Table of contents
1. Overall
Klaytn is a public chain launched by Ground X in June 2019. Ground X is a blockchain subsidiary of South Korean Internet giant Kakao. The Klaytn public chain is an extension of Kakao in the blockchain field. Klaytn was initially positioned as a service-centric enterprise-level platform. In March 2019, it completed a seed round of financing of $90 million, and cooperated with many well-known companies around the world. And signed a central bank digital currency project with the Bank of Korea. In September 2021, Klaytn acquired a new positioning of "Metaverse Blockchain", which opened the era of Klaytn 2.0, and the service target changed from enterprises to everyone, aiming to become a platform for NFT and decentralized finance in Asia.
2. Klaytn Statistics
2.1 TVL
The current TVL of Klaytn is $326.06M, ranking 13th, far lower than the TVL of the first-ranked Ethereum ($32.12 billion), accounting for about 1% of the TVL of Ethereum. It can also be seen from the changes of TVL in 7D and 30D that Klaytn is currently in a stage of slow rise. With Mcap/TVL of 2.62, the Market Cap is $854.28M.
The above figure shows the TVL data of Klaytn in one year. The highest TVL reached by Klaytn in one year was 1.34 billion US dollars, which began to decline in the Q2 quarter of this year. The current TVL is $326.06M, which has dropped to 25% of the original. There is also a slow upward trend.
2.2 Volume
At present, the number of transactions on Klaytn in 24 hours is 296.9k, the volume of Klaytn within 24 hours is $19.81M, and the volume within 7 days is $176.02M, and the volume has doubled from the previous month. As can be seen from the above figure, on October 21 this year, the Klaytn chain reached the highest single-day volume of $84.24M, and the volume has fluctuated and increased since September this year.
3. Klaytn token
The token issued by Klaytn is KLAY, and it has launched a cryptocurrency wallet Klip embedded in Kakaotalk, a domestic chat tool in Korea, for better user connectivity. The total number of registered users of Kakaotalk is 62 million, and 95% of the users who own smartphones in Korea are Kakaotalk users. Users can manage KLAY by installing the Klip wallet in Kakaotalk, and the app has a daily download volume of about 100,000 users on the first day of release.
3.1 distribution and use
The current distribution of KLAY is as follows: the Klaytn governance committee gets 34% of the tokens, the community incentives distribute 54% of the tokens, and the remaining 12% of the tokens are used for Klaytn improvements. KLAY tokens are mainly used for the following purposes:
a. On-chain transactions: Users need KLAY tokens to trade on the Klaytn chain.
b. Participate in decentralized financial activities: Users can provide liquidity through various DeFi protocols (such as Klayswap, Klaystation) to obtain tokens of other projects, or mortgage KLAY tokens to obtain KLAY mortgage rewards, and the mortgaged KLAY tokens can be used for liquidity mining.
c. Minting NFTs: Users can mint NFTs on the Klaytn network. At the same time, Klaytn is the second public chain integrated on OpenSea, and cooperates with OpenSea to launch NFTs minted through the Klaytn network.
3.2 Token Statistics
KLAY's current market cap ranking is 58th, the current price is $0.2757, and the market cap of the past 7 days has been slowly rising. As shown in the chart above, the price of KLAY peaked on April 30, 2021 at $4.34. After the explosive growth of the currency price in February last year, KLAY has fallen by more than 90% compared to the highest point due to market conditions, panic and other reasons. Although it has been rising slowly recently, the increase is not large.
As shown in the figure above, KLAY's market cap reached its highest value on March 29, 2021, at $10.43B, and then began to fluctuate and fall. The current market value has dropped by more than 90% compared to the highest point and has recently risen briefly.
4. Klaytn Ecology
4.1 DeFi
KLAYswap
KLAYswap is an AMM-based instant swap protocol and the largest DEX on the Klaytn chain. Through KLAYswap, users can freely exchange KLAY tokens and other tokens based on Klaytn ecology, and can obtain a certain percentage of transaction fee rewards and KLAY pledge rewards and other additional benefits. KLAYswap can be used directly in the chat software Kakaotalk, which simplifies the process of user participation in DeFi.
KLAYswap statistics
The figure above shows the number of active wallets, transactions, volume and historical activity data of KLAYswap within 7D. Within 7D, the UAW of KLAYswap is 9.1k, the number of transactions is 27.72k, and the volume is $87.37M. The volume of KLAYswap peaked at $3.24 billion on March 12 this year and has since fallen sharply.
Orbit Bridge
Orbit Bridge is a cross-chain protocol for linking and interacting with the Klaytn network and other public chains. It is also an application running on the Orbit chain that can transfer tokens from layer1 blockchains like Ethereum to the Klaytn network. Therefore, Orbit Bridge can connect the Klaytn network with external blockchains to support cross-chain liquidity supply. Currently KLAYswap is also utilizing assets imported into the Klaytn network from other chains via the Orbit Bridge.
Orbit Bridge statistics
The figure above shows the number of active wallets, transactions, volume and historical activity data of Orbit Bridge in 7D. Within 7D, the UAW of Orbit Bridge is 889, the number of transactions is 1.39k, and the volume is $86.04k. The volume of Orbit Bridge peaked at $20.53M on March 3 this year and has since fallen.
4.2 GameFi
Klaycity
Klaycity is a land management project built on the Klaytn chain. It was launched in March this year. It is Klaytn's first attempt in the field of chain games. Players can expand their virtual world in the ecosystem that combines NFT games and DeFi.
Klaycity is a P2E virtual world. Players enjoy the game based on exploration, cleaning, and trading. The background of the game is that in 2080, the earth is polluted and cannot survive. The survivors need to purify the pollution, collect resources, rebuild the population, and expand the territory.
Economic Model
Klaycity statistics
At present, Klaycity’s TVL is $1.01M, and the market cap of ORB and LAY tokens are $2.76M and $670K respectively. The price of ORB token has been in a downward phase after a brief outbreak and is currently far below the opening price of the token. It is about 6 times less than the initial price.
4.3 NFT
KLAYTNMAP
The KLAYTNMAP project was created in October 2021 and contains 5,200 NFTs with 863 owners. KLAYTNMAP is the first NFT project to store image data directly on the Klaytn chain, helping users add value by decorating and planning their land.
KLAYTNMAP statistics
At present, the total volume of KLAYTNMAP is 349k KLAY, the floor price is 40 KLAY, and there is no transaction within 30 days. It can also be seen from the Twitter of this project that the early users are basically Korean local users. And how to carry out user expansion may be a more important problem faced by the project.
4.4 DApp/BApp
Klaytn supports DApps in various fields such as digital assets, art collection, game development, and trading. Since most DApps are currently based on mobile phones, they can be linked with Kakaotalk, which also expands the scope of KLAY's use and accelerates the popularization of KLAY and become an important part of the Klaytn ecosystem.
At the same time, Klaytn also started the research and development of blockchain applications - BApps. Since DApps only consider a decentralized model, but in fact blockchain provides a wider range of functions such as transparency, traceability, and irreversible transaction processing, etc. By applying these advantages to applications, therefore, such an application is called a Blockchain App (BApp). DApps can be seen as BApps focused on decentralization. At present, Cosmo Chain, Wemix, Carry Protocol and many other companies are participating in the research and development of blockchain application BApps.
5. Summary
Klaytn relies on the South Korean communication giant Kakao as an endorsement. It not only obtains a lot of resources and capital support, but also relies on Kakaotalk to have a large number of native users. The popularity of its token KLAY in South Korea is also rapid. At the same time, the South Korean government has a high degree of acceptance in the field of encryption, and has introduced some support and regulatory policies. Therefore, with the support of the Korean government, banks and partners in the encryption field, as a public chain with both resources and users, and the ecosystem is constantly improving, Klaytn has the potential to become a project with a very high market share in the Korean market.
However, projects in the Klaytn ecosystem still have a big gap compared to projects on top chains like Ethereum. And with the KLAY token plummeting in price and market cap, how many users will continue to have confidence in KLAY? Although Klaytn has announced a global expansion plan in 2022, Klaytn is not well-known outside of South Korea. Whether it can truly embrace the global market and get rid of the label of "Korean public chain" remains to be seen. Therefore, I think currently the development form of Klaytn is not as optimistic as expected, and it is unknown whether it can become the leading public chain in Asia as the team expects.
