I still remember that when reviewing the "312" incident in 2020, the crypto industry only took 24 hours to complete the deleveraging process, and the health factor was adjusted to normal to welcome 2021. However, in 2022, it took us a whole year to deleverage, and the outcome was much more tragic than 312.
The thrilling 2022 started so low-key. Bitcoin started at $48,000. Although it has fallen a lot compared to the high of $69,000 in 2021, the market at the beginning is still full of confidence. Old projects are developing vigorously, and new projects are also ready to move. Then the situation took a sharp turn for the worse in May, the mood intensified in July, and the panic reached a climax in BlockBeats. BlockBeats sorted out some major events in 2022 (excluding NFT events) to record these 365 days that belong to the crypto watershed, to remind us who have survived 2022 to always respect the market.
January
Curve war
As a stable AMM focusing on low slippage, Curve issues the governance token CRV as an incentive to provide liquidity, thereby increasing the liquidity depth of each stable pool on the Curve platform and maintaining the ability to hook stable. However, Curve has a very critical mechanism that makes it very different from traditional liquidity mining: by locking CRV, liquidity providers (LPs) can obtain veCRV accordingly, which has practical governance significance for the liquidity incentive range of the Curve platform and has the power to change the "Gauge Weights". This is also the cause of the Curve War.
The Curve war in January was quite exciting. In order to win the war, many projects increased APY and organized new wars, which also allowed users who participated at the time to obtain good returns.
Curve War upgrades to the CVX war, the exciting power struggle continues
Defi 3.0
At the same time, there was a new concept in the DeFi field, "DeFi 3.0", which was short-lived at the time. DeFi 2.0 tried to solve the problem of unstable liquidity in 1.0 by "protocol-controlled liquidity". 3.0 appeared under the banner of "Farming as a service". Multi-Chain Capital (MCC), Cross Chain Capital (CCC) and other projects also became popular in the market at the time through more complex token tightening designs.
《DeFi 3.0: Is the day of easy win finally here? 》
February
The largest cryptocurrency theft in history
February started with the discovery of an ancient event. The suspects in what is considered the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrency, the 2016 Bitfinex theft of 120,000 bitcoins, were arrested: 34-year-old Llya Lichtenstein and his 31-year-old wife Heather Rhiannon Morgan. Lichtenstein is now the co-founder of a technology company, and Morgan has many identities, including a contributor to the well-known media Forbes and a rapper.
"The thief" was arrested, and the $4 billion Bitcoin theft case was solved"
Facebook's struggles before the Metaverse
As a stablecoin project that once attracted global attention, Libra has a very unfortunate fate. It started at the peak, with the vision of changing the global payment system under the ecology of a super social network, but now it has to be sold. In the meantime, it has experienced regulation, name change, and the withdrawal of many partners. Until February this year, we really had to say goodbye to Libra.
However, Libra still has an impact on the crypto industry. The Move language developed for Libra has become a new hot spot in the second half of 2022. People who left Libra have opened Aptos and Sui public chains, and have received investments from a number of star capitals at valuations that shocked the industry, and continue to explore new directions in public chain performance.
"Facebook officially sold Diem, who will continue Facebook's encryption journey?"
Rich Jump crypto
Hackers also used various methods we have seen or not seen to take money from the market in 2022. The attack on the well-known cross-chain protocol Wormhole lost 120,000 ETH, equivalent to about 326 million US dollars. This stolen number can also be ranked in the top 5 in 2022. But what is more surprising is that two days later, Jump Crypto announced that it had filled the hole and invested 120,000 ETH to make up for the loss of Wormhole theft and support Wormhole's continued development.
Dispute between EOS community and B1
EOS, which once set a record for cryptocurrency financing, also made a statement in February, with the community and EOS parent company Block.one finally having an open fight. Yves La Rose, former EOS node EOS Nation, became the leader of the new community organization EOS Network Foundation, negotiating with Block.one on behalf of the community, but there has been no clear result so far.
March
Ukraine airdrop
The Russian-Ukrainian war broke out at the end of February. This originally had no direct relationship with cryptocurrency, but it added more uncertainty to the global macro. But what is outrageous is that after Ukraine announced the introduction of cryptocurrency donations and released the donation address, Ukraine also officially announced a token airdrop to all donated addresses. This kind of national-level airdrop is very exciting, but it was officially cancelled in the end.
AC Retires
ac, Andre Cronje, this name must be well-known to everyone in the crypto industry. The man who pushed the 2020 DeFi Summer to a climax by himself announced his retirement on March 6 and would no longer contribute to the DeFi and Crypto fields. YFI, Fantom, etc. also dived in tribute.
We cannot be sure whether AC will come again, but his words "Crypto is dead, Crypto lives on" will definitely be repeated and chewed over and over again by the crypto spirit and crypto culture.
STEPN on Binance
The leader in the Web3 field, STEPN, certainly did not appear in 2022, but the IEO announced on Binance on March 1 was an absolute turning point for STEPN. In a market that could not find a new direction, STEPN's GMT opened with a 17-fold return on Binance, and then rose from $0.1 to $4, shocking everyone inside and outside. It is no exaggeration to say that STEPN has led the concept of Web3.
"Why has Binance's latest Launchpad project STEPN sparked so much discussion?"
Axie was stolen, shocking numbers
This is one of the most outrageous thefts this year. The self-developed sidechain Ronin of GameFi leader Axie Infinity was attacked, and 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC were stolen, worth $625 million. This is also one of the most serious attacks this year. What is outrageous is that the official discovered the theft 6 days before the official announcement, but did not say anything until 6 days later.
After $625 million was stolen, the party continues
Classic Betting
On March 14, Terra founder Do Kwon made a bet with crypto KOL Sensei Algod on a social platform on whether the price of LUNA would exceed the current price of $88 in a year (Do Kwon bet that LUNA would exceed the current price). Both parties invited another KOL Cobie to be a witness, and each sent a stablecoin worth one million US dollars to Cobie's designated address. The relevant funds were received at that time, and the bet took effect immediately.
Unexpectedly, within a year, everyone knew the outcome of this bet. Still, I didn’t expect that it wasn’t just the two of them who participated in the bet, but everyone of us participated.
Terra founder and crypto KOL make a million-dollar bet on LUNA price
April
LUNA is on the rise
April 2022 is the April of LUNA. It was thought to be at its peak at that time, but it turned out to be the climax of the final chapter of the music. The 20% annualized Anchor has made the market value of UST and LUNA soar, reaching 40 billion US dollars, and the market value of LUNA has directly come to the top five of the cryptocurrency market value. In order to maintain the stability of UST, the LUNA Foundation took over the banner of Grayscale's Pixiu and bought 42,000 bitcoins as reserves within a few days, becoming the seventh largest holder of Bitcoin in the world. Emotions have been brewing, and they really want to make it the most successful decentralized Stablecoin in the crypto world, but unfortunately it is a little short.
May
The LUNA Empire Collapses
May 2022 marks the final chapter of LUNA’s $40 billion financial symphony. Like a rest after the highest note, LUNA’s story comes to an abrupt end. From the slight decoupling of UST to the extreme panic liquidation of the market, the collapse of the world’s second largest public chain took only two days.
Everyone is familiar with the specific process. At that time, everyone was just amazed at the fall of the world's top 5, and no one paid attention to the words of the founder of LUNA: "If LUNA fails, it will be the failure of cryptocurrency."
$84 million leveraged a $40 billion financial empire, the whole story of UST's collapse
Justin Sun Launches USDD
Before the collapse of LUNA, there was a small episode, that is, Brother Sun’s algorithmic Stablecoin USDD was launched. This is just one of Brother Sun’s many projects, just like JST, USDJ and the like.
Sun Ge's "Calculated Stability Dream": Fed and USDD
June
OP was stolen, amazing operation
On June 9, the Layer2 leader Optimism announced its own outrageous operation. Due to communication and technical errors in the cooperation with the cryptocurrency market maker Wintermute, the 20 million OPs sent by the Optimism Foundation to Wintermute were directly sent to the wrong Layer1 address, and then these 20 million OPs were controlled by hackers. As the favorite of the Ethereum Foundation and the leader of political correctness, OP could actually make such a mistake that only a novice could make. It is really outrageous.
Optimism confirms that 20 million OPs were stolen, and the hacker has sold 1 million
Three Arrows Capital crashes
After LUNA, the crypto world saw the collapse of Three Arrows Capital. Three Arrows Capital, which once managed up to $18 billion, firmly believed in Supercycle, and built Solunavax with real money, also collapsed due to liquidity depletion. The collapse and depegging of LUNA, GBTC, and stETH made Three Arrows one of the dominoes. And we in June could not have imagined that there would be even bigger institutions behind Three Arrows that would collapse in the long river of history.
From Celsius to Three Arrows: The Dominoes of Crypto Billionaires and the Epic Liquidity Drainage
July
Vitalik Buterin Releases Updated Ethereum Roadmap
In July 2022, the market finally got a break after a series of crashes. Vitalik Buterin announced the latest Ethereum roadmap at the Ethereum community meeting, showing the industry the final form of the future of this most powerful decentralized ecological network.
"V God shows Ethereum's latest route, the final form after 5 major stages"
Aptos announces another round of financing
This is the extreme manifestation of the split between the primary and secondary crypto markets in 2022. The secondary market is calm, while the primary market's pursuit of star projects has reached its peak. A new public chain with a valuation of US$3 billion is very similar to 2018.
Aptos Completes $150 Million Financing, Led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto
August
More than 9,000 Solana wallets stolen
The theft in August is one of the most outrageous hacking incidents this year. The amount of stolen funds is not large compared to other incidents, but the outrageous thing is that the cause of the theft has not been determined yet. The cause of other attacks was basically determined almost at the same time as the incident fermented, but the cause of Solana's large-scale theft that lasted for several days has not been found. At that time, everyone even began to doubt whether there was a problem with the underlying Solana network.
SlowMist: More than 8,000 Solana wallets were stolen, and about $580 million flowed to 4 addresses
He Yi returns to lead Binance Labs
The long-lost top female in the industry has returned to take charge of Binance Labs, becoming the leader of over 200 portfolio projects and $7.5 billion in assets under management. The top customer service representative of that year is active again, speaking out in the community many times, answering questions, clarifying rumors, etc.
Binance co-founder He Yi to lead Binance Labs
Li Lin exits, Sun Ge becomes Huobi Global advisor
Before the middle of August, Bloomberg revealed that Huobi founder Li Lin was seeking to sell his majority stake in the trading platform at a valuation of US$3 billion. At the time, it was rumored that Sun Ge had conducted preliminary negotiations, which he later denied.
However, judging from the subsequent development of the incident, after the change of ownership, Sun Ge has the final say in Huobi. He shouted "empowering HT" at the internal meeting, and the senior management was replaced. Sun Ge is already the nominal manager of Huobi.
Bloomberg: SBF and Justin Sun are in talks to acquire Li Lin's Huobi shares valued at $3 billion
Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, and the sanctioned address made a large number of small transfers to celebrities
This is the most severe sanction in the history of cryptocurrency. The Ethereum mixing platform Tornado Cash has been included in the SDN List (Specially Designated Nationals List) by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury (OFAC). The Treasury Department's reasoning is convincing, saying that Tornado Cash has been used to launder more than $7 billion since its establishment in 2019, which is a necessary measure to combat crime.
This is the first time in history that a protocol has been sanctioned. Even though crypto fans who hold high the banner of "technology is innocent" silently resisted by maliciously polluting addresses, Tornado still suffered a devastating blow. It was banned by multiple protocol front-ends, its developers were arrested, its code was removed from GitHub, and its website domain name was blocked.
Tornado under the iron fist has caused heated discussions in the crypto community: Is the crypto world that upholds the spirit of decentralization capable of dealing with centralized attacks? Similarly, even the Ethereum network has been implicated and fallen into a regulatory crisis. This is the first time that people have doubts about the inherent anti-censorship of blockchain. Vitalik Buterin publicly responded that if the regulator censors Ethereum through the verification node, it will be regarded as an attack on Ethereum and the node will be destroyed through consensus.
The most severe crypto sanctions in history: What happened to Tornado Cash?
September
Ethereum merger successful
September is destined to be the most watched and anticipated month of the year. At 14:43 on September 15, Ethereum successfully completed the merger of the mainnet and the beacon chain, marking the elimination of Ethereum's proof of work (PoW) and the complete transition to proof of stake (PoS). The community has been waiting for this moment for eight years since "transition to PoS" appeared in the Ethereum white paper in 2014.
Vitalik Buterin praised the "merger as an important moment for the Ethereum ecosystem." According to its updated roadmap released on November 5, Ethereum's vision will not stop here. Breaking through the unsolvable "Blockchain Trilemma", the entire crypto world will continue to witness and create countless miraculous moments.
The 8-year Ethereum mining era ends: Vitalik Buterin, China’s mining industry, and Nvidia
Vitalik Buterin’s new book: Proof of Stake
The concept of soul binding was just beginning, and Vitalik himself proposed the concept and took the lead. The digital version of his ten-year collection "Proof of Stake" was minted in the form of SBT (Soul Binding Token) NFT.
In the same month, BNB Chain soul-bound token BAB was launched, and ApeSwap and other projects announced that they would provide exclusive benefits for BAB Token holders. As of press time, the total effective minting of BAB exceeded 540,000, which is probably the number of crypto users who are still active in the bear market.
In October, the BNB Chain official bridge was hacked
The largest on-chain attack in the history of cryptocurrencies occurred in October, with a staggering loss of $718 million. However, the rapid recovery speed of 9 hours, the almost stable price of BNB, and CZ's statement that the incident was under control once again made the BNB Chain team face doubts about "over-centralization". The meme about CZ's excessive power swept the crypto community, but a month later, we found that CZ had already represented the industry.
Aptos airdrop sparks "furry fever"
On October 18, the highly anticipated Aptos announced the official launch of the mainnet"Aptos Autumn". Aptos officially airdropped more than 20 million APTs to more than 110,000 community users. Based on the APT price at the time, the average airdrop amount per person was at least over 10,000 yuan. Many scientists immediately announced their graduation from Web3.
In a bear market, such a hard-core airdrop has aroused infinite FOMO in the community. Overnight, the crypto community started to roll in, pouring into various projects that have not yet issued coins. Sui, a public chain based on Move and also built by the Facebook team, has undoubtedly become the focus of attention. Its official Discord has been down for 24 hours and has not been restored. At the end of December, the Sui Foundation reiterated that there is no airdrop plan.
Aptos mainnet is online, what information should we pay attention to? (Updated on October 21)
Musk finally succeeds in acquiring Twitter
Musk took over Twitter with a wash basin in his arms, and the acquisition that lasted for half a year finally closed at $44 billion. He said he wanted to make Twitter the most accurate source of information in the world, so Twitter ushered in a number of reforms and large-scale layoffs. But it seems that Chief Twit is not easy to be. Not only has the $8 certification fee been repeatedly criticized, but users also voted that he "should resign." In December, Musk said he would resign after finding a successor and instead manage Twitter's software and server teams.
"The hottest acquisition of the year has come to an end, Musk finally took over Twitter"
zkSync 2.0 Mainnet Launched
Q4 of 2022 is ZK Season. After the launch of zkSync 2.0 mainnet, the ecosystem has expanded rapidly. Its development company Matter Labs has completed a $200 million financing led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, with a total financing amount of $458 million. According to the zkSync roadmap, there will be milestone events in Q1 and Q2 of 2023. How will the "Layer2 battle" between ZK and OP unfold? Look forward to next year.
zkSync 2.0 Mainnet Launch: What We Should Know
November
Hong Kong government embraces Web3
On the first day of November, the Hong Kong SAR government announced the " Hong Kong Virtual Asset Development Policy Declaration " at the 7th Fintech Week. For a time, the discussion of whether Hong Kong can become the "future Web3 center" ignited people's infinite longing and imagination in the bear market. The Hong Kong government continues to send positive signals to the encryption industry and practitioners, and Twitter Space is full of people's ambitions to devote themselves to building.
《Full text: Hong Kong Virtual Asset Development Policy Statement》
FTX crash
Unfortunately, the FTX crash happened soon after. This trading platform, which took only 3 years to become the leader, fell at a speed beyond everyone's expectations. A balance sheet from a few months ago, a delayed response, CZ's tweets, Binance announced an acquisition and then turned against it, the market discovered that FTX had a liquidity gap of up to $8 billion, and FTX filed for bankruptcy reorganization. The plot turned around so fast that no one had a chance to breathe.
This is a disaster, a disaster with no survivors. In three years, SBF and FTX have almost reached every corner of the industry. Their demise almost uprooted the industry. In three years, SBF received as much praise as it did in November, until the industry recovered.
[Event Review] FTX is in jail, Binance abandons acquisition, Lehman moment in the crypto world]
The collapse of FTX was also the trigger for a series of bankruptcies and FUD events. The former crypto giants went bankrupt like dominoes, and the entire crypto world was shrouded in panic. Perhaps FTX was too sudden, and the market began to compete to predict the next platform to go bankrupt so as to buffer it in advance. But the ripple effect was unstoppable: DCG and its subsidiary Genesis had problems one after another and were plagued by rumors; BlockFi and others filed for bankruptcy reorganization; wBTC, Crypto.com, Tether, etc. were all spared from blame.
"Genesis, the world's largest crypto lending platform, suspends withdrawals. What went wrong?"
Looking back at 2022
One of the functions of blockchain is to reduce the cost of trust. In 2022, we deleveraged and lost trust. A financial empire worth tens of billions of dollars can collapse in two days, but rebuilding confidence is not a matter of one or two days. We can only wait. I hope that 2023 will allow us to find the lost crypto spirit and shout "Long Crypto".
