Is that time of the year again, Bitcoin seems stuck in a never ending range while Layer-1 coins and other cryptocurrencies rally. The crypto market ended 2021 with important profits, but not with the bang everyone seemed to have been expecting. Related Reading | TA: Why Ethereum Bulls Aim Fresh Rally Above $4K Arcane Research recorded important growth in Layer-1 coins, such as Fantom (FTM), and Avalanche (AVAX) as a result of a 2021 full of adoption. These cryptocurrencies experienced rallies over 15x against Ethereum (ETH) and took a portion of its market share. Arcane Research claims the growing popularity in decentralized finances (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the transaction fee increase on the Ethereum network. The latter phenomenon started in 2020 with the “Summer of DeFi”, the period that saw the biggest boom in DeFi users leading to an increase in network usage. The proliferation of NFTs contributed with that issue and let layer-1 coins such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana (SOL), and others to onboard those users that were priced out of Ethereum. The same seems to be happening with Fantom and Avalanche. Arcane Research claimed the following: As illustrated on the charts, the greater the number of users of a particular protocol, the more value it tends to attain. In other words, the hypothesis that a multi-year bear is lurking because altcoins have gone up too much requires some nuance. The explosive...
