Q1 2021 marked the beginning of the long-awaited ecosystem wars.
In this week's recap, we dive into the weekly performance of the most popular protocols across different Layer-1s.
Ethereum
Assets with longevity on their side showed the highest resilience during the week. As of April 22nd, $MKR and $COMP were the only two assets in the Ethereum ecosystem with positive weekly returns.
Cosmos
All assets in the Cosmos ecosystem suffered last week. $ATOM, the chain's native token, had the worst performance ending the week with a -27% return.
Binance
$CAKE was the clear winner in the Binance ecosystem with a weekly return of 17%. $CREAM came in last with a loss of -26%.
Polkadot
Polkadot's assets as a whole were the worst-performing of the week. All of them suffered two-digit declines.
Solana
After a bumpy start to the week, $SOL ended the week strong with a weekly return of 29%. $KIN and $AUDIO were the laggards of the group with weekly returns of -26% and -28% respectively.
Centralized and decentralized exchanges were the top-performing sectors during the week fueled by the excitement of the Coinbase IPO.
Top Assets by Market Capitalization
$DOGE and $XRP were the clear outperformers of the group with weekly returns of 114% and 88% respectively.
Sector Drill Down - DeFi
DeFi was the third best performing sector of the week with an aggregate return of 22.4%. Among DeFi assets, THORChain's native token $RUNE led the way, returning 54% on the week.
Asset prices across all sectors reached new all-time highs as that bull market continues with full force.
Here is a recap of what happened 👇🏻
In this piece, the @MessariCrypto research team and I dive into the performance of the overall market and drill down on some of the top-performing assets in each sector according to our taxonomy.
The top assets by market capitalization were dominated by $BNB. The token's run was fueled by the rise of Binance Smart Chain as a low-cost alternative to Ethreum.
Further aiding $BNB's run was the exchange's accelerating volumes and earnings fueled by white hot crypto markets.
Uniswap was the first decentralized exchange to popularize the use of a constant function. The easy-to-grasp constant product function set the stage for several innovations in the space.
1/ The DeFi Pulse Index (DPI) now has over $35M in assets showing increased demand for crypto indexes
While DPI is a good investment for beginners, it may not provide the diversification that sophisticated investors demand, leaving them overexposed to individual DeFi assets
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2/ Index funds are by far the most traded instruments in traditional finance. They provide diversification, broad market exposure, have lower fees, and seek to match the return of the market (or asset class) creating the perfect investment vehicle for new investors
3/ Despite these attributes, index funds can become highly concentrated depending on their construction methodology reducing the diversification benefits of the product. This applies in particular to capitalization-weighted indexes like the S&P 500 and the DeFi Pulse Index