2022 Review: Which Projects Made Progress Beyond Market Expectations?

Written by: The DeFi Investor

Translated by: TechFlow

To catch the next 100x, you must bet on the hardest-working teams. Over the past year, I analyzed over 300 crypto projects to identify the best ones. Below are the projects that exceeded our expectations in 2022:

1. Frax Finance

Frax Finance is building a DeFi product ecosystem around its FRAX and FPI stablecoins.

• FRAX — pegged to the U.S. dollar
• FPI — pegged to the U.S. Consumer Price Index

While giants like AAVE saw their TVL drop by over 80%, Frax's TVL declined by less than 50%.

Given the number of products launched last year, this resilience isn't surprising:

• Fraxswap — an AMM capable of executing trades over time
• FPI — an inflation-resistant stablecoin
• Fraxlend — lending protocol for FRAX and FPI
• frxETH — $ETH liquid staking derivative
• Fraxferry — cross-chain bridge

I believe few people realize how far Frax has come due to its lack of marketing. Most project updates are shared only within the Frax Telegram group, leaving many unaware of what’s happening.

But this “build now, promote later” approach may pay off significantly in the long run.

2. Kujira

A community-driven decentralized ecosystem. Kujira was one of Terra’s flagship projects. But unlike most others, Kujira rapidly migrated to Cosmos immediately after Terra’s collapse. In the past 200 days, the Kujira team has delivered:

• A new Cosmos chain
• FIN — an orderbook-based DEX
• A public market for liquidating collateral
• A market-making protocol operating on FIN

They’ve also attracted interesting projects to build on the Kujira L1, such as CALC Finance and BlackWhale.

The most exciting aspect of these ecosystem projects is that a portion of their revenue is shared with $KUJI stakers. As the ecosystem grows, so does the return for $KUJI stakers. Their ability to adapt under extreme conditions convinces me that Kujira will endure.

3. Trader Joe

A one-stop decentralized trading platform on Avalanche and Arbitrum. The protocol began as a simple Uniswap V2 fork but quickly gained traction thanks to its rapid expansion of product offerings.

Key achievements for Trader Joe in 2023 include:

• Revised tokenomics
• Launch of Rocket Joe
• New NFT marketplace
• Release of Joe Studios — creating high-quality NFT collections
• Launch of Liquidity Book AMM
• Deployment of Liquidity Book on Arbitrum

One thing that sets Trader Joe apart, in my view, is their marketing team. They continuously launch new campaigns and maintain strong social media engagement. They've built one of the strongest communities on Avalanche and are now expanding across new chains.

4. Polygon

Polygon’s business development team has consistently excelled in securing top-tier partnerships. Reddit, Nike, Meta, and Disney are just a few Web2 giants that have chosen to collaborate with Polygon. Even flagship Solana projects like MagicEden and Phantom have opted to build on Polygon.

On the technical front, the team recently announced the final testnet launch of their zkEVM. This means Polygon’s zkEVM Layer-2 is nearly ready, and we can expect mainnet rollout in the coming months.

Polygon currently has seven Ethereum scaling solutions in development. At least one of them is likely to gain significant market traction.

Finally, I’m excited to see what lies ahead for Polygon and how their strategic partnerships will shape the future.

Other notable developments:

• Avalanche — launched a BTC bridge, introduced a wallet with an intuitive UI, and rolled out major upgrades enabling subnet interoperability.
• GainsNetwork (perpetual contracts DEX) — launched on Arbitrum, implemented a revenue-sharing model, and added forex and stock pairs.

Many other projects achieved significant milestones in 2022, but in my opinion, these stand out the most.

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