A Look Back At Polkadot 2022
2022 was an unfortunately eventful year for the Web3 space, but positive changes happened all around the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem. From technology rollouts such as XCM going live on Polkadot, OpenGov enacted on Kusama and Nomination Pools available on the Staking Dashboard to notable updates including USDT’s launch on Polkadot and DOT’s morphing into software to world-wide events like Polkadot Decoded, Polkadot Blockchain Academy and Sub0, Polkadot and Kusama’s 500+ projects were building with resilience amidst the gloomy market.
As the final quarter of 2022 has come to an end, let us look back at the year-long progress of the whole ecosystem. If you want a comprehensive listing of all ecosystem projects, check out Dotinsights’ Polkadot and Kusama Ecosystem Map available in two views, Projects By Category and Most Loved Projects. As always, we welcome community contributions; you can either Submit Your Project or create an issue/PR on our public Github repo.
Ecosystem Overview
Financial Status & Development Activity
Similar to the previous quarter, DOT opened Q4 with a strong start. After hovering around $6.00 in October, the token’s price experienced an upsurge and peaked at $7.40 on November 07 with a $8.07B market cap. This upward trend roughly collided with a ten-fold increase in new accounts on Polkadot following the collapse of centralized exchange FTX. The second half of Q4, however, appeared much more bleak. At the dip of $4.38 on December 22, DOT had lost 85.79% in its value compared to the year’s peak price of $30.83 on January 03 and 92.04% compared to the all-time high price of $55.00.
Token Price vs. Development Activity
KSM’s financial performance was a complete opposite. The token's price slid from $44.38 on October 04 at $372.01M market cap to as low as $21.89 on November 14 at $205.41M market cap, but bounced back steadily in the second half of Q4, reaching as high as $31.78 on December 06. Nonetheless, one can expect that the continued downcycle coupled with macroeconomic recovery slowness in 2023 will likely bring token prices much lower.
If one were to compare token price with development activities, one would see that the same inversely proportional relationship observed in H1 and Q3 of 2022 was even more pronounced in Q4 as token price plunged and development activities shot up. Compared to the first half of 2022, the average daily development activities on Polkadot in the second half were 1.23 times higher. Throughout the year, September, October and November marked the busiest months for Polkadot builders.
Polkadot Core Active Developers & Code Commits 2022
At the core protocol level, developers contributing to Parity Technologies’ Github were consistently delivering throughout the year. The number of active developers, defined as unique Github users who made 1+ commits to the project’s public repositories in the past 30 days, steadily increased from Q1 to Q4 and averaged 128 active builders a day. Zooming out to the whole Web3 space revealed that Polkadot was persistently a runner-up in the development activity race, coming second to and even at times surpassing Cardano and Cosmos.
Development Activity Comparison
Decentralization & Staking
Nomination Pools Staking on Polkadot 2022
And to further advance decentralization, Polkadot introduced Nomination Pools staking on November 01, allowing users to stake as low as 1 DOT. It took only 4 days for 64/64 pools to be opened and by the end of December, 800,000+ DOT had been staked in pools by 3,500+ pool members. The overall staking ratio remained fairly stable throughout the year and oscillated around 50%.
DOT Staking Ratio 2022
Token Holder
Quarter | Q4 2021 | Q1 2022 | Q2 2022 | Q3 2022 | Q4 2022 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
DOT cumulative holders | 376,386 | 648,517
+72.30%
|
837,967
+29.21%
|
983,316
+17.35%
|
1,210,317
+23.44%
|
KSM cumulative holders | 642 | 18,947
+2851.25%
|
33,517
+76.90%
|
49,263
+46.98%
|
66,659
+35.31%
|
Active Accounts and New Accounts on Polkadot 2022
Active Accounts and New Accounts on Kusama 2022
Parachain
As of December 31, 33 parachains were running on Polkadot and 41 on Kusama, locking 133M+ DOT and 3.39M+ KSM respectively. The chart below shows the amount of DOT raised for all auctions to date, which had lowered significantly over time. From the highest bid of 35.76M DOT (approximately $162M at the time) in Moonbeam’s auction, the funds raised went as low as 9.9K DOT (close to $45K) for the 21st auction winner Darwinia. That being said, running a parachain on Polkadot is now more affordable than ever, costing only a few hundred thousand dollars on average.
Total DOT Raised per Parachain Auction
Bidding for a parachain slot on Kusama is even easier. In November, Darwinia’s canary network Crab Network made history by winning with the lowest bid of 11 KSM (about $250), down 99.998% from Karura’s first and highest winning bid of 501,138 KSM (about $11.42M). In fact, the cost had gone down so substantially that 13 out of the latest 20 auctions were self-funded.
Total KSM Raised per Parachain Auction
XCM Transfers on Polkadot & Kusama 2022
Total Amount Received via XCM on Polkadot & Kusama 2022
Governance & Grant
By the end of 2022, DOT treasury sat at ~42M DOT and KSM treasury at 467K+ KSM. 4M+ DOT and 380K+ KSM had been paid out via proposals, tips and bounties to teams and individuals who contributed to the development of Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem respectively. Bifrost Foundation was awarded the highest amount of funds valuing $2.63M, whereas PolkaWorld had the most proposals approved in the top 10.
KSM
Beneficiary/Proposer | Total value |
---|---|
Bifrost Foundation
|
50,000 KSM
≈ $2,630,000.00
|
Acala Foundation
|
22,000 KSM
≈ $2,371,565.801
|
Encointer
|
36,534.084 KSM
≈ $1,152,559.485
|
Soramitsu
|
29,901.575 KSM
≈ $1,092,632.836
|
Snowbridge
|
25,132.66 KSM
≈ $644,241.93
|
Odyssey Multi-sig
|
9,065.41 KSM
≈ $543,436.684
|
Nova Foundation
|
5,234.71 KSM
≈ $537,066.18
|
The Kusamarian
|
8,002.8 KSM
≈ $497,823.304
|
Patract
|
3,259 KSM
≈ $426,319.799
|
Infrastructure Maintenance Bounty
|
11,000 KSM
≈ $409,318.759
|
DOT
Beneficiary/Proposer | Total value |
---|---|
ChainSafe
|
293,194.072 DOT
≈ $1,847,122.653
|
W3F
|
120,879 DOT
≈ $1,231,315.925
|
Nova Foundation
|
114,431.29 DOT
≈ $719,807.682
|
PureStake
|
76,115.42 DOT
≈ $663,768.759
|
Alzymologist
|
103,209.31 DOT
≈ $639,438.908
|
OneBlock
|
76,859.82 DOT
≈ $551,275.248
|
PolkaWorld
|
40,699.05 DOT
≈ $519,758.718
|
SubWallet
|
73,747 DOT
≈ $503,962.729
|
OnFinality
|
42,084.928 DOT
≈ $463,647.902
|
GalaticCouncil/
AmsterDOT |
55,490 DOT
≈ $439,461.715
|
Source: doTreasury
Note: Data as of 31 Dec 2022.
Web3 Foundation Grants Signed 2019-2022
Community Development
Polkadot Twitter Followers 2022
Polkadot Forum Site Statistics
Topics | Posts | Sign-Ups | Active Users | Likes | Chat Messages | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Last 24 hours | 1 | 30 | 2 | 97 | 16 | 0 |
Last 7 days | 9 | 87 | 9 | 196 | 82 | 0 |
Last 30 days | 53 | 617 | 81 | 448 | 694 | 4 |
All Time | 325 | 3.7k | 776 | -- | 3.0k | 4 |
The DeFi Economy
TVL Share by Top DeFi Parachains 2022
Polkadot and Kusama parachains focusing on DeFi all had a busy year full of activities. Top 6 parachains including Moonbeam, Moonriver, Acala, Karura, Astar and Parallel consistently dominated the DeFi scene. Moonriver, Astar and Moonbeam took turns to take the lead in TVL share in Q1, Q2 and Q4 respectively, while Q3 was quite equally divided among Moonbeam, Moonriver and Acala.
At the peak on April 19, all chains’ combined TVL amounted to over $860M. The crypto winter, however, sent a hard blow and inflicted a 69.00% loss compared to the peak by 2022 year-end. Let us take a look at how each product performed through the year.
DEX (AMM)
In the last report, we surveyed 13 decentralized exchanges (DEX) and divided them into one group with a higher average TVL and another with a lower average TVL. This time we are twitching things a bit by splitting the 16 DEXes into those that are deployed on Polkadot and those that run on Kusama.
TVL of Polkadot DEXes 2022
Overall, most DEXes on Polkadot started off the year on the right foot but had a rocky second half witnessing the plunge in their TVL. The number one DEX on Astar ArthSwap lost 92.73% from the all-time high TVL of $169.55M to $12.32M by year-end. Similarly, StellaSwap’s TVL was down 82.23% from the peak of $141.52M.
However, a zoomed-in look into the second half of 2022 revealed positive signs. After the unfortunate Nomad hack in August, StellaSwap bounced back strongly. Their TVL hit a peak at $27.99M on November 06 and continued to fluctuate around $24M in December, making StellaSwap the top 1 decentralized exchange on Moonbeam in particular and on Polkadot in general when the year came to an end. Curve on Moonbeam and ArthSwap came second and third respectively, both above the range of $10M in TVL.
TVL of Kusama DEXes 2022
Lending & Borrowing (Money Market)
TVL of Polkadot Lending Protocols 2022
Contrary to the packed DEX segment, lending protocols on Polkadot and Kusama are few and far between. On Polkadot, the money market scenery in 2022 could be divided into three periods: the Starlay period from March 04 to June 22 with a whooping peak of $300M+ in TVL, the Moonwell Artemis period from June 23 to August 02 that ended abruptly due to the Nomad hack, and the Acala period for the rest of the year despite the aUSD exploit. By the end of Q4, Acala lending protocol sat at $41.55M, Moonwell Artemis at $12.56M, Starlay at $8.46M and Parallel and AstridDAO both slightly over $5M. If these trends continue well into 2023, it will be very difficult for teams to compete with Acala.
On Kusama, Karura’s aUSD TVL hovered around $12M with little fluctuation compared to the more chaotic Moonwell Apollo on Moonriver. At their height, Moonwell Apollo exceeded $163M in TVL, which was 17 times higher than their dip of $9.54M on December 29.
TVL of Kusama Lending Protocols 2022
Liquid Staking
Because of delayed unstaking of both DOT and KSM, liquid staking solutions became popular for DeFi projects. Bifrost was the earliest player on Polkadot but immediately receded to second place when Acala launched their LDOT liquid staking on June 22. Acala’s TVL quickly rose to over $70M in less than two months, but had since tapered off gradually to $16.06M on December 31. Still, Acala remained on top; their TVL was 1.47 times higher than the runner-up Lido on Moonbeam and 2.8 times higher than the second runner-up Parallel at the end of Q4.
TVL of Liquid Staking Protocols on Polkadot 2022
TVL of Liquid Staking Protocols on Kusama 2022
Liquid Crowdloan
From Polkadot and Kusama’s unique crowdloan feature comes liquid crowdloan solutions, which allow users to earn extra rewards compared to contributing via the traditional Polkadot.{js}. Throughout the year, Parallel was the only DeFi project to repeatedly promote their liquid crowdloan product, so it came as no surprise that they led the race and that liquid crowdloan TVL contributed the most to their overall Super App TVL. As to Acala, since they are currently not providing this product, it is expected that their crowdloan TVL will drop dramatically when their parachain lease expires and contributors’ DOT is unlocked in October 2023.
TVL of Liquid Crowdloan Protocols on Polkadot & Kusama
Stablecoin
Stablecoin Issuance on Polkadot & Kusama 2022
Bridge
Bridge TVL on Polkadot & Kusama 2022
Non-fungible token
NFT Marketplace
Polkadot & Kusama NFT Marketplace Daily Sales Volume 2022
GameFi
For GameFi projects, 2022 was just the beginning. Many projects were still in the development phase, but some had already started testing or even deploying mainnet. The Great Escape, the first Play-to-Earn game on Moonbeam and possibly the first in the whole Polkadot & Kusama ecosystem to launch on mainnet, recorded an average of 1,829 games played per week with the highest being 3,782 in the third week of December. Also within the month, 5,452 GLMR and 2,083 GLMB were distributed as rewards for the players.
The Great Escape Weekly Game Sessions Played 2022
Another rapidly growing GameFi project on Moonbeam was the Web3 & NFT lifestyle app MoonFit. As shown in the chart below, MoonFit’s testnet active users went up tremendously in July and August with a sharp peak of 1,132 users on August 13. Thanks to the launch of the incentivized testnet launch, MoonFit achieved another peak of 528 active users on December 09.
MoonFit Daily Active Users 2022
2023 will see more GameFi projects coming to operation in the Polkadot & Kusama ecosystem, such as Bit Hotel, Evrloot, The Damned Pirates Society and Moonsama. In the bear market and especially after the GameFi trend has passed, projects will need to tackle many difficulties to sustain users and attract revenue other than NFT sales.
Web3
Manta Trusted Setup Contributions 2022
Closing Thoughts
If one were to focus on a month, one might not see much progress, but zooming out for a panoramic view of the whole ecosystem throughout the year brings in a lot of insights. Polkadot and Kusama projects steadily hit milestones, delivered updates and made accomplishments in 2022. Under the surface of the crypto winter, teams were building with resilience to create a solid foundation for the next bull run.
And if one zooms out further into the first five years of Polkadot from 2018 to 2022, the development is even more remarkable. Along with technical advancements, community expansion was the main focus of Polkadot. Total community events increased from 15 in 2019 to more than 700 in 2022, while annual events such as Sub0, Polkadot Decoded and Web3 Summit scaled up in size every year. So for the next few years of Web3 and Polkadot, the future is bright.
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About
Dotinsights is a research-focused initiative by SubWallet, the leading non-custodial Polkadot and Kusama wallet. By providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date Polkadot & Kusama Ecosystem Map along with data-driven Polkadot Deep Dive reports on a quarterly basis, our vision at Dotinsights is to become the official and trusted research hub and data platform of Polkadot.
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DJ Hà Trang
Alex Vu
Darrell Ha
Le Bui
Dung Nguyen
Hieu Dao
Head of Product
Frankie Kao
Creative Director
Thony
Head of Strategy
Peter Mai
Ryan Dinh
Development Manager