The cryptocurrency industry may have gone through tremendous price upheavals in the past year and a half. That said, it is certainly fair to say that the entire industry is now more mature than ever. There is acceptance, appreciation and infrastructure development.
However, a lot of people don’t appreciate the fact that cryptocurrency has different tiers to it. What we normally see is the investments and markets perspective in the form of price. What underwrites that is the fundamental or tech part. The latter is what has matured, seemingly without much attention from the outside world.
Research by analysis firm, Flipside Crypto, also affirmed this conclusion. Their findings, which hinges on user activity, developer behavior and the markets, concluded that the industry as a whole is getting healthier.
Decentralized Applications
The development of DApps is perhaps the most exciting part of the blockchain era. Initially, the cryptocurrency world was all about the development of virtual currencies. With the entrance of Ethereum into this space, the development curve has never been steeper.
The latest projects, for example, growth of non-custodial decentralized finance, currently led by the Ethereum ecosystem, take sophistication to another level. These apps are increasingly complex to solve a wide variety of tech needs.
DApps that deal with big data also deserve special mention. This is probably going to be the internet battlefield for the future. Increasingly, personal data is online and these apps are in a unique position to provide privacy and storage solutions.
Strengthening of Security and Privacy
Coin and exchange hacks are a devastating issue for the coin community. Bitcoin, for instance, is set to add Schnorr signatures and Taproot updates. These will boost BTC’s privacy, functionality, and efficiency.
The move is reminiscent of pretty much all projects in the cryptocurrency field. Projects are pouring record investments into security and privacy solutions. This is a marker for overall industry maturity. Regardless, many would deem it a necessary improvement with time and not realize the impact on overall industry credibility.
Third-Party Platforms and Liquidity Growth
Besides maturity in terms of crypto projects themselves, there are more third-party projects that serve support functions. This is in the form of strong third-party custodian solutions like Anchorage and Fidelity Investments.
These institutions provide crypto assets solutions to a large number of people worldwide. These people may not wish to own their private keys. It is not easy to trust random exchanges hence the development of these institutions.
Liquidity is another problem blockchain startups grappled with. This is because coin adoption in the subsequent years probably surpassed the expectations of these pioneers. As such, there has been recent growth in trading platforms that add to global liquidity. These include Omniex, Tagomi, Coinroutes, FalconX and others.
Accordingly, investors and traders can give up less value in transactions to exchanges and arbitrageurs. Another example is the xRapid solution leveraging XRP which is a liquidity solution for banks involved in cross-border transactions. These solutions cut out costly middlemen and make the industry more transparent.
In general, the cryptocurrency industry is at as good a place as it has ever been. Even though it has operated in bear territory in the past year, overall fundamental growth has endured. This growth is the key to a sustainable digital future.