History of tracking cryptocurrencies (4): Great collapse and ETH are recognized by mainstream

Author: Prashant JHA, Cointelegraph; Compilation: White Water, Bit Chain Vision Realm

The cryptocurrency market has gone through several cycles, which is characterized by the rapid rise in prices (called a bull market), and then a long period of time (called “cryptocurrency cold winter”).

The term cryptocurrency cold winter refers to the stage characterized by investors’ enthusiasm in the cryptocurrency market.From the sharp decline in the price and transaction volume of crypto assets, it can be clearly seen.Different from the traditional capital market, the cryptocurrency industry lacks standardization indicators to identify the start of the cold winter of cryptocurrencies.

Big collapse in September 2018

During this period,Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two leading cryptocurrencies, have fallen by more than 80%compared to historical highs.Bitcoin had previously reached a peak of nearly $ 20,000 at the end of 2017, while Ethereum rose to more than $ 1,400, but by September 2018, the value of both fell sharply.

Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, 95% of the currency value fell sharply.

The multi -fixed industry challenges triggered the encrypted winter in 2018.These include the failure rate of the first token issuance. More than 97%of the issuance failed to reach the goal, and the problem of excessive leverage of individual investors.Regulatory concerns have further complicated the situation, causing investors to withdraw a large amount of evacuation of the market.

The consequences of the collapse of crypto currency in 2018 deeply affected people’s views on cryptocurrencies.Financial institutions began to be suspicious of the cryptocurrency market and label it with potential speculative, while governments around the world recommend that they keep cryptocurrency investment cautious.

During this period of not active, it changed in July 2019. At that time, the enthusiasm of investors began to heat up and pushed the price of Bitcoin to exceed the $ 10,000 mark.However, the recovery of market fate is short.

March 2020,The popular outbreak caused a serious liquidity crisis and affected the global market, including the cryptocurrency market.

New Plan for Ethereum POS Journey

Although the economy declined sharply in 2018, Ethereum also ushered in key development.During this period, Ethereum began to lay the foundation for its transition to the transition of the equity (POS) system, although facing the efforts of delay and re -arrangement.

At the beginning of 2018, the popularity of the blockchain game “Cat Cat” caused network congestion.This incident highlights the necessity of Ethereum to improve its scalability.In response, Ethereum explored the concept of shards. This process divided the blockchain into several smaller and easier management parts, called the chip chain or data layer.Each shard runs independently and allows parallel processing information, which can significantly enhance the scalability of the blockchain.

However, the transition of Ethereum to the equity certificate (POS) blockchain is slower than expected, and there have been multiple delays along the way.

According to its 2017 route map, Ethereum plans to carry out two major upgrades -Metropolis and Serenity — can improve scalability by introducing equity proof and sharding.Metropolis upgrades will be implemented in two stages: the Byzantine stage, focusing on privacy improvement; Constantinople stage, the workload certificate+POS hybrid system will be introduced.

Nevertheless, by June 2018, Ethereum uses a simpler POS system, Casper 2.0.Although this transformation is expected to be completed in 2019 at first, it is finally completed in 2021, which shows the complexity involved in the upgrade and widely used blockchain platform.

One of the significant progress during this period was that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) categorized Ethereum as non -securities in June.This decision made Ethereum the second asset to get such titles after Bitcoin, which triggered discussions and debates in the following years.

2019: Ethereum has been recognized and DEFI’s year

In 2019, Ethereum attracted widespread attention due to the expansion of its technological progress and decentralized finance (DEFI) ecosystem.In this year, the DEFI field has experienced considerable growth. As of December 31, 2019, the total value of the DEFI agreement lock -up increased to $ 667 million.

2019 DEFI TVL chart.Source: Medium

It was originally led by MakerDao, which held 1.86 million ETH (then about $ 260.4 billion). By the end of the year, the industry ushered in the influx of new participants.

The decentralized exchanges have also experienced significant growth, and they have attracted attention when the centralized exchanges are generally popular.UNISWAP has become the main participant, and its average daily transaction volume has increased from $ 25,000 to $ 1.5 million, and its liquidity has increased from $ 500,000 to $ 25 million.

In addition, Ethereum began to attract attention from various fields, including large companies, financial institutions, consumer brands and celebrities.

Basketball player Spencer Dinwiddie announced a plan to create his NBA contract in Ethereum to create 90 tokens based on Ethereum.These tokens allow the holder to invest in part of the income of Ding Weidi’s futures contract and interest.Through this arrangement, Dinwiddie received $ 13.5 million in prepaid from his $ 34 million contract.

Professional basketball team, King Sacraono, used the Ethereum tokens to launch a reward plan to enhance fans’ participation through blockchain technology.In the entertainment industry, the “Star Trek” series announced that it will use the digital collection platform to issue a series of collectible spacecraft on Ethereum as an irreplaceable token.

In addition, Samsung also launched a developer platform focusing on Ethereum, and released a new smartphone integrated Ethereum wallet.