In 2023, we will witness the success of many ecosystems with DeFi on Arbitrum, SocialFi on Base or Sui Network’s liquidity attraction programs. However, besides that, there are also many ecosystems that leave disappointments. In this article, everyone looks back at the TOP 3 disappointing ecosystems in 2023.
TOP 3 Disappointing Ecosystems in 2023
Market landscape & ecosystems
The number of Blockchain platforms is increasing and becoming popular from 2020 until now. However, besides the Blockchains that really develop and solve problems in the Crypto market, there are also many Blockchains born just to follow the trend and make profits quickly, of course that means with the ecosystem having no depth.
Ecosystems without depth are often shown by the fact that the ecosystem only has a few simple DeFi puzzle pieces, copied from existing models, and even has many more puzzle pieces, but these puzzle pieces also There is no difference compared to the market. Some characteristics that help us distinguish underdeveloped ecosystems include:
- The ecosystem does not have events to attract developers such as Mini Hackathon, Global Hackathon, Offline events, Grants,…
- The ecosystem only has a few simple pieces and is copied from existing projects on the market such as AMM copied from Uniswap V2 & V3, Lending Protocol copied from AAVE’s model, Compound or CDP copied from the AAVE model. Image from Maker DAO.
- The ecosystem does not have a spearhead, does not focus on any niche market.
Optimism: The ecosystem lacks depth & Builder
It can be seen that in terms of the overall picture, 2023 is a successful year for Optimism when introducing the Superchain concept, with the companionship of Coinbase with Base, Binance with opBNB, Farcaster, Zora, Aevo, Mantle Network, Celo , DeBank Chain, Mode,… However, it all stops there.
If we consider Optimism’s ecosystem, we can easily see a number of factors such as:
- The TVL of the ecosystem maintained by Incentive comes from the Optimism Foundation itself.
- The Optimism ecosystem lacks cohesion when DApps and Protocols operate relatively independently of each other.
- The Optimism ecosystem lacks depth even though it has all the pieces of the puzzle about DEX, Lending & Borrowing, Yield Aggregator, Derivatives,… Even though it has all the pieces, it lacks truly different projects to lead.
Throughout 2023, although the number of projects on Optimism is always growing, most are Multichain projects without Native projects. As of the time of writing, when looking at the Optimism ecosystem, the number of Native Protocols only has a few names such as Velodrome, Polynomial Protocol, Ethos Reserve, Pika Protocol,… but these projects have not yet been demonstrated. What’s too much?
What I see most clearly in the Optimism ecosystem is that it is diverse but lacks a spearhead. Because of the lack of a spearhead, when it comes to Optimism, users are close but do not have any impression of any segment or identity. on the ecosystem.
BNB Chain: Standing still in the context of the whole market going up
BNB Chain had a relatively difficult year to evaluate, but from my personal perspective, this was an unsuccessful year for BNB Chain. A year 2023 with many different trends such as AI, GameFi, Inscriptions, Real World Assets, LSDfi, DePIN,… but there is not a single trend that will explode on BNB Chain.
Looking at the BNB Chain ecosystem, we still see familiar names from 2021 to now such as PancakeSwap and Venus. What’s even sadder is that these two protocols account for more than 70% of the total TVL of the ecosystem (at the time of writing), which proves that:
- Other DeFi protocols on BNB Chain have barely captured market share from PancakeSwap and Venus throughout 2023.
- DeFi money flow on BNB Chain is mostly focused on basic DeFi protocols with almost no tendency to migrate to higher-layer protocols.
Once an ecosystem leading many trends in the Crypto market, a quiet year 2023 can be considered a failure of BNB Chain. There are many reasons surrounding this, but it is highly likely that due to Binance’s upstream issues related to legality, BNB Chain is not paid close attention.
However, there are still some bright spots in the BNB Chain ecosystem as Binance’s Incubator program is still running smoothly and winning projects are in the process of building products. It can be seen that 2023 could be a year of preparation for the next market trends.
Polygon: Overtaken by Layer 2 platforms in turn
One of the platforms expected to storm the Crypto market in 2023 is Polygon, which has not yet achieved outstanding achievements. If you ask any investor about Polygon now, they will likely say Polygon has 2 special features including:
- Having gone hand in hand with BNB Chain, it exploded in the DeFi trend of 2020 – 2021 with many famous DeFi projects like QuickSwap.
- There is an excellent BD team that cooperates with many extremely famous brands in Web2.
However, the Polygon of 2023 is a quiet, less vibrant Polygon and there are many reasons for this such as the ecosystem not keeping up with ongoing trends, the infrastructure still having many remaining problems. stagnation (it is very normal for a transaction to hang for up to several days),… all of this makes users gradually abandon Poylgon to move to new areas with more diversity and more opportunities.
A typical example is that NFT on Polygon first developed even more strongly than Solana, but everyone has seen the results after that. Then the TVL of the entire ecosystem, which was initially in the TOP 3 markets, is now also surpassed by Arbitrum, Optimism and Solana.
I see that myself Polygon and the team are people who are good at catching trends and doing business, not people who are good at creating breakthrough products and leading the market. Besides, the fact that Polygon Studio makes too many products, leading to not having a central product, also makes the products when launched not reach the maturity level to attract users. It can be said that Polygon is doing an ambitious project by building too many different Layer 2s, and each Layer 2 uses different expansion technology.
There are still many disappointing ecosystems
The three names above are not the only names that will disappoint in 2023. In fact, in the Crypto market, most developers are still more oriented towards business than building products that bring real value. for the market sales. As I have shared in a few articles, up to 95% of projects in the Crypto market are products of copying.
In 2023, there are still many names that were hoped for and then disappointed like Layer 2 with Metis or Boba Network, some Layer 1s have not yet shown too much like Oasis Protocol, Celo, Near Protocol, Mina Protocol,. .. and of course this review is only based on my personal opinion.
Summary
It can be seen that the TOP 3 disappointing ecosystems in 2023 are names that are quite familiar to the community such as Optimism, BNB Chain and Polygon. Once again, this article is just a personal opinion and should not be considered investment advice or an attack on projects. I hope that people will have some more objective perspectives when looking at the Crypto market.
