CoinGecko has published its report on the first quarter of 2021, which primarily shows the significant growth of Binance Smart Chain, PancakeSwap, NFTs and DeFi. 

2021 is the year of Binance Smart Chain

In particular, the growth of the TVL (Total Value Locked) on Binance Smart Chain stands out, rising to $20 billion, three times more than in the previous quarter. 

Ethereum’s dominance in this respect has now shrunk to 73%, compared to 97% at the end of 2020, while on the other hand, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has risen from 3% to 27%. 

Overall, the TVL of DeFi rose from $23.5 billion to $72.2 billion, i.e. it more than tripled. 

In addition, PancakeSwap, i.e. the decentralized exchange on BSC, became the second-largest DEX in the world, increasingly helping to establish Binance Smart Chain as Ethereum’s main competitor. 

It is worth noting that more than half of the market capitalization of DeFi protocols is made up of DEXs, which have become the dominant tool in this sector. PancakeSwap (CAKE) itself has risen to a market cap of $2.5 billion from just $50 million at the start of the year, a growth of over 5,000% in three months. 

DEXs saw a net increase of 250% in spot trading volume, with the main exchanges, PancakeSwap and Uniswap, accounting for 70% of the increase. PancakeSwap also increased its market share to 25%, challenging Uniswap for the position of “King of DEXs”. 

Growth of NFTs

The other significant growth was in NFTs, with searches for NFTs overtaking those for DeFi on Google Trends. 

Moreover, despite a slight decline in recent weeks, there are still four times as many NFT searches on Google Trends as DeFi. 

The total volume of NFT trades in the art market, for example, has grown 1,281 times compared to a year ago, which fully justifies this boom. 

CoinGecko also reveals that at the end of the first quarter of 2021, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies reached $1.9 trillion, a growth of 146% compared to the previous quarter. 

In particular, among the main cryptocurrencies, the one with the highest growth was Binance Coin (BNB), with a gain of 710%, followed by Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) with +555% and +295% respectively.

CAKE and LUNA, on the other hand, generated returns of up to 2,900%.