2023 Crypto Assets Market Review and 2024 Outlook

In 2023, the total market value of Crypto Assets returned to $1.7 trillion, with an annual growth of over 110%, marking that the industry has passed through the cyclical winter. Several key events shaped the industry landscape this year:

1. Large Crypto Assets companies reach a settlement with regulators, promoting the trend of industry compliance.

2. The rise of the inscription projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem has created a new model for fair issuance.

3. In the Ethereum ecosystem, liquidity staking derivatives (LSD) and related financial products (LSDFi) define the industry's "low-risk return" standard.

4. Layer 2 scaling solutions ( Layer 2) are gradually becoming the main carriers of Ethereum ecosystem applications, with the total locked value ( TVL ) approaching that of the Ethereum mainnet.

5. The Solana ecosystem has regained market attention, especially in the areas of decentralized physical infrastructure ( DePIN ) and meme coin projects.

6. Real-world assets ( RWA ) yields have become an important source of profit for decentralized finance ( DeFi ) lending protocols.

Looking ahead to 2024, industry experts predict the following ten major development trends:

1. After the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF, it is expected to bring in more than $30 billion in incremental funds.

2. The total market value of inscription projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem could exceed $20 billion, with the leading projects that genuinely achieve fair distribution having the most long-term consensus.

3. The second layer solutions for Bitcoin will experience rapid development, benefiting the improvement of the infrastructure of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

4. The total locked value of Ethereum Layer 2 solutions is expected to surpass the Ethereum mainnet, possibly reaching over $100 billion.

5. Although the scale of zero-knowledge proof rollup(ZK Rollup) may still not compete with optimistic rollups, the zero-knowledge proof-related modular components in the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem will tend to be complete.

6. The cross-chain infrastructure project is expected to issue tokens in the first half of 2024, which is likely to trigger a market boom in the entire chain (Omnichain) track.

7. The application of parallel EVM technology will drive the blockchain networks that support this technology to achieve secondary growth.

8. The market size of the decentralized physical infrastructure ( DePIN ) project may grow tenfold.

9. There may emerge explosive autonomous worlds with strong social attributes (Autonomous World) or fully on-chain games (Fully onchain games).

10. The integration of artificial intelligence and Crypto Assets technology in multiple application scenarios will create star cases, including using Bitcoin as AI payment currency, and utilizing zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML) for sensitive data training and model evaluation.

These trends reflect that the Crypto Assets industry is developing towards a more mature, diversified, and practical direction, while also showcasing the prospects of deep integration between the industry and traditional finance, artificial intelligence, and other fields.