Living Through 2022: A watershed for the crypto industry

Remember the "312" in 2020, the crypto industry only took 24 hours to complete the deleveraging process, the health coefficient adjusted to normal, to meet 2021. In 2022, it took us a whole year to deleverage, and the outcome was much more tragic than 312.

The exciting 2022, so low-key start, bitcoin started at $48,000, although compared to 2021's high of $69,000 has fallen a lot, but the opening market is still full of confidence. Old projects are thriving and new ones are on the way. Then things took a turn for the worse in May, intensified in July, and the panic reached its climax in November. Rhythmic BlockBeats has sorted through some of the biggest events of 2022 (NFT excluded) to chart the 365 days of this crypto watershed, to remind those of us who live through 2022 to always be in awe of the market.

January

Curve war

Curve, as a stable AMM focusing on low slip points, issues governance Token CRV as an incentive to provide liquidity, thus improving the liquidity depth of each stable pool of Curve platform and maintaining the hook ability of stable. However, Curve has a key mechanism that makes it very different from traditional liquidity mining: By locking CRVS, the liquidity provider (LP) can obtain vecrVs correspondingly, which have actual governance significance for the liquidity incentive amplitude of the Curve platform and have the power to change the "Gauge Weights". This is how the Curve War started.

The Curve war in January was amazing, with many projects raising APY and organizing new wars in order to win the war, which made the users who participated in it a good profit.

Curve War escalates the Battle of CVX, the wonderful power struggle continues

DeFi 3.0

On the other hand, a new concept, DeFi3.0, was defii. DeFi 2.0 attempts to solve the 1.0 liquidity instability problem with the "protocol control liquidity" approach. 3.0 appeared under the banner of "Farming as a service". Multi-Chain Capital (MCC), Cross Chain Capital (CCC) and other projects were also busy in the market for a while through more complex Token tightening design.

DeFi 3.0: Is the day of the lying win finally here?

February

Biggest cryptocurrency heist in history

February began with a new discovery of an ancient event, with the arrest of the suspect in what is believed to be the largest theft in cryptocurrency history: "120,000 Bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex in 2016" : Llya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31. Lichtenstein is now a co-founder of a tech company, and Morgan is a Forbes writer and Rapper.

"Bonnie and Clyde" caught in $4 billion bitcoin theft case solved

Facebook's struggle before the metaverse

As one of the world's most celebrated Stablecoin projects, Libra has had a lot of trouble. From a vision to transform the global payments system in the ecology of a super-social network, to now having to be sold, through regulation, name changes, and the departure of multiple partners -- until February, when we literally said goodbye to Libra.

However, Libra still has an impact on the crypto industry. Move language developed in Libra became a new hot topic in the second half of 2022. Those who left Libra also started Aptos and Sui public chain, which won investment from a number of star capitals with a valuation that shocked the industry. Continue to explore new directions in the performance of public chains.

Facebook sells Diem, Who will continue Facebook's crypto path?

Jump crypto with money

Hackers are also taking money out of the market in 2022 in ways we've seen and haven't seen. Wormhole, a well-known cross-chain protocol, lost 120,000 ETH, or about $326 million. That number would be in the Top 5 in 2022. However, what was more surprising was that two days later, Jump Crypto announced that it had replaced the Wormhole and invested 120,000 ETH pieces to make up for the loss of Wormhole theft and support the continued development of Wormhole.

Wormhole, a cross-chain protocol, was hacked and 120,000 ETH pieces were stolen, resulting in a loss of 326 million dollars

Dispute between EOS community and B1

EOS, which once set the all-time record for cryptocurrency fundraising, also had a voice in February, when the community and EOS parent company Block.one finally had a public spat. Yves La Rose of EOS Nation, a former EOS node, has become the leader of a new community group, the EOS Network Foundation, to represent the community in negotiations with Block.one, though until now there has been no clear outcome.

The EOS Network Foundation is taking legal action: it wants Block.one to return $4.1 billion to enable EOS Ecosystem

March

Ukrainian airdrop

At the end of February, the Russia-Ukraine war started, which originally had nothing to do with cryptocurrency, but more to the global macro uncertainty. However, it is outrageous that after announcing the introduction of cryptocurrency donations and the release of donation addresses, Ukraine officially announced Token drops for all donated addresses. Such state-level airdrops, as you might imagine, were officially cancelled.

AC unwinding

AC, Andre Cronje, a name everyone knows in the crypto industry. The man who single-handedly brought the 2020 DeFi Summer to a climax announced his retirement on March 6 and will not continue to contribute to the DeFi and Crypto fields. YFI, Fantom and others dive in salute at the same time.

We don't know for sure if AC will come, but his "Crypto is dead, Crypto forever" line is sure to be repeated, chewed over by the crypto spirit and crypto culture.

Andre Cronje is retiring from the crypto space and will terminate about 25 related apps and services on April 3

STEPN on Binance

Picture from the Internet

Web3 leader STEPN certainly didn't arrive in 2022, but the March 1 announcement of the launch of Binance's IEO is the absolute turning point for STEPN. In a market that couldn't find a new direction, STEPN's GMT opened at 17 times earnings in Binance, then went from $0.10 all the way up to $4, shocking both inside and outside the market that STEPN led the way with the Web3 concept.

Binance's latest Launchpad project, STEPN, has generated so much discussion.

Axie was stolen. That's a big number

In one of the most outrageous heists of the year, GameFi leader Axie Infinity's self-developed side chain Ronin was attacked. 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC were stolen, worth $625 million. It was also one of the worst attacks of the year. Absurdly, the authorities found out about the theft six days before it was officially announced, but waited six days to announce it.

After $625 million was stolen, the Party continued

Classic counterbet

Picture from the Internet

On March 14, Terra founder Do Kwon took to the social platform to bet against crypto KOL Sensei Algod that LUNA would be worth more than $88 a year from now. Each side brought in another KOL Cobie to witness the Stablecoin, and each sent the $1 million Stablecoin to the address specified by Cobie. The money came in, and the bet was effective.

Unexpectedly, within a year, everyone knew the outcome of the bet. Still, it wasn't just the two of them, it was everyone.

Terra founder and Crypto KOL bet millions against LUNA price

April  

LUNA is in full swing

The April of 2022 is the April of LUNA. What was thought to be the sun at that time is the climax of the music's final chapter. With the 20% annual Anchor, the market value of UST and LUNA has skyrocketed to $40 billion, and the market value of LUNA has directly entered the top five of cryptocurrency market value. In order to maintain the stability of UST, LUNA Foundation took over the gray PI Xiu and bought 42,000 bitcoins as reserves within a few days, becoming the seventh largest holder of Bitcoins in the world. The mood was already brewing, and they wanted to be the most successful decentralized stablecoin in the crypto world, but they missed it by a little.

Stablecoin interest rates have long been as high as 20%. Is Anchor Ponzi too?

May

LUNA empire collapse

Picture from the Internet

May 2022 marks the end of LUNA's $40 billion financial music. Like the rest after the highest note, LUNA's story comes to an abrupt end. It took just two days for the world's second largest public chain to collapse, from a slight unanchoring of the UST to a panicky liquidation of the market.

The process is pretty familiar to everyone, who was still marveling at the fall of the global Top 5 and didn't pay attention to the LUNA founder's words, "If luna fails, it will be the failure of cryptocurrencies."

$84 million to shake up $40 billion financial Empire, UST Crash Starts and Ends

Yuchen Sun launches USDD

Before LUNA crashed, there was another episode, that is, Brother Sun's algorithm Stablecoin USDD went online, which is just one of many projects of Brother Sun. Like JST, USDJ, etc., Brother Sun continues to expand his family bucket.

Son's "Dream of Stability" : the Federal Reserve and the USDD

In June

OP stolen, god operated

On June 9th Layer2 Optimism itself announced a call that, following communication and technical missteps in its collaboration with Wintermute, a cryptocurrency market maker, Optimism The Optimism Foundation sent 20 million OPs to Wintermute directly to the wrong Layer1 address, and then the 20 million OPs were seized by hackers. It's outrageous that OP, the darling of the Ethereum Foundation and a champion of political correctness, could be guilty of something that looks like a white novice.

Optimism confirmed that 20 million OP had been stolen and that hackers had sold 1 million

Three Arrows capital thunder

Picture from the Internet

After LUNA, the crypto world was hit by Three Arrow Capital. Three Arrow Capital, which once managed up to $18 billion and believed in Supercycle and built Solunavax with real money, also collapsed due to liquidity depletion. LUNA, GBTC, stETH's thunder and anchors made the three Arrows one of the dominoes. And in June, we can not imagine that behind the three arrows there is a larger institution fell in the long river of history.

From Celsius to Three arrows: Cryptogenic billions of dominoes, epic liquidity drying up

July

V God has released an updated Ethereum roadmap

In July 2022, when the market finally took a breather after a series of thunderstorms, V unveiled the latest Ethereum roadmap at the Ethereum Community meeting, showing the industry the ultimate shape of the most decentralized ecological network in the future.

V God shows Ethereum's latest route, the final form after five stages

Aptos announced another round of financing

This is the ultimate performance of the separation of the primary and secondary markets of 2022 encryption. The secondary market has no waves, while the primary market's pursuit of star projects has reached the extreme, a new public chain with a valuation of $3 billion, just like 2018.

Aptos closed a $150 million funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto

August  

More than 9,000 wallets were stolen from Solana

The August breach was one of the most outrageous hacks of the year. The size of the stolen money is small compared with other incidents, but the reason for the theft has been surprisingly slow to be determined. Unlike other attacks, where the cause of the attacks was largely established almost as soon as the incident unfolded, the cause of the widespread breach remained unknown for several days, even as people began to wonder if something was wrong at the bottom of Solana's network.

Slow fog: More than 8,000 Solana wallets were stolen, and about $580 million went to four addresses

Any return to the helm of Binance Labs

The long-lost sister of the industry is back at the helm of Binance Labs as the leader of over 200 portfolio projects with $7.5 billion in assets under management. The first customer service of that year became active again, and made a voice in the community for many times, answering questions and clarifying rumors.

Binance co-founder He Yi will lead Binance Labs

Li Lin retired, Brother Sun as Huobi Global consultant

Less than halfway through August, Bloomberg reported that Huobi founder Li Lin was seeking to sell his majority stake in the trading platform at a valuation of $3 billion, amid rumors that Sun had held preliminary talks, which he later denied.

However, from the follow-up development of the event, Huobi after the change of master is now in charge of Sun elder brother, the internal meeting shouted "empower HT", senior management, Sun elder brother has been Huobi's nominal manager.

Bloomberg: SBF and Justin Sun are in talks to buy a stake in Huobi valued at US $3 billion by Li Lin

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for making large amounts of small money transfers to celebrities

Picture from the Internet

This is the toughest sanction in cryptocurrency history, The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury, The Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury, OFAC) on the SDN List (specially designated List of Nationals of the United States). The Treasury's case is solid, saying Tornado Cash has been used to launder more than $7 billion since it was set up in 2019, and that it is necessary to fight crime.

This is the first time in history that an agreement has been sanctioned, and despite silent resistance from "innocent of technology" crypto advocates through malicious pollution of addresses, Tornado has taken a devastating hit. Tornado has been banned from multiple protocol fronts, its developers have been arrested, its code has been taken down from GitHub, and its website domain has been blocked.

Will the decentralized crypto world be able to cope with centralized attacks? Likewise, even the Ethereum network is embroiled in a regulatory crisis. For the first time, the inherent censorship resistance of blockchain has been questioned. V God publicly responded that if the regulator reviews Ethereum through the verification node, it will consider it an attack on Ethereum and choose to destroy the node by consensus.

Toughest crypto sanctions in history Read: What happened to Tornado Cash

September

The Ethereum merger was successful

Picture from the Internet

September is destined to be the most watched and anticipated month of the year. At 14:43 on September 15, Ethereum successfully completed the merger of the mainnet and beacon chain, marking the elimination of Ethereum's proof-of-work (PoW) and the complete transition to proof-of-interest (PoS). The community has been waiting for this moment for eight years, ever since "Transformation PoS" appeared in the 2014 Ethereum white paper.

"The merger is an important moment for the Ethereum ecosystem." According to its updated roadmap released on November 5, Ethereum's vision does not stop there, breaking through the unsolved "triangle of Impossibility" and the crypto world will continue to witness and create countless moments of wonder.

Ethereum's 8-year mining era Ends: V God, China Mining, and Nvidia

V God New Book "Proof of Stake"

Picture from the Internet

The concept of soul binding is young, and the concept of V God himself has been pioneered. The digital edition of his ten-year anthology Proof of Stake is cast in the form of SBT (Soul Bound Token) NFT.

In the same month, BNB Chain soul binding Token BAB went online, and several projects such as ApeSwap announced that they would provide exclusive benefits to BAB Token holders. As of press, BAB's total effective casting exceeded 540,000 pieces, which is probably the number of active encryption users bear market.

BNB Chain: Soul Bound Token BAB holders can receive 14 items such as ApeSwap special rewards

The official bridge of BNB Chain was hacked in October

The largest on-chain attack in encryption history took place in October, costing a staggering $718 million. However, the rapid recovery in 9 hours, BNB's almost stable currency price, and CZ's claim that the whole process is under control again make the BNB Chain team face the question of "excessive centralization". The meme about CZ having too much power swept through the crypto community, but a month later, we found out that CZ already represents the industry.

The official bridge of BNB Chain was hacked, and the total loss was estimated at $718 million, the largest on-chain attack in history

Aptos airdrop detonates "Hair fever"

On October 18th, Aptos announced the official launch of its main network "Aptos Autumn", and Aptos officials air-dropped more than 20 million APT pieces to more than 110,000 community users. According to the APT price at that time, the average amount of air-dropped pieces was at least more than 10,000 yuan. Even more scientists immediately announced their graduation from Web3.

In a bear market, such hardcore airdrops provoke unlimited FOMO in the community. Overnight, the crypto community opened fancy inside volume, the influx of each has not yet issued a coin project. Sui, a Move-based public chain also built by the Facebook team, is certainly in the spotlight, with its official Discord still unrestored after a 24-hour outage. In late December, the Sui Foundation reiterated that it had no plans for air drops.

What information should we pay attention to when the Aptos main network is online? (Updated on Oct 21)

Musk eventually succeeded in acquiring Twitter

Picture from the Internet

Elon Musk walks into Twitter with a sink in his hand, closing a six-month-long takeover of the company for $44 billion. He said he wanted to make Twitter the most accurate news source in the world, and the company has seen many changes and widespread layoffs. But it seems that Chief Twit is not going to be easy. Not only has the $8 authentication fee been criticized, but users have also voted that he should resign. In December, Musk said he would step down when a successor was found to run Twitter's software and server teams.

The year's hottest acquisition is over, and Musk is finally taking over Twitter

The zkSync 2.0 main network is online

The Q4 of 2022 is the ZK Season. After the zkSync 2.0 main network came online, the ecosystem expanded rapidly. Its developer, Matter Labs, closed a $200 million funding round led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, bringing its total funding to $458 million. According to zkSync roadmap, milestones will occur in Q1 and Q2 in 2023. How will the "Layer2 battle" between ZK and OP be carried out? Look forward to next year.

zkSync2.0 Mainnet Launch: What Should We Know

November

The government embraces Web3

On the first day of November, the Hong Kong SAR Government announced on the occasion of the 7th Fintech Week thePolicy Declaration on Virtual Asset Development in Hong KongFor a time, the discussion of whether Hong Kong can become the "future Web3 center" aroused people's infinite longing and imagination in the bear market. The government continues to send positive signals to the crypto industry and its practitioners, and the Twitter Space is filled with people's ambition to join the building.

Full text: Policy Declaration on Virtual Asset Development in Hong Kong

FTX Thunder

Picture from the Internet

Unfortunately, the FTX explosion happened soon after. Even more surprising is the speed with which the trading platform, which rose to prominence in just three years, has fallen. A months-old balance sheet, a belated response, CZ's tweets, Binance's announcement and reversal, the market's discovery of an $8 billion liquidity gap, FTX's bankruptcy filing, and the speed with which the story was turned gave no one a break.

This was a disaster, a disaster that no one survived. SBF and FTX had almost touched every corner of the industry within 3 years, and their collapse almost uprooted the industry. As much praise as SBF received in 3 years, there was as much abuse in November until the industry recovered.

FTX in jail, Binance walks away, crypto's Lehman moment

The collapse of the FTX was also the trigger for a series of bankruptcies and FUDs that sent the crypto world into a panic as former crypto giants collapsed like dominoes. Perhaps the FTX has come so suddenly that markets are racing to anticipate the next platform for the thunder to cushion themselves. But the ripple effects were unstoppable: DCG and its Genesis subsidiary had problems, some operations had to be suspended, and even the world's largest crypto lending platform was rumored to file for bankruptcy; BlockFi, etc., filed for bankruptcy reorganization, etc.

What went wrong when Genesis, the world's largest crypto lending platform, suspended cash withdrawals?

One of the functions of blockchain is to reduce the cost of trust, and in 2022 we are deleveraging and also removing trust. A financial empire worth tens of billions of dollars can be destroyed in two days.

The rebuilding of confidence will not happen in a day or two. We just have to wait. Hopefully 2023 will allow us to find the lost Crypto spirit and shout "Long Crypto".

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群：https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群：https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号：https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia