“Brands, brands, brands. Creators, musicians, sports teams and consumer brands all see tokens and crypto as the mechanism to better engage and grow their communities of supporters. My expectation is that a critical mass of these brands will begin building and deploying tokenized experiences such that it becomes a default part of building any online or real-world community.
The adoption of DeFi and NFTs in GameFi has only just begun, and we will see incredible innovation in this space with community-owned economies and on-ramps to the Metaverse. Blockchain-based gaming is expected to rise exponentially, with the play-to-earn model adding a monetary value to gameplay.
2022 seems likely to be the year Ether flips Bitcoin in market cap, and just about every other metric.
The companies that were first to adopt the technology are starting to reap real benefits, and whole industries will move aggressively to integrate DLT and related technologies into their enterprise stack. In the next 12 months, I believe one or more significant tech companies (e.g., Tesla, Google, AirBnB, etc.) will announce plans to invest their own capital in crypto solutions.
In 2022, it will be ‘corporate career risk’ to not have a baseline understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. From bankers to corporate executives to politicians, it is imperative that they get on board and seriously consider the implications of blockchain.
We’re going to see more countries adopting crypto as a legal currency. We’re also going to see central governments coming out and taking their own currencies and putting them on a blockchain. China has already said it is going to do this, which will speed up the real competition for private cryptocurrencies from a payment perspective.
Central bank digital currencies do not present competition from a store of value or inflation protection perspective because it’s still the same fiat currency, subject to the same monetary policy manipulation by central banks. It’s certainly something that is fully digital, transparent, and has both good things and some very scary things that come with it. The hope is that, at least in the United States, the dialogues around CBDCs will happen alongside maintaining the values of our society in mind, including our own privacy and control.
I expect that the decentralized derivatives market will experience more attention from market makers and other professional players in 2022. Due to the lack of crypto assets and derivatives liquidity on traditional markets, there’s going to be an opportunity for DeFi to fill in the gap. With layer-two multichain lending protocols coming into the limelight, offering futuristic financial services on the blockchain could become a reality.
In 2022, we may see federal regulation from the U.S. If this happens, we should expect more countries to follow suit. Clarity is helpful for the community and encourages other jurisdictions to be friendlier to crypto investors.
In Web2, payments and transfers happen within the app with minimal clicks. For Web3 to reach mass adoption, cross-chain transfers must be in-DApp as well. This year will be the year of frictionless Web3 experiences that finally make it mainstream.”
“Lower Energy Consumption – The Ethereum Foundation predicts that after the Merge the network will use at least 99.95% less energy than it does in its current state.
Deflationary Ether – The transaction fee burn combined with lower rewards and ether locked for validating will drive the circulating supply equilibrium down to between 27.3 and 49.5 million ETH. For comparison, the current supply is sitting at 118 million ETH and is still slightly inflationary.
Same Execution Layer – Ethereum’s current execution layer will be ported over to the incoming proof-of-stake consensus layer. For existing users and application developers, this means that interacting with Ethereum will remain incredibly similar post-Merge.
Increased/Similar Transaction Fees – Once Ethereum sheds the narrative that it consumes more energy than a moderately sized country, new users and entities may come onboard to use the technology and increase the current demand for blockspace. However, impending upgrades (such as sharding, rollups and calldata improvements) to the network after the Merge will focus on increasing scalability without sacrificing decentralization.
A Road to Decentralized Scalability – Under proof-of-stake, the Ethereum network will have the capability to implement sharding and other scalability focused upgrades that will lower transaction costs.”
The Disrupt 