Making new all-time-highs, can Tezos compete with Ethereum’s Defi dominance

The last couple of months have seen the market fall to the lowest and then race up to a local top. Amidst this turbulent ride, some coins made headlines with their new ATHs and independent trajectories while others tempted the market with high gains.

Cardano, Solana, Terra, Avalanche, and Tezos were among the few that garnered attractive gains during the time. In fact, at press time as Tezos made new price ATHs, anticipation and skepticism about the coin’s trajectory rose. 

Tezos has been fetching its holders hefty returns of late. XTZ’s one-day ROI vs USD, at the time of writing, was around 15% while its weekly ROI noted 22%

In hindsight, the gains were rather impressive because Tezos and Elrond were the worst performing mid-cap alts in the third week of September. However, XTZ’s price recovery alongside high trade volumes after its price fell to $3.9 in the last month fueled its journey to a new ATH. 

Source: Sanbase

XTZ’s ATH was supported by… 

As Tezos’s realized market cap reached an all-time high of $4.25 billion, many credited its rally to the network growth post the Granada upgrade in early August. The upgrade enhanced several existing network features like cutting block times in half and reducing smart contract gas consumption.

Additionally, the NFT mania also played a part in pushing the alt’s price as several institutions announced the usage of the network for their NFT experience. 

Notably, Redbull racing, McLarenF1, and DojaCat announced to use Tezos for their NFT experience, and more recently Premiere League soccer club Toulouse FC also announced the use Tezos for the same. 

Metrics supporting the uptrend 

Tezos’s adjusted NVT was trending at lower levels as compared to the last month. The network-value-to-transaction ratio highlighted that value being transferred on the network was at par with the network value or market cap which was a good sign of growth. 

Additionally, data from Tezos’ official website presented that 76.4% of the total supply was staked on the network. Staking has essentially limited the number of tokens available in the market thereby inducing a kind of supply shortage and a price-uptrend pressure.

With XTZ seeing a price ATH on the spot market, Futures market seemed bullish on the coin too. In fact, Open Interest change over the last 24 hours in the futures market was a staggering +123.37%.  

Source: Coinalyze

Now, with the price side looking secure, Tezos seemed to be in the process of catching up with Ethereum’s dominance in the Defi space. Tezos had more than 130 projects and dApps in development on its network. However, with Tezos’s market cap dominance still lower than 2020 levels, speculations of whether the altcoin’s gains would hold or would it just be a one-hit-wonder loomed over the market.