pseudonymous in a way that Tornado zkSnarks the user address and transaction amount are completely disclosed but can Zero not directly link to an individual or organisation. AZTEC Knowledge Protocol In response to the demand for completely private transactions, privacy Proofs projects have emerged in the market. Privacy projects have a significant Zero- room for growth in the DeFi sector, and the recent USDC account freezing Incognito Knowledge by the authority has triggered some deeper thoughts on how can the Range Proofs industry to work on privacy technology in the market. Plutus zkSnarks At present, privacy projects on the market generally use zero-knowledge proofs and specific classifications under zero-knowledge proofs to solve ‣ Degree of Privacy privacy problems. Since there are few privacy projects on the market and Transactions the lack of data information, comprehensive market analysis is nearly Source: TokenInsight impossible. However, the development trend of such projects can still be Project Address Transfer seen from the performance of representative projects. In addition, it should be noted that the mechanisms adopted by each project are Tornado different: Tornado adopts a fund pooling model, requiring users to deposit AZTEC assets like a fund pool; while Incognito directly processes transactions Protocol through a shielded mode. Incognito ‣ Tornado Pool Size and Incognito Transaction Volume Source: Incognito, TokenInsight Tornado Pool Size Incognito Total Transaction Volume $8M $6M $4M $2M $0M 2020/2/29 2020/3/31 2020/4/30 2020/5/31 2020/6/30 Tornado Pool Size As can be seen from the figure below, in H1 2020, Tornado and Incognito $3M have achieved positive development. The balance of Tornado's fund pool $2M $2M increased from $350,000 at the beginning of the year to more than $4 $1M million, with a growth rate of 1077%. Since the launch of Incognito’s $0M mainnet launched in November 2019, as of the end of June, Incognito's 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 /1 /1 /2 /2 transaction amount has reached $7.53 million, and its growth was the /1 /2 /1 /2 1 0 9 strongest from March to June, with a growth rate of 528%. tokeninsight.com 11
RESEARCH But at the same time, the use of privacy tools also has certain security risks. For example, if the privacy function is used by a hacker to initiate an attack, it will be difficult to track the hackers. SECTION SUMMARY There is ample market space in the DeFi infrastructure sector, infrastructure players need to have a deep understanding of the technology supported by the strong growth of the DeFi ecosystem in order to gain large-scale adoption. The safety and reliability of the price oracles will play vital roles to support further growth of the DeFi industry. At the same time, privacy projects aim to address some of the DeFi pain points, and the emergence of privacy issues in the industry boosts the development of such projects, and there is plenty of room for subsequent growth in the industry. tokeninsight.com 12
RESEARCH CONCLUSION The DeFi space is gradually realising its unique value proposition. It is without a doubt that DeFi is still in the early stage where users still experience sufficient frictions in interacting with the DeFi applications. However, the DeFi world is working together to grow and produce innovative solutions to reduce these user frictions and connecting the dots to form an integrated decentralized financial ecosystem with ample liquidity. As we are building, learning and experimenting with the “money legos”, being an open, permissionless and interconnect financial ecosystem gives back significant power to the users, in the meantime, there are also significant risks associated with the DeFi space. The oracle attacks, front- running, re-entry attacks, liquidity risk, and many more whether due to smart contract logical errors or poorly designed system mechanisms. Users who wish to experience the DeFi world should at least aware and understand these potential risk factors before jumping straight to the DeFi bandwagon. DeFi presents a significant innovation in the space, and the industry is still growing and learning from our traditional counterparts. TokenInsight Research believes the future of the DeFi space, its unique value proposition, strong growth potential and innovative concepts can drive the broader cryptocurrency market to another level. At some point, proof of stake, centralized finance and decentralized finance will come together to form an enormous cryptocurrency financial ecosystem to achieve the potential of “money legos”. Sophisticated derivatives products and instruments will be developed in the near future to add another layer of complexity in the already complex yet young financial ecosystem, driving innovation and experimenting various financial applications to achieve unimaginable future. With the composability of decentralized finance, the untapped potential of building with the “money legos” is enormous. We expect DeFi will grow in an exponential trend in the future with unprecedented liquidity to be presented in the space, combined with a concrete decentralized financial ecosystem to achieve mass adoption and bring decentralized finance to the world stage. Don’t trust, verify. tokeninsight.com 13
The report is based on public sources considered to be reliable, but TokenInsight Inc. does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information contained herein. The report had been prepared for informative purposes only and does not constitute an offer or a recommendation to purchase, hold, or sell any cryptocurrencies (tokens) or to engage in any investment activities. Any opinions or expressions herein reflect a judgment made as of the date of publication, and TokenInsight Inc. reserves the right to withdraw or amend its acknowledgment at any time in its sole discretion. TokenInsight Inc. will periodically or irregularly track the subjects of the reports to determine whether to adjust the acknowledgement and will publish them in a timely manner. TokenInsight Inc. takes its due diligence to ensure the report provides a true and fair view without potential influences of any third parties. There is no association between TokenInsight Inc. and the subject referred in the report which would harm the objectivity, independence, and impartiality of the report. Trading and investing in cryptocurrencies (tokens) may involve significant risks including price volatility and illiquidity. Investors should fully aware the potential risks and are not to construe the content of the report as the only information for investment activities. None of the products or TokenInsight Inc, nor any of its authors or employees shall be liable to any party for its direct or indirect losses alleged to have been suffered on account thereof. All rights reserved to TokenInsight Inc. Tokeninsight Inc. Find, Create, And Spread Value In Blockchain. To Obtain The Latest Data And Rating Reports In Blockchain Industry Website www.tokeninsight.com Cooperation bd@tokeninsight.com Other Contacts WeChat official account Tokenin official Twitter TokenInsight official Weibo TokenInsight TI Official Twitter official Telegram https://t.me/TokenInsightOfficial WeChat Account WeChat Mini App
You can also read