Biggest blockchain trends for 2023 and beyond

2022 was a challenging year for blockchain and Web 3.0 as it was plagued by black swan events such as the Terra-LUNA crash, the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the subsequent fall of founder Sam-Bankman Fried, who was among the most lauded industry figures just a few months ago.

Discard spoke with crypto industry experts to reflect on the potential of blockchain technology and discuss blockchain trends for 2023.

See related article: Crypto winter could last until the end of 2023: Coinbase research

Traditional companies adopting Web3 can end the crypto winter

• “In 2022, I see many Web2 companies accepting crypto payments and adding blockchain innovations like NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to their services… This is a trend that will continue to grow as more people become aware blockchain technology,” Alex Onufriychuk, chief growth officer at blockchain-based music crowdfunding platform Corite, said.
• “The key to the next ‘cryptosome’ will be the mass adoption of Web3 elements by traditional Web2 companies. As this transition accelerates, more attention will be spent on designing interfaces and experiences that are more intuitive for the average user,” Onufriychuk said.
• “Adoption starts with three main components: simplicity, security and usability. We see a trend in this direction, as well as some “best practice” legacy from Web2 services. The ability to combine what people used to do with something new is what will define future blockchain trends,” said Vlad Shavlidze, founder and CEO of xDAO, a multichain decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) builder.

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• “[We expect to see] significant adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) by institutions due to permissioned pools and decentralized compliance protocols such as PureFi,” said Slava Demchuk, CEO of AMLBot and compliance protocol PureFi.

• “Integrating permissioned DeFi protocols into the backend of traditional banking systems [is necessary] to provide their customers with a more attractive and trustless alternative to current financial services,” said Demchuk.

See related article: Is DeFi at war with traditional finance, and should TradFi be afraid?

Gaming will drive mass crypto adoption

• “Gaming will be a big driver [of mass adoption], and more generally, blockchain culture as represented by NFTs of various kinds.” Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said.

• “We’re going to see a big wave of high-quality games come into the market, which will initially lead to more mass adoption. It will come into full effect somewhere in 2023, maybe spill over into 2024. So we should expect a wave of potentially hundreds of millions of users entering the area for that reason, Siu said.

• “Gaming [will grow], probably on Polygon, but could be anywhere besides Ethereum. There has been so much investment in gaming companies in the last year or two. Players will come first from Asia and eventually from the more hesitant North American audience, said Randy Wasinger, founder and CEO of NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam.

• “Gamers are already familiar with many online transactions using digital currencies that prepare them very well to participate in blockchain-based games, and since the market is already so large – with over 2.5 billion video game players – the potential for growth in blockchain games is very promising, ” said Saro McKenna, co-founder and CEO of games to earn games Alien Worlds,.

• “Both gaming and metaverse applications are following a rapid growth curve, and accordingly we expect the number of cryptocurrency users to continue to rise during 2023, despite the ongoing crypto winter,” McKenna said.

• “Gaming is likely to be one of the next areas to innovate going forward,” said Lex Sokolin, chief economist at Ethereum software firm ConsenSys.

See related article: Why games to make money are losing momentum and where GameFi needs to go next

DAOs can reach their full potential

• “DAOs will perhaps be the most important development trend in 2023… Participate [Alien Worlds’] DAO-based elections to a planet’s council allow a player to be elected to the board, to play a role in decision-making and to oversee the expenditure of treasury funds… These kinds of new opportunities are already beginning to intensify the level of activity in our worldwide user community,” McKenna said.

• “In 2023, new models of governance and collective financial management will be in focus, as DAOs offer a way to address current issues of centralization and lack of transparency in the crypto industry. Companies will be attracted to DAOs for their improved accountability and transparency,” said xDAO’s Shavlidze.

• “In terms of applications, we will likely see growth in tools that allow DAOs to produce useful financial goods. That includes financial tools for payroll, governance platforms and other on-chain collaboration software,” Sokolin said.

See related article: “It raises very interesting questions”: How regulators approach DAOs

NFTs will gain more ground

• “[Next year, I expect] more advanced revenue models for creators beyond forced royalties on secondary market transactions – especially for non-art digital assets – [and] the emergence of a wider range of digital asset classes, tokenized almost exclusively as NFTs rather than their fungible counterparts, CryptoSlam’s Wasinger said.

• “We should expect some big names from multiple industries to join this movement over the next couple of years. For example, mainstream social media platforms and AAA game studios are already experimenting with the use of NFTs,” said Corites Onufriychuk.

• “Different types of applications are going to be invented for NFTs. They’re not just pictures that you put money into and hope that it grows in value over time. It’s not going to be just a speculative asset, but rather the Lego bricks that will be the next version of the decentralized internet,” said Gary Liu, founder and CEO of Artifact Labs, a company focused on historical non-fungible tokens. .

• “Native digital economies are starting to emerge, and digital goods like NFTs will continue to evolve. Just as the internet went from flat websites to interactive cloud software, tokens will evolve from being flat digital goods to much more interactive, customizable and intelligent digital on-chain agents We haven’t seen generative AI interact with Web3 meaningfully, but I suspect the technologies will find promising overlaps, ConsenSys’ Sokolin said.

See related article: How tokenization via blockchain can digitize assets and open up investment opportunities