Layer by Layer Issue 42: Aptos and Sui

Short-term market volatility can often belie the significant growth of the crypto industry on a larger scale. Public valuations of crypto assets have swung dramatically over the past few years, with crypto’s total market cap rising from about $191 billion at the beginning of 2020 to a peak of over $3 trillion in November 2021. Since peaking, total crypto market cap has fallen more than 60% to about $1.1 trillion as of this writing.  

Even so, the aggregate valuation of crypto assets at present is still up by about 490% since the start of 2020, underscoring the evolution of the market in recent years. This growth has been accompanied by a notable influx of capital and on-chain activity, driven in large part by the emergence of core innovations in decentralized finance (DeFi), such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending protocols, yield aggregators, and derivatives. At the same time, 2021 saw crypto break into mainstream consciousness to a far greater extent than in any other market cycle previously.