Blockchain’s Pulse: Current Trends in Web3 Development

The first half of 2024 has seen monumental steps forward for the whole of the crypto and blockchain sector. 

Number of legal wins injects new life into Web3 sphere

Amid a new bull market, regulatory wins, and renewed investor interest, Web3 seems to have a revived sense of purpose.

Leaving aside the Bitcoin ETF approval, the Bitcoin halving, the U.S. Approval of the Crypto FIT21 Bill and other landmark drivers of the market this year, Web3’s development and maturation itself has had a major hand in boosting the industry.

As one of the largest Web3 infrastructure providers, Ankr provides direct access to the array of nodes running on 55+ blockchain L1 and L2 networks. These nodes are used globally to serve eight billion daily requests from dApps, developers and crypto end users of all types.

The Ankr team released a report covering the prospects and trends of blockchain usage in May-June 2024 and highlighted the fastest-growing blockchains.

Ten fastest-growing networks indicated by Ankr: XAI, Rollux, Stellar in top three

This list shows how popular different blockchains are becoming, based on the percentage increase in how often they are used (collected from May 17-June 17). Imagine these "uses" as conversations between applications (dApps) and the blockchain itself.

These conversations, called RPC requests, happen whenever users perform actions on the blockchain. This could be anything from sending crypto to checking their wallet balance or seeing who owns a digital item. The more a blockchain is used, the more RPC requests it will have.

Xai is a layer-3 blockchain created to be powerful enough to unlock open trading for all games, including the AAA sector. Developed by Offchain Labs, Xai just achieved a record-breaking 101 TPS and has introduced a variety of games.

A long-time player as a crypto payments blockchain, Stellar recently expanded its utility to welcome all developers to build applications on the Stellar mainnet via the Soroban smart contracts platform. 

As the Bitcoin development and scaling trend continues to gain steam, Rollux (an L2 of Syscoin) is proving that others see Bitcoin's potential to host secure, efficient and affordable EVM rollups and dApps at scale as RPC requests grew by 516%.

After Ankr launched its Bitcoin RPC on March 5, the OG blockchain has seen tremendous interest as developers seek to explore potential in L2s, BRC-20, Bitcoin staking and other new functionalities.

Continuing the trend of Bitcoin development, builder interest seems high in Syscoin as the first protocol to create a dual-chain layer 1 that blends Bitcoin's proven proof-of-work (PoW) consensus with EVM compatibility and modularity.

As the red-hot trend of tokenization for real-world assets and financial instruments continues, XDC calls have been soaring as the chain's express purpose is to digitize and tokenize trade finance. Another Bitcoin L2, Bitlayer, has gained developer attention as the first Bitcoin security-equivalent layer 2. As a newly supported chain on Ankr, Kinto is a layer 2 designed to specifically address security concerns in DeFi.

Long-time modular blockchain network Nervos may be seeing increased activity due to builder demand for secure, flexible and interoperable protocols at the rise of the modular revolution driving the blockchain scalability effort. B² is seeing growth from the tide raising all Bitcoin layer-2 ships, as well as from its own merits as a performance solution bringing fast transactions, seamless wallet access and a DA layer that allows any ZK-Rollup to settle in Bitcoin.

Macro trends in crypto segment: RWAs, modularity, what else?

It is no surprise that the same trends leading market appreciation this year seem to be the factors behind the leap in on-chain activity and development seen above.

Bitcoin's initial purpose of disrupting traditional finance with peer-to-peer payments was groundbreaking.  However, its limited transaction capacity and functionality restricted its broader impact. This is where the recent surge in Ordinals, Inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, Bitcoin staking and L2 scaling solutions comes in.  As more developers become interested in unlocking these new use cases for the Bitcoin network with chains like Rollux, Syscoin, Bitlayer, B² and more, Ankr sees a spike in the number of RPC requests to these networks through its service.

Tokenization has been the talk of the town as the largest financial companies seem to be doubling down on their tokenization strategies. Behemoths like Blackrock are now directly funding companies to continue building out the infrastructure it will take to properly move traditional assets onto blockchain rails. Networks like Stellar, XDC and more that are focused on asset tokenization and speedy payments seem to be gaining momentum.

A modular approach to scaling allows for separate execution, consensus and data availability layers, leading to faster transactions, lower costs and a more scalable future for blockchains. This paves the way for them to handle complex applications and a massive user base, all while remaining secure and decentralized. Networks like Nervos are well-suited to the modular future, as chains like CKB demonstrate high levels of interoperability and flexibility with support for all cryptographic primitives.

To sum up, Web3 is thriving in 2024 with surging interest, new regulations and a wave of innovation. Ankr's data shows booming development surrounding Bitcoin's new functionalities, tokenization of real-world assets and modular blockchains.