An unidentified individual dubbed Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a whitepaper on the possibilities of cryptocurrencies thirteen years ago, on October 31, 2008, when the globe was suffering an economic catastrophe.
“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” a widely circulated whitepaper, explained the foundations of bitcoin (BTC) while underlining the importance and benefits of a futuristic online payment system without any middlemen.
Satoshi Nakamoto stated in the Bitcoin whitepaper that the world required an “electronic payment system based on cryptographic evidence rather than trust, allowing any two willing parties to interact directly with one another without the need for a trusted third party.”
The Bitcoin network was made available to the public for the first time in 2009, after the idea’s popularity, and the process of mining BTC formally began. BTC’s value began modestly, eventually rising to $1,000 for the first time in 2013, before plunging below $300 per coin. Rival cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and Namecoin began to enter the crypto ecosystem around the same time.
In the present day, bitcoin’s price has surpassed $68,000, making it the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Other notable altcoins, like Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Dogecoin (DOGE), have momentarily gained a significant portion of the market while achieving new all-time highs, assisting the global crypto market in passing the $3 trillion valuation barrier.
Along with the dramatic rise of cryptocurrencies, various other blockchain-based solutions have risen to prominence, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and play-to-earn (P2E) games. Who’d have guessed that cryptocurrencies, which were originally termed “illicit activities” instruments, would one day upset existing financial structures, locking in billions of dollars in total value locked (TVL)?
As the cryptocurrency bull market continues, let’s take a deeper look at some of the projects that have made a significant contribution to the cryptoverse’s extraordinary growth.
Projects Shaping The Cryptoverse One Milestone At A Time
All blockchain networks that use the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus method, such as Bitcoin, rely on mining rigs, which use a lot of resources and have limited scalability. As a result, new blockchain networks have begun experimenting with alternative consensus processes that have a smaller environmental effect while providing better scalability.
One business pioneering a greener perspective for cryptos is Jelurida, the firm behind Nxt blockchain and its pure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. Nxt was the first Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain network, launched in 2013, that paved the way for future blockchain networks like Ethereum.
Following the success of the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, various other blockchain networks began to develop modifications such as Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS), Liquid Proof-of-Stake (LPoS), and other similar models. Despite the fact that other platforms like as Cardano, Polkadot, Dash, Neo, Algorand, Cosmos, and others have embraced the Proof-of-Stake architecture, Nxt remains one of the most proven and stable platforms in the market, influencing a slew of other projects.
Blockchain technology has not only improved in efficiency over time, but it has also attracted seasoned financial experts from traditional brick and mortar institutions. Yuzo Kano, co-founder and CEO of bitFlyer, is one of them. He is widely regarded as one of the first TradFi specialists to leave the field for cryptocurrencies. He worked at Goldman Sachs before founding bitFlyer. BitFlyer became one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges with operating licenses in Japan, Europe, and the United States after years of hard effort.
BitFlyer Inc. (Japan) has been there from the early days of bitcoin, since its inception in 2014. It is one of the world’s top bitcoin exchanges by market value. Since the early days of Bitcoin, the platform has led the charge in simplifying crypto assets and making them accessible to everybody, with more than 2.5 million users globally and transaction volumes exceeding $350 billion in 2021 alone.
BitFlyer is continuously developing its services after all these years, allowing individuals all around the world to participate in the burgeoning blockchain ecosystem. The BTC/JPY trading pair was just opened for US consumers by bitFlyer, making it the first cryptocurrency platform to enable cross-border trading and giving users access to more liquidity and arbitrage opportunities within the fully regulated Japanese crypto market.
Moving forward, Qtum, a Singapore-based blockchain initiative, is another project that leverages the greatest characteristics of different chains, offering smart contracts a plethora of new use cases, similar to Jelurida’s energy-efficiency benefit.
Following Ethereum’s breakthrough, the crypto industry saw the emergence of other intriguing smart contract platforms. Qtum, on the other hand, stands out because it blends the UTXO paradigm of the Bitcoin network with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the Proof-of-Stake 3.0 consensus mechanism.
Unlike other systems that rely on a single main chain, Qtum’s hybrid architecture, paired with the first-of-its-kind MPoS algorithm, ensures unrivaled compatibility across legacy networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Simply said, the Qtum team has brought AAL (account abstraction layers) to the Bitcoin network, allowing for the implementation of EVM smart contracts on top of the Bitcoin network. As a result, Qtum benefits from native Bitcoin and Ethereum network updates while allowing dApp developers to quickly migrate their Solidity Smart Contracts.
Tron is another blockchain project that aims to bridge the gap between decentralized and traditional finance (DeFi). Tron, as a third-generation blockchain network, can perform everything that legacy blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum can achieve, but with more scalability and efficiency.
Tron has gained significant traction in the existing financial market, with leading investment management firm VanEck adding 200 million Tron (TRX) to their existing holding of 814,271,133 TRX, in addition to making a name for itself in the decentralized content sharing niche by launching BitTorrent Chain (BTTC).
Tron has also launched an ecosystem fund of $1.1 billion to entice additional current businesses and protocols to its network. A vast range of DeFi devices and protocols, NFTs, and stablecoins, among other real-world use cases, may be found in Tron’s rapidly expanding ecosystem.
The initiatives listed above (and many more) have played critical roles in helping cryptocurrencies achieve popular acceptability as blockchain technology has progressed from a point when someone exchanged 10,000 BTC for two pizzas to a worldwide crypto market value of more than $3 trillion.
