These 2020 blockchain tech developments have set the stage for 2021

January 2021 will mark 12 years since the Bitcoin genesis block. In that time, blockchain technology has made many significant strides forward. The launch of Ethereum in 2015 introduced smart contracts and token minting. Subsequent years saw developments in areas, such as transaction privacy with the launch of Zcash (ZEC), platforms such as EOS and Tezos attempting to compete with Ethereum on scalability, and dozens of use cases being explored.

In particular, 2018 and 2019 were difficult years. Following Bitcoin’s fall from its all-time high in December 2017, it’s fair to say that the general appetite for blockchain and cryptocurrencies waned significantly during the long crypto winter. However, there was still plenty of innovation happening, which has started to become evident and pay off in 2020.

This year, several key themes have emerged that are poised to shape the blockchain landscape for 2021 and beyond. Here, Cointelegraph tracks 2020’s most significant developments in blockchain.

Scalability, interoperability and privacy have been core themes in infrastructure development during 2020. Of course, scalability has already become an age-old topic in blockchain conversations. However, in previous years, the focus was on new platforms claiming to be more scalable than Ethereum. In 2020, the scalability focus shifted to Ethereum itself — in part because the first phase of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade finally launched at the end of the year, but also because 2020 saw several critical milestones for Ethereum’s second-layer platforms.

With the Eth2 project still at least two years away from full implementation, it seems likely that second-layer platforms are set to thrive well into 2021.

Several platforms have put interoperability at the front of their development efforts this year. Early in 2020, Syscoin and RSK were two of the first platforms to launch a bridge allowing developers to send tokens back and forth to the Ethereum blockchain. Others were quick to follow suit, with Solana, NEAR Protocol, and Ontology also launching their own interoperability solutions using bridge technologies.

In other interoperability news, Polkadot launched its mainnet in May after several years in development. Much like how Eth2 is aiming to be, Polkadot is a sharded network that enables high throughput. However, the project places particular emphasis on its “heterogeneous sharding” mechanism for interoperability.

Whereas Eth2 will only allow its own shards to connect to the central beacon chain, Polkadot’s heterogeneous sharding supports any kind of blockchain, allowing other platforms such as Bitcoin or Ethereum to connect using bridges. Polkadot is already making its mark, sitting comfortably in the top-10 ranked cryptocurrencies and attracting significant interest from the DeFi developer community.

At the infrastructural level, interoperability has been perhaps the most significant focus area across the board in 2020. Therefore, we can surely expect to see more applications taking advantage of this technology in 2021 and beyond.

The ability to transact in private via blockchains received a boost this year, with the launch of two privacy-protecting mechanisms. In January, Monero announced Triptych, a new ring signatures construction that offers a greater degree of privacy protection by making it more difficult to detect genuine transactions among decoys. Triptych went live in September.

Elsewhere, Aztec Protocol, a layer-two, privacy-preserving network for Ethereum, launched its mainnet in February. In its first iteration, Aztec was using Zcash technology to enable “confidential tokens” that hide transaction values. However, in October, Aztec launched its 2.0 version, which uses zero-knowledge rollups in private smart contracts that also boost Ethereum’s scalability.

The Electric Coin Company, the operator of Zcash, announced in September that it was working with the Ethereum Foundation to develop the open-source “Halo 2.” It uses a variation of advanced zero-knowledge proofs used by Aztec. The shared research among Ethereum, Aztec and Zcash is proving to accelerate developments in blockchain privacy for the benefit of users across all platforms.

Poor user experience has long plagued the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. There were finally some signs in 2020 that showed promise for the benefit of crypto newcomers in retail and institutions.

The most significant development in UX for retail crypto newcomers was undoubtedly the news that PayPal is integrating cryptocurrency. The payments giant opened its crypto buy-and-sell services to U.S. users in November. The next big development will be a merchant integration in early 2021, allowing users to spend their crypto holdings on goods and services, with 26 million merchants on the PayPal network. PayPal says it will handle all the fiat conversions on behalf of the customers, meaning merchants can avoid cryptocurrency’s volatility if they wish.

However, because poor UX has been an ongoing issue for blockchain-based applications and crypto wallets for many years now, the good news is that we’re seeing developments among more decentralized solutions, too. Argent, a new type of wallet that reached significant popularity in 2020, uses smart contracts to enable non-custodial wallets without requiring private keys. In addition to its security features, the wallet also features direct integrations with decentralized finance, including an integration with flagship DeFi yield app Yearn.finance.

Another example is Authereum, a wallet that builds on the first layer of non-custodial wallets such as MetaMask. Authereum offers all the security benefits of a decentralized wallet while providing users with an easy and familiar onboarding experience, using a simple username and password access, backed up by apps such as Google Authenticator. It also eliminates gas payments.