What Does the 2024 Crypto Status Report Tell Us?

In this article, I have compiled the prominent data of the 2024 State of Crypto Report, which is the 3rd issue of the Crypto State Report launched by a16zcrypto in 2022 and published annually. I will evaluate the report’s highlights, data and new trends impartially, without giving investment advice. Fasten your seat belts; We start with the first episode of the series. Have a nice read!

The monthly active crypto address achieved an ATH with +220 million addresses. I think this number will increase at least 1.5 times next year in the 2025 report.

This image shows the distribution of the 220+ million addresses in the previous image according to blockchain networks. Non-EVM networks have surpassed EVM networks by almost 3 times.

It is not surprising that the Base blockchain in particular ranks first among EVM chains. You may notice that Ethereum is ranked 2nd and Avalanche is at the bottom of the list. Solana, on the other hand, maintains its first place among public networks with 100 million addresses (Meme Coins play an important role here).

While the Ethereum network was the most preferred by developers, the biggest increase in usage was the Solana and Base ecosystems.

According to the report, America ranks first, Nigeria ranks second, and Türkiye ranks 11th with 30 to 60 million monthly active crypto users worldwide in mobile crypto wallet usage. While the total number of cryptocurrency owners reaches 617 million, 1 in every 4 individuals between the ages of 18-35 in the USA has crypto assets. Additionally, it has been stated that approximately 95% of total crypto holders do not use their cryptocurrencies. I predict that this number will exceed 1 billion users in the 2025 Crypto State Report.

According to the report; Stablecoins have been stated to be one of the most prominent “Killer use cases” of the crypto industry. Stablecoins more than doubled Visa’s transaction volume in Q2 2024. This reveals the future potential of stablecoins. In the same period, a transaction volume of 8.5 trillion dollars was realized, compared to 3.9 trillion dollars.

Major scaling updates to Ethereum have significantly reduced on-chain transaction costs. For example, when you want to transfer money internationally, you have to pay 44 dollars with wire transfer, while if you did the same transaction with USDC stablecoin in 2021, the average transaction fee would be 12 dollars.

Thanks to the updates, this fee has dropped to an average of $1 as of September 2024. Thanks to L2 solutions, if you use the Base network for example, the average transaction fee will be less than $0.01.

In the US, the number of banks has fallen by two-thirds since 1990, and the five largest banks control almost half of the country’s assets.

DeFi stands out in the financial sector by offering a decentralized alternative to this consolidation. The report shows that DeFi and stablecoins stand out in crypto usage. In terms of daily active addresses, DeFi has a 34% share and stablecoins have a 32% share. Infrastructure solutions account for 14%, token transfers 13%, centralized exchanges 3%, gaming 2%, NFTs 1%, and social applications less than 1%.

Crypto has been highlighted as being able to solve some of AI’s most pressing problems. The problems that blockchain networks can help with are as follows:

Verifying the authenticity of media, including deepfakes (verifying content) Facilitating access to computing power for developers (more democratizing AI applications) Creating transparent and user-owned AI services or companies (User-owned/accountable AI companies) Encouraging users to provide data to AI models (IP ownership)

Flow of dollar liquidity between different blockchain networks in the last 12 months; It shows that with the introduction of second layer solutions, multichain and interoperability are at a high level. If we had talked about interoperable blockchains five years ago, they would have been said to be selling dreams. But today we’re at a point where it’s not hard to imagine the next five years of interoperability.

In the next section, we will continue to examine the critical highlights of the report. See you in the next episode.