New Year’s Special

Here’s what blockchain industry insiders foresee in the development of the blockchain and crypto space in the new year of 2022.

Yat Siu of Animoca Brands

Yat is the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, which delivers digital property rights to the world’s gamers and internet users, thereby creating a new asset class, play-to-earn economies and a more equitable digital framework contributing to the building of the open Metaverse.

“During the course of 2022, growth in decentralized gaming will drive blockchain and crypto adoption into the hundreds of millions of users.”

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Tim is a pioneer of business ventures in the U.S. and a co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

“My prediction for Bitcoin to hit $250,000 by the end of 2022 or early 2023 stands. I expect that the chief financial officers of Apple, Amazon and Facebook (Meta) will either put some Bitcoin on their balance sheets or be fired.”

Ray Youssef of Paxful

Ray is the CEO of Paxful, a global people-powered platform for buying, selling and trading digital currencies.

“There are 1.7 billion people in the world who are unbanked. In 2022, we can expect that peer-to-peer finance will be a major breakout in the crypto and blockchain space as people discover the use of Bitcoin as a means of exchange and its ability to give anyone and everyone access to any financial network across the world. As use cases diversify, we’ll see more people unlocking the power of money. From remittance to wealth preservation, peer-to-peer is a pathway to financial freedom and inclusion.”

Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos of Metrika

Nikos is the CEO and founder of Metrika, a toolbox for monitoring blockchain networks and applications, offering essential analytics and performance insights.

“With major blockchains continuing to experience outages and other network degradations, expect to see demands from the community for transparency of blockchain network operations. Applications built on blockchains will have higher levels of criticality and requirements from layer ones, including the need for detailed views of infrastructure operations such as real-time network performance, reliability, uptime, latency, upgrades and more. Improving the reliability of these networks is not only a key concern as evidenced by community feedback, but will also be critical to providing greater confidence that will drive enterprise and institutional adoption of blockchain technologies. Banks and governments will demand regulation and compliance, and as such, we can expect intelligence around layer-one operations to grow along the lines of internet infrastructure. Once this is accomplished, broader and mass usage will follow.”

Josh Neuroth of Ankr

Josh is the head of product at Ankr, a scalable protocol built to offer multichain infrastructure for plug-and-play DeFi solutions and multichain staking for DeFi. 

“Decentralized social networking: Decentralized social networking will emerge in a major way in 2022. Many projects are currently in development with the goal to bring a self-sovereign, data-privacy-focused social network to market. This is especially interesting as Facebook will not be able to simply buy the next platform company, as Web3 users will be the owners and operators of the network.

NFTs and digital identity in gaming: Digital real estate and unique items tokenized as NFTs will help make gaming a business for many players who are already heavily invested in the crypto and blockchain space. Porting items and identities from one game to another will be a large financial and creative opportunity for many game studios and publishers.

Crypto is already mainstream and no longer depends on new investors entering the space. In the last several years, crypto’s total market cap grew as new investors entered the space. Now, projects are generating cash flow and reinvesting profits into new Web3 startups. This economic expansion is now driving the industry, as it has become a self-contained economy.”

James MacFarlane of Eden Network

James is the head of business development at Eden Network, an optional, non-consensus-breaking transaction-ordering protocol for Ethereum blocks. 

“With the level of investment being driven into the space, we are likely to see continued innovation on chains supporting the decentralized finance layer. This is likely to include protocol liquidity and how it is approached, the increased accessibility/adoption of multichain wallets, and how differently chains treat their users when it comes to maximal extractable value.”

Dave Perrill of Compute North

Dave is the CEO of Compute North, a cryptocurrency mining and infrastructure provider.

“Following a hash rate decline in 2021 resulting from Chinese miners being forced offline due to nationwide crypto bans, the Bitcoin hash rate recently rebounded and hit an all-time high. Expect it to double in 2022, as major industry players promise that hundreds of megawatts of capacity will come online this year. Even if this doesn’t entirely come to fruition, we will still see more than 3 gigawatts of power coming online in all corners of the U.S.”

Beili Baraki of Nansen

Beili is the research analyst at Nansen’s platform, which combines on-chain data with a proprietary database of activity across over 100 million blockchain wallets to provide real-time, actionable insights for investors and financial institutions on the expanding blockchain ecosystem.

“2022 will be a very interesting year as we see the continuation and push toward mass adoption for cryptocurrencies globally. Regulation is one thing that is constantly being mentioned and reviewed in the space. Regulations are now seen as a positive rather than a negative in the crypto world as we move toward global adoption. However, with many countries eager for greater acceptance, countries that are constantly pushing back will be left behind.

More adoption could come in as well once regulation in the space becomes clearer, and more significant institutional money (such as pension funds) starts flowing into the space. Additionally, the DeFi space is very much fragmented at the moment. The rise of layer-one and layer-two solutions aiming to solve the scalability issue has resulted in ecosystem silos and inefficient markets (e.g., fragmented liquidity, lock-up periods to move funds on layer two, etc.). As a result, greater interoperability between the various chains and layers will undoubtedly increase adoption in the coming years. It is also worth mentioning that adoption will increase significantly as the convergence of various technologies such as NFTs, VR, AR, etc. start to create new games and experiences that interact with tokenized assets. We are already seeing major corporations embracing the rise of the Metaverse. As a result, it is safe to say that the next wave of adoption will come by means of collectibles, art, digital content and games.”

Andrew Levine of Koinos Group

Andrew is the CEO of Koinos Group, a team of industry veterans accelerating decentralization through accessible blockchain technology.

“2022 is going to be a battle royale of next-generation layer ones, with the darkhorse entrant being a new fee-less blockchain.”

Alex Tapscott of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group

Alex is a writer, speaker, investor and adviser focused on the impact of emerging technologies such as blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He is the general manager of Ninepoint Digital Assets Group, an investment management services provider in the field of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. 

“I think 2022 is the year of multichain. 2021 saw the rise of new layer-one protocols like Solana and Avalanche that promised to improve on Ethereum with faster throughputs and lower fees. But these benefits may prove impermanent. As they become more popular, they may suffer the same fate as Ethereum. Remember, Ethereum fees used to be cheap too until the network found a product-market fit with the rise of liquidity mining and other DeFi applications. 

With a tsunami of new users coming into the ecosystem, it became a victim of its own success. Fees skyrocketed, turning Ethereum into a ‘whalechain,’ meaning only the wealthy could afford the fees. The same thing could happen to other layer ones. That’s OK. I believe the scarcest resource in the world for the next few years will be block space. All these layer ones will probably fill up, meaning we need better ways to interconnect different protocols. 

Most new crypto users will only interact at the application layer, not knowing or caring what base chain they run on. That means making interoperability a reality. A few groups are working on multichain, including Cosmos, which supports hundreds of crypto assets worth tens of billions of dollars. 2022 is the year of Multichain Maximalism, and Cosmos is leading the way.”

Introduction

The year 2020 brought into the mainstream consciousness an important concern about Bitcoin (BTC): energy consumption. This led to some questions about the need for sustainable, green energy within the cryptocurrency industry, and the community responded to those concerns, making sustainability a priority. With humanity facing the threat of climate change, the most serious problem for our planet, the trend toward more green solutions must remain in the coming year and decades.

Another important trend that will definitely remain in the coming years is the Metaverse. Building a digitalized dimension where users can buy, sell, play, interact and more looks futuristic enough already, but the future is quickly approaching. I am certain many brands will enter the Metaverse space this year, experimenting with this emerging sector. Let’s just not make it a centralized hell — rather, let’s create a decentralized heaven. 

But that’s just my opinion. To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking them: “What lies ahead for crypto and blockchain in 2022? What are your personal expectations for the year?”

Here’s what industry insiders foresee in the development of the blockchain and crypto space in 2022.

Simon Peters of eToro

Simon is a crypto analyst at eToro, the world’s leading social trading platform, which offers both investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

“While we could potentially see a bear market in 2022, with more countries considering making Bitcoin legal tender, the emergence of CBDCs, and the wider use of stablecoins by households and businesses, the crypto landscape has much more to offer. As the next iteration of the internet comes into effect (Web3 and the Metaverse), we will naturally see greater capital and user inflows to this space. With NFTs specifically, we could see the tokenization of real-world assets, represented and traded on blockchains.”

Sameep Singhania of QuickSwap

Sameep is the founder of QuickSwap, a decentralized exchange on Polygon that allows users to swap, earn, stack yields, lend, borrow and leverage, all on one decentralized, community-driven platform.

“Well, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I try not to make too many predictions, but now that UniSwap has decided to launch its version 3.0 on Polygon in early 2022, major institutions are coming as well. I can’t really say much more about which ones yet, but let’s just say I expect 2022 to be another blockbuster year.”

Martha Reyes of Bequant

Martha is the head of research at Bequant, a digital asset exchange and prime broker.

“Greater adoption, movement in regulation and new applications for blockchain, including NFTs. Crypto adoption will continue to increase, particularly in the institutional space. More regulatory clarity will also impact the speed of this adoption.

In 2022, we may see federal regulation from the U.S. If this happens, we should expect more countries to follow suit. We are already seeing countries such as India bringing in regulation as the United States’s position changes. This may not necessarily be the light touch regulation that some in the industry would prefer, but any clarity is helpful for the community and encourages other jurisdictions to be friendlier to crypto investors.

2021 was undoubtedly the year of NFT art, but expect this to grow in the music and particularly the gaming space, as well as supply chains and logistics. GameFi and gaming investments have ramped up in recent months, and the popularity and success of these appears to be growing rapidly. Expect this to increase as more established studios and brands get involved and integrate NFTs into established series in the coming years.”

Jonathan Schemoul of Aleph.im

Jonathan is the CEO at Aleph.im, an open-source, cross-blockchain decentralized storage and computing network. 

“With the mainstream growth that we’ve already seen in 2021 and large corporations like Facebook, Adidas and Nike coming into the space, it is likely that more major corporations will be joining in the new year as well. While 2021 was all about expansion, 2022 will be about refining the technology we have and increasing cross-chain compatibility. For us, we look forward to working with other blockchains that we haven’t had the chance to work with for indexing, cloud computing and more.”

Jason Allegrante of Fireblocks

Jason is the head regulatory counsel and global chief compliance officer at Fireblocks, a digital asset custody, transfer and settlement platform.

“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 supported by one of the major custodians.”

Hatu Sheikh of DAO Maker

Hatu is the co-founder and chief security officer of DAO Maker, which creates growth technologies and funding frameworks for startups while simultaneously reducing risks for investors.

“Today, cryptocurrencies have turned popular as investable assets for all. Their position as a store of value is barely questionable. However, with crypto trying to revamp the global financial system, we need to account for the ‘medium of exchange’ aspect of crypto. I believe 2022 will be the year that crypto will be used by retail users to securely invest and transact.

DeFi will be the must-watch space for 2022 as the building of Web3 and adoption of DeFi is rapidly progressing. Lending protocols and NFT marketplaces will also see a huge influx of audience and growth.

I believe more institutions will embrace crypto and blockchain tech in their conventional operations. 2022 will be the year when institutional adoption will really thrive and push the crypto market to newer heights.

Some countries might also see regulations imposed on crypto and DeFi, like restricted access, taxes and so on. A few countries may also follow the steps of El Salvador in recognizing cryptocurrencies as legal tender. Sustainable growth is what the crypto community must aim for as the innate volatility of crypto makes it difficult for governmental adoption. Hence, sustainability is key.”

Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger Foundation

Daniela is the executive director of Hyperledger Foundation and general manager of blockchain, healthcare and identity at the Linux Foundation.

“2022 will again be a fascinating year for enterprise blockchain. 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. This will raise the stakes for interoperability across permissioned and public blockchains as well as legacy systems.

Enterprise blockchain’s impact on existing markets will only be one story. There will be even bigger headlines around the businesses and business models that are emerging as companies around the world start to tap into the potential of distributed and decentralized technologies. At Hyperledger Foundation, we are seeing increasing interest in a mix of our technologies as platforms for digital identity, CBDCs, tokenization (fungible and non-fungible), cross-border payments and more.”

Anton Bukov of 1inch Network

Anton is a co-founder of 1inch Network, a distributed network of decentralized protocols.

“In the past two years, we saw a huge expansion in spot market volume. 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.”

Andre Neves of Zebedee

Andre is the chief technology officer at Zebedee, which enables programmable payments and small transactions to power economies for virtual worlds.

“Nonfungible tokens completely captured the public imagination in 2021 and spearheaded the rise of play-to-earn gaming, a massive economic force. I think 2022 will see the concept evolve in new ways as people start seeing more value in having open interoperability between platforms. It will lose a lot of its get-rich-quick narrative in favor of more sustainable concepts, with Bitcoin taking a much larger role.”

Alan Konevsky of PrimeBlock

Alan is the chief legal officer at PrimeBlock, a sustainable Bitcoin mining operation, infrastructure solutions provider and member of the Bitcoin Mining Council, with locations spread across North America.

“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.

How China versus the U.S. will run it will differ, so the dialogue needs to consciously ask the right questions. There’s a way to get carried away with technology that really ignores the fundamental, social, political, philosophical and legal impacts it could have on society. It’s an immensely powerful tool — I’m not understating or overstating it. The government has a lot of regulatory control of the payment, banking and monetary systems now by regulating important intermediaries like banks and other entities. This is going to be directly impacting us on a micro level.”

Introduction

I do not like to use the word “predictions” due its connotations that can lead to speculation. Instead, I prefer the word “expectations.” The year of 2020 taught us not to make any predictions for the future, but in order to be prepared for what is coming, we should instead expect some trends that will remain throughout this year, from enterprise blockchain and central bank digital currencies to blockchain gaming and crypto art. Which of these will define 2022? To gain some insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking: “What lies ahead for crypto and blockchain in 2022? What are your personal expectations for next year?”

Here’s what industry insiders foresee in the development of the blockchain and crypto space in 2022.

Sandra Ro of Global Blockchain Business Council

Sandra is CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, an industry association for the blockchain technology ecosystem.

“​​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.

Further, 2022 winners will ‘expect the unexpected,’ and adapt to investing, servicing clients and participating in new trends.

In 2021, few expected NFTs to become the killer app, driving mainstream interest and adoption. Web3, the Metaverse and DAOs will enter mainstream curiosity in 2022.

The boring infrastructure stuff is critical. Crypto markets and the blockchain industry are experiencing explosive growth, but to scale, they need common terminology, standards and sound governance, including conflict resolution. 

The Global Blockchain Business Council will continue the Global Standards Mapping Initiative in 2022, mapping the regulatory, technical, academia and business states of cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

GSMI is the largest crowd-sourced, open-access crypto and blockchain research project. GSMI 2.0 content, released in November, was the result of eight months’ work from over 200 individuals and 131 institutions, including student researchers and veterans of government, industry, start-ups and regulation.

For 2022, I remain mindful to stick to the original vision of leveling the playing field for many, not a few.”

Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com

Roger is an early Bitcoin adopter and investor. He is the executive chairman of Bitcoin.com, a site featuring cryptocurrency news in addition to an exchange and wallet service. He is also one of the five original founders of the Bitcoin Foundation.

“2022 seems likely to be the year Ether flips Bitcoin in market cap, and just about every other metric.  Many other coins will likely do the same in the coming years.”

Paolo Ardoino of Bitfinex

Paolo is the chief technology offier of Bitfinex, a digital asset trading platform offering state-of-the-art services for digital currency traders and global liquidity providers.

“Our space is so dynamic that it has always been difficult to anticipate what lies ahead. I wouldn’t try to second-guess what the next big thing will be. Still, I’m certain that the space will continue to evolve at a fast pace as so many innovative projects are poised to come to fruition. I do think that 2022 has the potential to be the year where real-life digital token payments at scale reach a certain point of critical mass. This includes payment processors such as the Lightning Network seeing an influx in network users while also being the catalyst for a grander vision of Bitcoin in terms of its payment capabilities.”

Lisa Edwards of Getting Started In Crypto

Lisa is an Elliott Wave specialist trader with over 20 years of experience in traditional stocks and commodities, now exclusively trading cryptocurrency. She runs and co-owns Getting Started In Crypto, Thousand To Millions, and The Moon Mag with Josh Taylor.

“I am looking forward to seeing Bitcoin at $100,000, it was my hope to see that last year, and I do think as supply decreases, demand will fill the gap and have BTC headed well over $100,000.”

Jane Thomason of Kasei Holdings

Jane is an entrepreneur and thought leader in technological innovation, fintech and blockchain for social impact. She is a chairperson of Kasei Holdings, an investment company specializing in the digital asset ecosystem.

“The growth in adoption will continue, and institutional investors will fuel the continued popularity  of stablecoins, which are seen as less risky. We will also continue to see rapid growth and innovation in emerging economies. Following the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, there will be a plethora of green blockchains and tokenizing carbon offsets and gamification to address climate issues. 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.

My personal expectations and hopes are that we continue providing a bridge from the new world to the old, and ensure that we don’t have rose-tinted glasses on in the excitement of creating  incredible innovation. We need to consider ethics and basic human needs as we hurtle along this ever-exponentiating trajectory.”

Donald Thibeau of the HBAR Foundation

Donald is a co-founder and chief strategy officer of the HBAR Foundation that helps the development of the Hedera ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups and entrepreneurs.

“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.”

Chris Kalani of Phantom Wallet

Chris is the chief product officer at Phantom Wallet, a Solana wallet built for DeFi and NFTs.

“We look forward to new cases being unlocked, gaming and payments. We think it will get easier to onboard people going forward. Speed and cost reduction are going to open the door for developing and emerging markets that we didn’t see in the first wave of the DeFi boom.

Layer ones and layer twos will lead to more experimentation from developers — one area that we’re seeing is with decentralized autonomous organizations.”

Ankitt Gaur of EasyFi Network

Ankitt is the CEO of EasyFi Network, a layer-two DeFi lending protocol for digital assets.

“This year is extremely crucial for cryptocurrency and could determine its future course. With thousands of innovative projects around the corner, blockchain technology could establish itself at the forefront of major operations in the world. Blockchain-based gaming is also expected to rise exponentially, with the play-to-earn model adding a monetary value to gameplay.

But, once again, it is DeFi’s lending protocols that could be the center of the action. These protocols create a capital flow and redistribute it efficiently, carrying the whole DeFi industry. With layer-two multichain lending protocols coming into the limelight, offering futuristic financial services on the blockchain could become a reality.”

Amanda Keleher of ConsenSys

Amanda is the chief people officer at ConsenSys, a global community of developers, businesspeople, programmers, journalists, lawyers and others, made to create and promote blockchain infrastructure and peer-to-peer applications.

“Addressing the challenges for women and minority groups working in the banking and fintech sectors, and examining the steps that must be taken to mitigate should be on top of our agenda. Narrowing the gap between the communities leading fintech adoption and their representation in the developer community that is building fintech ecosystems will be crucial to achieving more equitable outcomes for these participants, as well as more profitable businesses. 

We live in an era of accelerative transformation, and it is the responsibility of the crypto and blockchain sector to encourage a diversity of thought to proliferate within our companies, which is evidenced as the best way to foster innovation. With the current demographics skewed so heavily toward men and majority ethnic groups, it’s evident that there is plenty of work to do, and there are no easy fixes. However, even with a minority voice, the initiatives to encourage women and people of color toward careers and career growth in fintech will help to increase the profile of a more diverse contingent leadership and demonstrate that the sector can be inclusive.”

Ahmed Al-Balaghi of Biconomy

Ahmed is a co-founder of Biconomy, a developer platform that empowers blockchain developers to enable a simplified transaction and onboarding experience for their Web3 projects.

“Last year showed us that the future is multi-chain. Many DApps are going that route and those that aren’t are still looking for ways to tap into cross-chain liquidity. Currently, many cross-chain operability solutions cause fragmented workflows; there is an increasing need for infrastructure that delivers a single UI for users to interact with. This will allow DApps that need to move funds around in the backend to be able to do so with little to no impact on the user experience. Such workflows will become much more common, and end users won’t even need to know about blockchain technology to use it. 

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.”

Introduction

Here we are — 2022 has just landed! There’s no better time to ponder over what we can expect for the new year. 2021 opened the way for the creator economy by empowering independent musicians, artists, bloggers and other content creators that rely on digital technologies — and that economy is powered by decentralized technologies. People have been seeking alternative decentralized solutions, leading to the unprecedented rise of the decentralized finance sector, the emergence of DeFi 2.0, nonfungible tokens and Web3 development, all of which we witnessed this year. These trends will certainly remain central throughout this new year — but that’s just my opinion.

To gain more insight on the matter, I reached out to different experts from the crypto and blockchain industry, asking them: “What lies ahead for crypto and blockchain in 2022? What are your personal expectations for the year?”