Data Source: Footprint Analytics

This article is part of the Footprint Analytics Blockchain Annual Report.

In 2021, the ecological development of the public chain has entered an explosive period, and the multi-chain world has moved from ideal to reality.

Public chain development and classification overview

according toFootprint AnalyticsAccording to statistics, there are currently 86 public chains that have been collected in total, compared with 11 at the beginning of 2021, the number has increased by nearly 7 times.

Footprint Analytics - Total Amount of Public Chains in 2021

At the beginning of last year, Ethereum dominated 96% of the market, while hundreds of new DApps in DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and SocialFi caused the network to barely function on its own due to congestion and fee issues.

along withalong with, the new chain — both competing with and partnering with the Ethereum ecosystem — has become the big story heading into 2022.

Footprint Analytics - Market Share of TVL by Chain - 2021 vs. 2020

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The goal of almost all public chain solutions is to process more transactions than Ethereum, with faster speed and cheaper price.

These public chains start from technology, ecology, integration with traditional finance, or emerging wind directions, focusing on the impossible triangle, each showing its special abilities.

In this post, we'll take a look at the different types of public chains that support blockchain usage at scale.

• At present, we can classify different types of public chains into the following three categories

• Layer 1 technology innovation chain, which improves performance by transforming the public chain itself, and competes with Ethereum. It includes exchange brand public chains (such as BSC, Cronos, Heco, etc.), interoperable chains of Cosmos and Polkadot types, and public chains such as Solana, Avalanche, Terra, and Fantom.

• Sidechain, as an extension solution compatible with Ethereum EVM, is partially complementary to deal with the excess capacity of Ethereum. For example, Ronin, which is specially designed to solve NFT transactions, and Polygon, a blockchain network that builds and links Ethereum, provides a general framework.Layer 2, as a fully complementary solution to Ethereum, is essentially a part of Ethereum. It implements off-chain expansion by building a second-layer technical solution under the chain and processing some transactions (Rollups) on the second layer. Currently, Rollups technologies mainly fall into two categories: Optimistic-rollups and ZK-rollups. For more information on L2, pleaseFootprint in-depth articles on the topic.

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Ecological overview of the public chainBy the end of 2021,The total value peaked at 293 billion, a 10-fold increase compared to 2020.

Footprint Analytics - Total TVL in 2021

Among them, the public chains of Layer 1 have adopted various strategies to build their own ecosystems, and have captured the largestmarket shareimage description

Footprint Analytics - Market Share of Different Public Chain

at present,at present,The number of DeFi projects on each public chain

, has approached 1,000. Among them, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Solana, Fantom, Terra, Arbitrum, and Cronos have grown into the top ten public chains with the number of DeFi projects other than Ethereum.The ecology of each public chain has also gradually covered DEX, yield, lending, assets, staking, minting and other DeFi business types. fromimage description

Footprint Analytics - The Growing Trend of DeFi Projects

Footprint Analytics - Top 10 Public Chain Growing Trend

Footprint Analytics - Top10 Public Chain's TVL Distribution

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As a new trend in 2021, NFT and GameFi will flourish.NFT transaction public chain。

Footprint Analytics -  NFT Transaction Amount of Different Public Chains

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Footprint Analytics - Monthly GameFi Users of Different Public Chains

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2021 Public Chain Star Players

The Terra public chain built around the stablecoin protocol, after several rounds of financing, once surpassed BSC, which is backed by powerful exchange resources, at the end of the year and became the second-ranked public chain.

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Footprint Analytics - Top 5 Public Chains TVL in terms of Growth Rate in 2021

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The rapid growth of cross-chain bridge business

As the blockchain world is now divided into multiple public chains, it has become a necessity to build bridges between these different public chain solutions and projects.

Most cross-chain bridge protocols are L2 extended cross-chain bridges built on Ethereum, the purpose of which is to realize interconnection with Ethereum.

Footprint Analytics - TVL of Cross-chain Bridges

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Summarize

Summarize

With widespread adoption and an influx of new users, the blockchain has expanded far beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Different public chains aim to solve pressing Web3.0 problems, and their relatively low development cost makes it possible to have many public chains. However, this fragmentation also creates new challenges for developers and users, while also creating a need for interoperable solutions.Footprint Analytics: An Overview of ChainsCopyright Notice:

About Footprint Analytics:

Footprint Analytics is a one-stop visual blockchain data analysis platform. Footprint assisted in solving the problem of data cleaning and integration on the chain, allowing users to enjoy the zero-threshold blockchain data analysis experience for free. Provide more than a thousand tabulation templates and a drag-and-drop drawing experience, anyone can create their own personalized data chart within 10 seconds, easily gain insight into the data on the chain, and understand the story behind the data.

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The above content is only a personal opinion, for reference and communication only, and does not constitute investment advice. If there are obvious understanding or data errors, feedback is welcome.

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