The 2024 State of Crypto Report from a16z crypto highlights significant growth in the industry, marked by all-time highs in activity and usage, along with major infrastructure improvements.
What Happened: The report, authored by Daren Matsuoka, Robert Hackett and Eddy Lazzarin, presents seven key takeaways.
1. “There have never been more monthly active crypto addresses. In September, 220 million addresses interacted with a blockchain at least once, a figure that has more than tripled since the end of 2023,” the authors write.
2. One of the most notable findings is the emergence of crypto as a key political issue ahead of the U.S. election. The report analyzes the relative levels of crypto interest in swing states, revealing that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have seen significant jumps in crypto search interest since the 2020 election.
3. Stablecoins have emerged as a “killer app” in the crypto space, with the report stating, “Stablecoins amounted to $8.5 trillion in transaction volume across 1.1 billion transactions in the second quarter of 2024 ended June 30. Stablecoin transaction volumes more than doubled Visa‘s V $3.9 trillion in transactions over the same period.”
4. Infrastructure improvements have drastically reduced transaction costs and increased capacity. The report notes, “Blockchains are processing more than 50 times as many transactions per second as they were just four years ago thanks to the rise of Ethereum ETH/USD Layer-2 networks and other high-throughput blockchains.”
5. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) continues to grow, with the report revealing, “More than $169 billion is now locked inside thousands of DeFi protocols. Some of the top DeFi subcategories involve staking and lending.”
6. The intersection of crypto and AI is highlighted as a significant trend, with about a third of crypto projects using AI, up from 27% a year ago. The report suggests that crypto could potentially solve some of AI’s most pressing challenges, particularly around centralization.
7. Finally, the report explores how more scalable infrastructure has unlocked new onchain applications, including social networks and games. The authors state, “As the blockchains improve along classic tech price-performance curves, expect more of these applications to thrive.”
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