From OpenSea MetaMask to Deribit, what other "monopolists" in the crypto industry are there that you don't know about?

Recently, Ethereum developer @0xTomoyo listed the platforms that he considers to be almost "monopolistic" in the current cryptocurrency industry. This article expands on this idea and attempts to sort out the monopoly rankings in the current cryptocurrency industry.

There are also some questions about whether the definition of "monopoly" is accurate, especially in the cryptocurrency industry, which is intensive in innovation and change. A more appropriate term may be "temporarily having an absolute leading market share in a certain field."

OpenSea

Track: NFT trading market

Monopoly index: 90%

In fact, we can roughly divide OpenSea's monopoly era into the pre- and post-eras:

• Before OpenSea’s monopoly era: its competitors were trading markets such as SuperRare, Rarible, and Foundation. At this stage, OpenSea was in an absolute monopoly position, and its market share grew rapidly from 40% to 98%.

• Watershed: Events such as the OpenSea IPO turmoil and the loss of NFT assets have gradually reduced users' favorability towards OpenSea, and the market is eager for challengers that can pose a threat to OpenSea.

• Post-OpenSea Monopoly Era: Now

  
  

Now as OpenSea's trading volume has reached a new level (exceeding US$6 billion), early competitors such as Rarible no longer pose a threat.

Although the market has also seen the rise of grassroots players such as LookRare and X2Y2, and their trading volume even surpassed OpenSea at one point, they are essentially trading and mining, and even tend to play with the path of token economy. Despite this, in this post-OpenSea monopoly era, there are also many regular players entering the market, such as Coinbase's NFT market and FTX's NFT market; at the same time, as the multi-chain trend matures, OpenSea may miss out on NFT trading market share outside of Ethereum. For example, Magic Eden is currently the largest NFT market on the Solana network. Although its trading volume is still far less than OpenSea, its number of transactions is sometimes two or three times that of OpenSea.

Uniswap

Track: ETH AMM DEX

Monopoly index: 80%

According to Dune Analytics data, based on the proportion of transaction volume, Uniswap's current market share on chains such as Ethereum is as high as 80%. In the stablecoin AMM segment, even at the height of the Curve War, after the new fee rate option (such as 0.01%) was passed, Uniswap's market share was close to 90%.

Although there is no technological monopoly on AMM at present, and various micro-innovative AMMs are emerging on the market, Uniswap Labs' continuous innovation in the DEX field (the creation of AMM and centralized liquidity, etc.) may be the key to maintaining its market share.

But it should be noted that Uniswap has not entered other public chains such as BSC Solana. Therefore, if the perspective is expanded to the DEX of all public chains, its overall monopoly level will be lower.

MetaMask

Track: Browser plug-in wallet

Monopoly index: 85%

In fact, in the Ethereum ecosystem and all EVM-compatible ecosystems, the MetaMask plug-in wallet has achieved a crushing monopoly with its first-mover advantage; however, MetaMask has not yet launched an offensive in the market outside of EVM. I wonder if new products in this field can quickly occupy some market share with the help of some new trends. There are also many new plug-in wallets with their own characteristics in the market, such as Coinbase Wallet, Coin98 Wallet, Rabby, Maizi Wallet Plug-in, TP Plug-in Wallet, XDEFI and Liquality. Areas where MetaMask does not have a monopoly include: in the Chinese market, TP Wallet has a greater influence; in non-EVM public chains such as Solana, it has its own wallet.

WBTC

Track: Bitcoin-pegged coin

Monopoly index: 80%

WBTC is a Bitcoin-pegged coin jointly launched by BitGo, Kyber Network, Republic protocol and other project parties. It was officially launched in January 2019. It is the first ERC20 version token of Bitcoin and the most widely supplied Bitcoin-pegged coin on Ethereum, with a market share of up to 81%. Other Bitcoin-pegged coins on Ethereum currently include hBTC, renBTC, sBTC, imBTC, tBTC, and pBTC.

Lido

Track: Ethereum 2.0 staking track

Monopoly index: 85%

Lido is an Ethereum 2.0 staking service platform where users can stake any amount of ETH and receive 1:1 staking tokens stETH to participate in other services in the DeFi market. There are other players in the Ethereum 2.0 staking track, such as Ankr, StakeHound, SharedStake, Stakewise, StaFi, Rocketpool, etc. However, Lido currently almost monopolizes the track, with a current market share of 85%.

Deribit

Track: Centralized options trading platform

Monopoly index: 90%

Deribit is a digital currency derivatives exchange and the world's largest Bitcoin options trading platform. According to statistics from The Block, Deribit accounts for 87% of the total open Bitcoin options in the current market, and 96% of the total open Ethereum options.

Flashbots

Track: MEV

Monopoly index: 95%

Note: Miner Extractable Value (MEV) is a measure of the profit miners earn through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or reorder transactions in the blocks they produce.

Flashbots is a research and development organization that was originally established to alleviate the network congestion (i.e. the increased burden on the peer-to-peer network), chain congestion (i.e. tight block space) and potential threats to Ethereum's consensus security caused by MEV.

Although there are players such as Eden Network and KeeperDAO in the MEV track, they are basically not in the same league as Flashbots.

Chainlink

Track: Oracle

Monopoly index: 90%

Although there are many new players in the oracle field, such as API3, Band, NEST, DOS, Tellor, etc., the vast majority of DeFi projects still use Chainlink's price feed service. After all, the authenticity and stability of data feed prices directly affect the survival of DeFi projects. At this time, choosing a leading service is naturally the safest approach. However, many DeFi projects are now compatible with Uniswap's TWAP (time-weighted average price) oracle service.

Gnosis Safe

Track: Multi-signature asset management

Monopoly index: 99%

Gnosis Safe is a multi-signature wallet that many DeFi protocols and DAOs currently use to manage their funds. Currently, there seems to be no well-known product competing with it in the field of asset multi-signature management.

Tornado Cash

Track: Mixing protocol

Monopoly index: 95%

Tornado Cash is the largest decentralized currency mixing protocol on Ethereum. There are also new players in the currency mixing protocol field such as Onion Mixer and Miximus, but they are not yet at the same level as Tornado Cash.

Chainalysis

Track: On-chain data analysis, on-chain security

Monopoly index: 90%

Chainalysis was founded in 2014 and mainly provides Bitcoin transaction analysis software to cryptocurrency exchanges, international law enforcement agencies, and other clients to help them comply with compliance requirements, assess risks, and identify illegal activities. It hopes to become a bridge between digital currencies and traditional banks. Therefore, Chainalysis is very different from common smart contract security audit vendors and is more inclined to compliance review and security collaboration.

Bitmain

Track: Bitcoin Mining Machine

Monopoly index: 70%

Bitmain is currently the world's largest Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer. Bitmain's sales in 2021 are about 5-10 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 70% of the Bitcoin mining machine market. Other players in this field include Canaan Technology and Shenma. However, Bitmain's monopoly is facing great adjustments. The rise of Shenma in 2018 caused its market share to drop sharply, and Intel's current efforts may also have an impact.