In 2019, only 1 of the top 20 blockchains by market capitalization was a Proof of Stake blockchain (Tezos), with a total value staked of around $50 million. Today, 16 of the top 20 blockchains are Proof of Stake (excl. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Classic, and Litecoin), with a total market cap of around $850 billion; representing about 22% of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies. Without BTC, PoS would represent 50%.

With the advent of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, the payments space is rapidly evolving. A conversation between Ran Goldi of Fireblocks and Nikola Plecas of Visa Crypto took listeners on a deep dive into the world of digital assets, blockchain, and the role and potential of stablecoins in global payments.

The anticipated change in stance from US regulators will drive a huge boost to global stablecoin adoption, which is already rapidly gaining traction as their share in cross-border and business-to-business payments grows, according to Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks.

For digital asset businesses, the increased clarity in the global regulatory landscape, driven by frameworks like MiCA and DORA in the EU and from the Hong Kong SFC and Monetary Authority, has been a welcome evolution. It also means that internal and external compliance requirements are growing more complex to manage as digital asset businesses consider expansion strategies and the need to streamline operational plans.

At Fireblocks, our Decentralized Finance mission is to reduce the complexity to access DeFi protocols and protect users when interacting onchain. Interest in Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, is growing rapidly. In fact, the Fireblocks DeFi suite has supported over $22B in DeFi volume in the past 90 days alone and witnessed a 110% surge in DeFi volume between the second and third quarter of this year.

The Fireblocks Cryptography Research Team has developed MPC-BAM, a new two-party ECDSA MPC protocol that achieves an ideal balance among the three key efficiency metrics in cryptographic protocols: rounds, communication, and computation. Multi-party computation (MPC) cryptography protocols are critical for the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem as they enhance security and privacy while allowing direct custody operations.