From Crypto Winter to DeFi: A Year of Loss and Opportunity

Whatever transpires at this year's Consensus conference, it's safe to say it will be nothing like last year's.

If we use the past two Consensus events as bookends for a 12-month review, we can look back on the past year - dubbed by many as the "Crypto Winter" - and satisfyingly conclude that it also included some impressive progress in blockchain evolution.

As bitcoin's price collapsed from its lofty peak of $19,783 in December 2017 to a low of $3,122 a year later, as ether retracted 94 percent peak-to-tough, and as countless ERC-20 tokens that were issued in the prior two years plunged to near worthlessness, the crypto community came under a barrage of criticism.

Throughout the year, questions were constantly raised about whether Tether, the stablecoin used by numerous exchanges to manage their crypto and fiat floats, was sufficiently backed by reserves to sustain its one-to-one peg to the dollar.

With tokenization innovators seemingly unfazed by the ICO flame out, the past year also saw a flurry of new methods for creating new representations of value to move across these decentralized systems.

Made popular by the 2017 launch of CryptoKitties - a series of breeding, collectible colorful cats built on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard - NFTs hit their stride last year as businesses such as gaming companies saw opportunities for trading virtual goods online.

There was plenty going on elsewhere last year to sustain the community's revolutionaries.

It's an experimental process, one helped this year by the "Lightning Torch," a social media-fueled game in which people passed around a small but ever-growing pool of bitcoin via Lightning channels.

The past year was also the year of the stablecoin, where digital tokens are offered by an entity that pegs their value to some other asset, typically dollars.

Either way, it will no doubt provide great fodder for the 2020 Consensus year in review.