Blockchains Overview 2022: Milestones and Metrics

Blockchain technology is here to stay, and companies and individuals alike are starting to embrace it. It is important to mention, that despite notable impact of the recession and bear market on the market capitalisation, over 300 million people, or 3.9% of the global population, use blockchain or cryptocurrency. There are over 82 million Bitcoin wallets and 425 million crypto holders in the world. Moreover, it’s projected that companies will spend almost $19 billion on blockchain technology in 2024 and 90% of U.S., Canadian and European banks have started exploring blockchain technology.

This report aims to provide a snapshot of the main achievements and metrics of blockchains in 2022, taking into account the economic downturn, and offer insights into the future of this rapidly evolving ecosystem.

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that you can buy, sell and exchange directly, without an intermediary like a bank. Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, originally described the need for “an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.” On January 3, 2009, the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain, known as the Genesis block, was mined by the pseudonymous developer(s) known as Satoshi Nakamoto. The oldest cryptocurrency was created to be money with a fixed supply that no one can change. It launched amidst The Great Recession, when governments were issuing lots of new money to help ease the economic pain.

Bitcoin, the world’s biggest and most popular cryptocurrency was celebrating its 14th birthday in January 2022. In 2022, Bitcoin hit a milestone of 19 million coins and we are becoming closer to the maximum supply of 21 million. Less than 10% of the Bitcoin left to be mined.

The 21st million won’t be mined until roughly 2140. That’s because every four years the emission schedule drops in half. Currently, the block reward is 6.25 bitcoins for each block, which is worth more than a 120 thousand dollars at current prices.

Ethereum is a technology for building apps and organisations, holding assets, transacting and communicating without being controlled by a central authority. There is no need to hand over all your personal details to use Ethereum — you keep control of your own data and what is being shared. Ethereum has its own cryptocurrency, Ether, which is used to pay for certain activities on the Ethereum network.

At block 15537393 on 15th September 2022, triggering the Paris upgrade the next block. The Paris upgrade was triggered by the proof-of-work blockchain passing a terminal total difficulty of 58750000000000000000000. Paris was The Merge transition — its major feature was switching off the proof-of-work mining algorithm and associated consensus logic and switching on proof-of-stake instead. This was arguably the most significant upgrade in Ethereum history since Homestead.

Build N Build (BNB) Chain is a distributed blockchain network upon which developers and innovators can build decentralised applications (DApps) as part of the move to Web3. The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is now the BNB Chain. BSC, crypto exchange Binance’s layer-1 blockchain, in February 2022 announced the merger of the Binance Smart Chain and the Binance Chain to form the BNB Chain. BNB is the cryptocurrency that fuels the BNB Chain ecosystem and the native coin of both the BNB Beacon Chain and the BNB Smart Chain. It also serves as a governance token, apart from fueling transactions on the BNB Chain, much like gas on Ethereum.

The BNB Chain developers community continuously innovates so that BNB Chain remains a highly competitive and functional blockchain infrastructure. From Q1 to Q3 2022, BNB Chain increased BSC block gas capacity to 200 million gas cap in order to increase transaction speed and reduce cost.

BEP-131 proposal has changed the validator consensus module, introducing dynamic adjustment on the validator set. Validators benefit from a more competitive consensus that gives even smaller candidate validators a chance to place in the validator set and earn rewards. It increased the number of BSC Mainnet validators from 21 to 41, providing more decentralisation and incentives for validators to constantly innovate their hardware and infrastructure.

In Q2 2022, BNB Beacon Chain moved to an open-source the Binance decentralised exchange (DEX) and made it available to developers to build on. Developers can look forward to gaining access to the DEX matching engine code that is free to use and build on.

BEP-126 will implement BLS-based multi-signature for the peer-to-peer (P2P) channel and attest the blocks to fast finalize the state of the blockchain. The final confirmation time of transactions will decrease to as short as two blocks and provide end-users with a smoother cross-chain user experience by decreasing the transaction time.

Fully Diluted Market Cap (FDV): maximum supply * average price of governance token. The highest FDVs have Bitcoin ($477.5B) and Binance Smart Chain ($60.6B). Token supply of Ethereum is unlimited, so it is not possible to calculate FDV. Ethereum market capitalisation is around $200B.

Total Fees (TF): total fees paid by users in US dollars. The largest amounts of fees paid by users : Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Bitcoin, Avalanche and Filecoin.

Sources: Token Terminal, CoinGecko, Coinmarketcap, bnbchain.org, ethereum.org, cointelegraph.com