Messari Enterprise Insights - January 2021

Below is the most recent edition of Enterprise Insights, a monthly newsletter for Messari Enterprise subscribers. We are giving our Pro users a sneak peek at this month's issue as we get ready for a full public launch of Messari Enterprise on Feb. 11. Learn more about the enhanced features of Messari Enterprise here.

A new year, and a new paradigm. The momentum we saw in the last half of 2020, especially around DeFi, carried into the first month of 2021. With a new administration that seems to be somewhat crypto-friendly in the White House, the concerns over looming regulation on KYC/AML and stablecoins may have temporarily subsided. Meanwhile, we are seeing the first hints at DeFi breaching mainstream attention following an insane week on Wall Street where retail investors took on hedge funds and won. The subsequent censorship and de-platforming of those investors from Reddit and Discord only fueled the narrative that decentralized technology provides an outlet to the status quo. The need for DeFi has never been more apparent and projects have never been more prepared for a new influx of users.

On the development front, January has been the month of v2 launches. We saw the launch of Stacks v2.0, Enzyme v2, Yearn v2 UX and public vault launch, Powerpool PowerIndex v2, and the release of audits for Alpha Homora v2. This month also marked the highly anticipated soft-launch of Optimism’s L2 scaling solution based on its homegrown optimistic rollup design. It is now possible to stake and interact with Mainnet assets on L2 through AMMs on Loopring and staking on Synthetix Optimism. While the functionality and features are limited at this point, it’s a clear sign that L2 scaling will be one of the defining narratives of 2021.

Below we will cover some of these trends more in-depth and take a look at what is coming in the month of February.

Network Coverage

This month we added Intel coverage for:

• Alpha Finance (ALPHA)
• Akropolis (AKRO)