The yr 2022 is coming to a close, and if there'south one way to depict how the cryptocurrency manufacture fared in the past 12 months, it would be momentous growth.

Major cryptocurrencies shattered previous records, adoption grew, new sectors sprouted and novel blockchain use cases made significant breakthroughs.

The Market Insight'southward latest edition recalls the events covered in by issues equally well as deep-dive topics in Cointelegraph Research'southward manufacture reports.

DeFi and Altcoins

Two of the top gainers of 2022 were Solana (SOL) and Terra (LUNA). SOL gained nine,500%, while LUNA gained thirteen,000%. Pregnant investments and ecosystem growth catalyzed the immense gains for the two tokens. One could besides argue that the two being billed as potential "Ethereum killers" had a part in contributing to their massive rallies.

In the decentralized finance (DeFi) scene, the ii tokens sit among the superlative five in total value locked (TVL). Solana is at No. five with $11.45 billion, and LUNA has recently surpassed Binance Coin (BNB) for the No. 2 spot with $xviii.9 billion, according to Defi Llama. Moreover, the emerging ecosystems of Solana and Terra deserve a deeper wait, which is why they are the subject of Cointelegraph Research's upcoming reports.

DeFi followed a similar growth trajectory as the broader crypto market in 2022.

Contest has undoubtedly increased for Ethereum. Its TVL share was 97% in January but is currently down to 62.54%, per Defi Llama. The adjacent phase of development for the sector comes into question in 2022, particularly since the growth of DeFi this year has been then substantial that government have switched from denying the manufacture to grappling with ways to deal with it.

The DeFi market capitalization remains a small fraction of the overall cryptocurrency market place cap, but it underwent the aforementioned growth trajectory. Some believe that integration with legacy cyberbanking could be ane of the primary focuses for DeFi in 2022.

NFTs

Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, plant their breakout year in 2022 despite existing since 2022. The bulk of sales came in the past 12 months, surpassing $xiv billion in December. Digital art collections and digital collectibles dominate 91% of these sales volumes, which is one of the central data revealed in this report.

The sales in the offset half of the twelvemonth were driven primarily by private artists joining the space with their respective collections and some loftier-profile sales, while the second half brought in more mainstream brands.

For instance, Coca-Cola auctioned a wearable chimera jacket peel in Decentraland, and Visa purchased its first NFT. Such participation from these brands enabled the NFT market to come into total bloom. The report also revealed that the most profitable NFT collection in 2022 was "CryptoPunks." A "CryptoPunk" NFT offers a better all-fourth dimension boilerplate return on investment compared to NFTs on other popular collections, such as "CryptoKitties" and "Bored Ape Yacht Lodge."

NFTs have likewise disrupted the gaming industry and become key to fully realizing the concept of metaverses through their blockchain properties. However, some critics incertitude that the parabolic surge in 2022 volition play out in 2022, peculiarly with more than regulatory scrutiny.

Nonetheless, this twelvemonth's amount of venture capital investments funneled into NFT companies is beyond sizable. NFT funding in 2022 is already at $2.one billion every bit of Q3, yet well-nigh 40% of VC deal activities involve merely a single house in Andreessen Horowitz, according to PitchBook. Therefore, as sales and involvement for NFTs go along to grow, it may be difficult for firms with a thirst for high growth potential to resist NFTs.

Regulation

2021 has been progressive in the cryptocurrency regulatory front. The 117th U.s.a. Congress has introduced 35 bills that focus on cryptocurrency regulation, blockchain policy and central bank digital currencies. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell expressed his views that cryptocurrency is non a pregnant threat to the U.S. financial market's stability. Notwithstanding, a probable give-and-take that could seep into adjacent year is the regulation on stablecoins.

The President's Working Group on Financial Markets has stated in a report that stablecoins could exist a beneficial alternative payment option but are "subject to advisable oversight." Currently, there are no regulations on stablecoins, even every bit their market capitalization passed $162 billion every bit of this writing, merely a bill proposed by Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis could be a footstep in that direction.

Lummis plans to introduce a comprehensive neb in 2022 that will provide regulatory clarity on stablecoins, guide regulators around asset classes and offering consumer protections. Cryptocurrency regulation will be a talking point in 2022 and volition also exist a topic that the Cointelegraph Inquiry team will be examining further.

GameFi

Information technology is almost certain that anybody in the space agrees that Axie Infinity revolutionized gaming. The play-to-earn model was a massive hit, as information technology added real income potential to playing video games. Information shows how play-to-earn decentralized applications (DApps) dominated the latter half of 2022 in terms of connected, unique, active wallet addresses. And since September, gaming tokens such as The Sandbox (SAND), Axie Infinity (AXS), Enjin (ENJ), Illuvium (ILV) and Ultra (UOS) accept even shell out Bitcoin in gains, every bit revealed in this newsletter'south previous effect.

The gaming sector took the helm from DeFi that saw the near addresses connected in the showtime vii months of the year. The two DApp categories birthed a new sector, GameFi, which is believed to be the next logical step in blockchain evolution. Crypto-based games already enable users to have control over their in-game assets via NFTs, but the elements of DeFi could take information technology to another level. Incorporating DeFi would hateful that features such as staking would be available to users where they can earn interest in their tokens.

Even so, the sector is even so in its early stages, but its appeal lies within its bewitchery to users who may not necessarily be cryptocurrency holders. Attracting such users could further contribute to more cryptocurrency adoption, which will likely be its focal signal for GameFi in 2022.

Adoption

With the developments in 2022, cryptocurrencies were able to obsess a much broader audience compared to the year before. In just the second quarter, global adoption has grown 880% since 2022, Chainalysis data shows. And the key events mentioned above are likely contributing factors to cryptocurrencies going more mainstream. The NFT venture capital activities stated earlier stand for only 7% of the $30 billion poured into crypto-related investments in 2022.

But despite the apparent growth, cryptocurrency ownership remains relatively low. TripleA estimates the global cryptocurrency ownership rate to exist at an average of 3.nine%. Ukraine, Russia and Venezuela are the top countries, with at least 10% of their population owning cryptocurrencies.

Despite growing adoption, cryptocurrency buying remains relatively low worldwide.

The low ownership rates imply substantial room for growth, which is why a CAGR of 60.8% from 2022 to 2026 for the cryptocurrency marketplace may have some merit. This year, the value of the cryptocurrency market has already grown from $364.v billion last year to more than $two.5 trillion — a 586% surge. And in the coming year, the new sectors in GameFi and perhaps assets related to Web3 could perchance exist new avenues for connected growth.

Tokenization of certain securities could also happen on a much larger scale, and it is even predicted to exist the norm by 2030. Furthermore, the prevalence of cryptocurrencies for payments could too be another expanse with untapped potential, which will be explored further in some other upcoming report.

Predicting what sectors in 2022 are poised for the same breakthrough that NFTs had this year would exist difficult, if not, incommunicable. Yet, reports that carefully written report and go in-depth near certain topics would offering a better way of agreement the nuances of a specific sector.

Cointelegraph's Market Insights Newsletter shares our knowledge on the fundamentals that motility the digital asset market. The newsletter dives into the latest data on social media sentiment, on-chain metrics and derivatives.

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