After declining significantly during the summer of 2021, cryptocurrency Polkadot reached a market cap of more than 50 billion U.S. dollars in November 2021. Nicknamed "the Ethereum Killer" by Bloomberg in December 2020, the altcoin is similar to Ethereum in that they are both open-source and are a decentralized web. Over the course of 2021, it increasingly attracted interest from crypto fund managers as they thought there were few developments in the Ethereum blockchain, and the cryptocurrency from Switzerland's Web3 Foundation was a suitable alternative.

Six months after its initial release, the value of cryptocurrency Polkadot was already six times higher than it was at the end of August 2020. Nicknamed 'the Ethereum Killer' by Bloomberg in December 2020, the altcoin is similar to Ethereum in that they are both open-source and are a decentralized web. Over the course of 2021, it increasingly attracted interest from crypto fund managers as they thought there were few developments in the Ethereum blockchain, and the cryptocurrency from Switzerland's Web3 Foundation was a suitable alternative. By 2022, the situation had changed: As of March 25, 2025, one DOT token was worth 4.64 U.S. dollars.

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Bitcoin and Ethereum together made up more than half of the crypto market in 2024, with newer coins losing out. One example is Polkadot or DOT, an altcoin that went live in August 2020 but, at first, increasingly attracting interest in 2021 as it was seen as a viable competitor to Ethereum's blockchain structure. Indeed, six months after its initial release, the value of Polkadot was already six times higher than it during its launch. By 2024, the market position of Ethereum had not changed that much.

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The market cap of cryptocurrency Algorand nearly tripled between August and September 2021, and initially continued to grow in November 2021. The rise of the ALGO coin in September was noticeable, as it came in a time when the market cap of Bitcoin and other digital coins was declining. The Algorand coin is similar to Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Polkadot in that is powers its own layer 1 blockchain, an environment for smart contracts and essential for setting up Decentralized Finance or DeFi projects. The market cap increase in September likely reflects a sentiment that Algorand has the potential to become a new Solana.

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The decentralized finance (DeFi) market size in May 2021, as measured by the amount of cryptocurrency locked, decreased by over 25 billion USD within a single week. Partially, this could have been caused by significant changes in the price of nearly 100 different cryptocurrencies which may have led to investors pulling out. Another factor are growing gas prices (transaction fees) of Ethereum, the main cryptocurrency of use within DeFi. Analysts observe that during drops of the crypto market, a need arises for alternative blockchain networks that do not run on Ethereum. One multichain alternative of note is Polkadot, as its price development attracted growing interest from crypto fund managers in early 2021.

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