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

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

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Traditional companies adopting Web3 could end the crypto winter

• “In 2022, I saw 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 of blockchain technology.” blocks,” Alex Onufriychuk, head of growth at blockchain-based music crowdfunding platform Corite, said.
• “The key to the coming ‘crypto summer’ will be mass adoption of Web3 elements by traditional Web2 companies. As this transition accelerates, more attention will be paid to designing interfaces and experiences that are more intuitive for the average user,” said Onufriychuk.
• “Adoption starts with three main components: simplicity, security, and applicability. We see a trend in this direction, as well as a legacy of “best practices” 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 builder of multi-chain decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

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

• “Integration of authorized DeFi protocols within the backend of traditional banking systems [is necessary] to provide its customers with a more attractive and reliable alternative to current financial services,” said Demchuk.

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

Games Will Drive Mass Crypto Adoption

• “The games will be an important factor [of mass adoption]and, more generally, the blockchain culture represented by NFTs of various kinds.” Yat Siu, co-founder and CEO of Animoca Brands, said.

• “We’re going to see a big wave of high-quality games emerge on the market, which will basically bring more mass adoption. That will go into effect somewhere in 2023, perhaps extending through 2024. So we should expect a wave of potentially hundreds of millions of users entering the space for that reason,” Siu said.

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

• “Gamers are already familiar with many online transactions using digital currencies, which prepares them very well for participating in blockchain-based games and since the market is already so large, with more than 2.5 billion video game players. , the growth potential in blockchain gaming is very large. promising,” said Saro McKenna, co-founder and CEO of the Alien Worlds game..

• “Both gaming and metaverse apps are following a rapid growth curve, and consequently we expect the number of cryptocurrency users to continue to increase through 2023, despite the ongoing crypto winter,” McKenna said.

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

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DAOs could reach their full potential

• “DAOs will be perhaps the most important development trend of 2023… Participate in [Alien Worlds’] DAO-based elections for a planet’s council allow a player to be elected to the governing council, play a role in decision-making, and oversee the spending of treasury funds… This kind of new opportunity is already here. beginning to intensify activity levels. in our global user community,” McKenna said.

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

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

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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 rise of a broader range of digital asset classes, almost exclusively tokenized as NFTs rather than their fungible counterparts,” said CryptoSlam’s Wasinger.

• “We should expect some big names from multiple industries to join this movement in the coming years.. For example, major social media platforms and AAA game studios are already experimenting with the use of NFTs,” said Corite’s Onufriychuk.

• “Different types of applications are going to be invented for NFTs. They are not just images that you invest money in and hope that they will increase in value over time. It will not just be a speculative asset, but the Lego blocks that will become the next version of the decentralized internet,” said Gary Liu, founder and CEO of Artifact Labs, a company that focuses on non-fungible historical tokens. .

• “Digital native economies are starting to emerge and digital products like NFTs will continue to evolve. Just as the Internet transitioned from flat websites to interactive cloud software, tokens will evolve from flat digital goods to much more interactive, personalized and intelligent on-chain digital agents. We haven’t seen generative AI interact with Web3 in any meaningful way, but I suspect the technologies will find promising overlays,” said ConsenSys’ Sokolin.

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