Consumerism has evolved. From localized in-store purchasing with limited choices, to globalized digital marketplaces with a variety of options, consumers have had to adapt to the ever-changing tides of innovation. With services like smart devices, allowing instant access to information, and the ability to interact with brands in a multifaceted consumer landscape, consumers can connect with brands and interact with consumer goods like never before.

There have been many catalyst contributing to the ongoing uptrend of crypto and legacy markets. After succumbing bank failures, regulatory uncertainty, and memecoin trading, market participants are still finding all the reasons to stay. There is however, a downside for having too many participants. Since there are many resources needed for conducting transactions and deploying contracts on the Ethereum network, a small fee known as gas is paid to validators for verifying those actions. On Ethereum, every transaction requires a fee regardless of whether the transaction is successful or not. (1).

The battle for Aggregation market share is heating up as Sushiswap recently unveiled its roadmap for 2023. The plans include launching a DEX aggregator in Q1 and a “decentralized Incubator” throughout the year. In a recent post by CTO Jared Grey, he mentions the goal for Sushi is to “become a market-leading DEX by improving our product stack & delivering feature parity to provide a firm foundation enabling innovation…“. Some of the features highlighted include new tokenomics, improved governance, educational resources i.e Sushi Academy, and much more.

The Ethereum ecosystem has experienced significant growth over the last few years. With growing demand for dApps, NFTs, and block space, users are paying hefty fees to use the congested network. In 2021, when the price of $ETH was settling around $3,000, users were spending $100+ on gas fees for one transaction alone. Along come Layer 2s (L2), Layer 2 refers to a network that runs on top of L1s to improve scalability and efficiency while reducing bottlenecks of transaction costs from the underlying L1 chain. Layer 2 protocols aim to solve the problems of high fees and slow transactions by finding ways to ease the network load. To learn more about Layer 2s and Optimistic Roll-ups see the sources section at the bottom.

All charts have the queries in the sub-header! This is my first Mirror post, so please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter for edits or add-ons @biff\_buster Cheers!