Original Author: Bankless
Compilation of the original text : The Way of DeFi
2022 is full of surprises, isn't it? At least I didn't expect...
A Top 3 Exchange Committed One of the Worst Frauds in History
The Largest Crypto Fund Is a Massive Overleveraged Scam
One of the largest blockchains goes to zero and is wanted by Interpol
But should we be surprised?
While the specifics can never be predicted, the madness of 2022 is exactly what Bankless predicted, and it will happen when we put our trust in people, not code.
We don't know which crypto banks are going to fail us...we just know they are going to fail.
So we have to keep our keys safe.
We don't know which trader guru on Twitter is just an overleveraged Degen.
So what we have to do is to invest in theory, not to pursue their narratives .
We don't know which blockchain technology will change the world next.
But we know that it will be those technologies that prioritize decentralization .
Protocols, not people.
Code, not kings.
We will double down on Bankless' core thesis in 2023. We won't get all the details right. it's out of the question. But we are headed in the right direction. As always, all the way west.
We're going bankless.
It's a new year, and it's time for some great predictions. We got it wrong a lot last year...but seriously, who could have predicted the collapse of FTX ?
The good news is, that doesn't stop us from making more bold predictions for the new year. In hindsight, forecasts can be a useful gauge of how deep we were in an echo chamber or misled by market sentiment.
"What the hell are you thinking?" is a worthy question that we don't ask ourselves enough of.
So how do some of our general predictions going into 2022 turn out?
❌ New highs in cryptocurrency market cap.
✅ ETH 2 merge happens.
❌ Total market cap hits $5 trillion (high is still $3 trillion).
✅ Bitcoin is adopted by another nation-state ( CAR in June ).
❌ Ethereum becomes a trillion dollar network. (Currently only at $0.56 trillion)
❌ L2 hits $25 billion TVL. (only reached $7 billion)
✅ NFT sales reached $30 billion. (Over $30 billion by April -- counting wash trades?)
❌ A DeFi protocol will reach the top 10 by market cap.
➖ DAO will make 8-figure purchases for a real project.(UkraineDAO? )
✅ Michael Saylor buys more bitcoins. (He bought 5610 BTC )
Overall Grade: C
Now, let's look at the team's predictions, starting with Ryan, David and William.
Ryan Sean Adams: Founder
Scoring Ryan's 2022 predictions:
❌ Crypto market cap is over $7 trillion. (The high is still $3 trillion)
❌ ETH to $10000. (only up to $4500)
✅ L2 market capitalization entered the top 10. (Including Polygon , it reaches the 10th place)
❌ Bridge billions of dollars in assets (Across, Hop issued tokens, but still in the millions)
✅ BTC to $100,000. (Only to $63,000)
➖ Web3 socialization. (Farcaster, Lens, Deso... still early days)
➖ DeFi returns. (DeFi is not coming back...but when CeFi fails, it serves us!)
❌ Crypto Bank IPO. (not at all)
✅ DAOs just got weirder. (The $8 million raised for the Ukraine war is also odd)
✅ NFT adds extensions. (NFTs do scale...but only BAYC)
❌ GameFi builds a niche. (wasn't even a niche last year...still too early)
Overall Grade: C-
Viewpoint: I expect this bull cycle to have 50% more upside than it does. By last April, the Fed's tightening cut short the bull market, but looking back I'm glad - we needed a detox!
RSA's 2023 predictions:
2023 will have many ups and downs, but the crypto market cap will end up above $2 trillion .
ETH withdrawal will be enabled in the second quarter of 2023, and Proto-Danksharding will be enabled in 2023.
ETH drops to 3 digits, giving us one last chance to buy.
Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin, but 2023 is not the year for a comeback.
A cryptocurrency law passed Congress, but it's not the end of the world.
L2's TVL hit $25 billion (yes, same as last year).
DeFi rebuilds, back to $125 billion TVL.
The strongest development communities still exist: Ethereum, Cosmos , Solana, in that order.
David Hoffman: Founder
Score David's 2022 predictions:
❌ Bear markets never come.
✅ Newbies to crypto are less concerned about centralization concerns. (However, in 2023 it will be the exact opposite!)
✅ Merge happens.
❌ ETH competitors trying to fix money supply schedule. (Competitors still have illusions about oversupply of block space and thus token launch timelines)
➖ A solid fee market emerges on the ETH competitive chain. (does appear, but returns to 0)
✅ Optimism & Arbitrum develop and prosper. (These two L2s were one of the few growth areas in Crypto last year)
❌EVM equivalent pushes Optimism to dominate. (Not in 2022, but the prospect looks good!)
✅ NFT flips lose momentum. (Retail investors run out of money = less profit for everyone)
❌ RAI is adopted. (RAI certainly had ideological adoption; but didn't translate into actual adoption)
✅BAYC goes beyond Punks.
➖ 'Web3' became a household name. (yes, but it's not the way I want it)
✅ Speed up the 'bankless' meme. (Thanks FTX!)
✅ Politicians start defending Web3.
✅ Bankless keeps outputting. (We're very proud of our coverage of the FTX event, Bankless has a lot of stuff under construction for Q1 and Q2 2023).
Overall Rating: B
David's 2023 predictions:
Throughout 2023, Ethereum L2 will continue to see steady growth and adoption - Ethereum's scaling factor will increase from 2x to 5x .
At least one generic zkEVM is open to users.
The StarkNet ecosystem will maintain its advantage over other zkEVMs.
Ethereum DeFi blue chips will outperform Alt-L1 tokens. The same goes for L2 tokens.
The DAO will still be confused. Most DAOs will continue to operate at a loss, and only a few DAOs will focus on their PNL.
There is always a bull market somewhere! I think this time it will be a contract with Ethereum. We will see more sites with 'SIWE' powers.
Bitcoin Maxis will continue to go wild and out of touch with reality. Cory Klippsten will lead the effort.
Richard Heart will find a new scam to promote after Pulsechain fades.
The NFT collecting community will emulate Balaji's theory of network state . Those who survive the bear market will infuse their assets with real utility.
A double assault from the CFTC and SEC will push cryptocurrencies to their only safe place: the decentralized invisible land.
William M. Peaster
Scoring William's 2022 predictions:
❌ The TVL of Ethereum DeFi will be x 2
❌ The TVL of Ethereum L2 will reach 100 billion USD
✅ A top 50 DeFi project is going bankrupt
➖ US politicians will continue to be enthusiastic about Web3
❌ All-time NFT sales will hit +$50 billion
❌ Cool Cats became the Top 3 NFT brand
Overall Rating: F
WMP's NFT predictions for 2023:
With the alt-L1 faltering, Ethereum's market share in NFT volume will once again hit the 80% mark.
Polygon ’s NFT sales will exceed the historical sales of alt-L1s Cardano , Flow and Solana.
As other market aggregators continue to gain traction, OpenSea's market share in the NFT market segment will sink below 50%.
Yuga Labs' collection (BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeeds, and CryptoPunks) will reach $10 billion in historical volume.
Yuga Labs vs. the SEC is going to be a bit of a showdown.
Sorare will surpass Flow-based NBA Top Shot in sales campaigns.
The NFT-based identity ecosystem ( ENS , POAP, SBTs) will usher in its next major wave of activity.
NFT use cases will increasingly drive L2 activity.
The NFT game track will launch its next breakthrough project (such as Axie in 2020-2021).
A major project will lose control of its NFT collection due to a hack.
Predictions from the rest of the Bankless team
The intricacies of the team's predictions revealed our excitement, interest, and blind spots.
Dawson Botsford: Chief Technology Officer
Gemini Earn will return 100% of all frozen funds. I have a lot of assets stuck here so I'm optimistic about this issue.
Brian Armstrong will become even more famous. After 2022 full of rug pulls, Crypto needs good actors to be idols. Brian will be ready to be a knight.
Sui , Aptos , or a similar company will gain traction and then break out at scale.
Ethereum will have physical stores (like Solana). Before this, I hated this, but now, I feel like some people need real-world experience to understand crypto.
CryptoPunks will soar.
Bankless Labs will create two more web3-defining products - Earnifi brought in over $150 million to people through AirDrop notifications. We are currently expanding more technologies for your Bankless journey.
Rachel Cusack: Chief Operating Officer
Ethereum will flip Bitcoin.
Lucas Matney: Editorial Director
Things got worse for Twitter, with Elon’s staunchest defenders in crypto keeping his distance, and crypto Twitter still won’t pivot to decentralized social.
Reddit has quietly become a major crypto player.
The SEC is directly targeting some crypto venture capital firms.
Elizabeth Warren gave up being a Senate voice for aggressive regulation of cryptocurrencies, realizing that hating DeFi isn't the progressive rallying cry she thought it was.
A non-Kardashian celebrity has been fined more than $1 million for promoting an item.
Apple continues to wage war on crypto while quietly building teams to figure out how to monetize it in the App Store.
Lucas Campbell: Head of Web3
ENS is crushing on fundamentals (domains registered, revenue, etc.).
Liquidity pledges outperform the market.
Music NFTs continue to gain traction against the backdrop of new artists and collectors entering the space. Music is collectible.
Web3 social lays the groundwork for a bull market (similar to DeFi in 2019). Identity, social graphs, collectible content , and more are all key parts of this new social layer of the internet.
Summer of TCR. Token curation registries , a cryptographically primitive concept posited in the early days of Ethereum, are finally starting to see some adoption (due to the wave of web3 social).
Donovan Choy: Editor
Launch of CBDC . They won't get very far unless governments forcefully link them to basic payment services like taxes.
StarkNet underperforms relative to its L2 competitors.
Technically speaking, Ethereum’s censorship issues are still a thing of the past. Another black swan event like the Tornado Cash sanctions could create a lot of commotion, but won't have any existing censorship issues like 2022.
BTC will not break through 28.7 K in 2023.
Individuals lose more money on cryptocurrencies.
Ben Giove: Analyst
After Shanghai is upgraded, there will be a large-scale growth in the field of Liquidity pledge DeFi. Lido is still the market leader, but lost a lot of share to challengers like Rocket Pool, StakeWise, Frax, etc. RPL has the same market capitalization as LDO . All LSD pure plays (LDO, RPL, SWISE) outperformed ETH this year.
The total TVL of Ethereum L2s exceeds $10 billion, driving the revival of DeFi. Arbitrum became the second largest L1/L2 in TVL after launching their token, GMX became a unicorn.
A major L1 announces that they will become Ethereum L2.
We will see the bottom of the crypto market on November 9, 2022, and the year will end with a rise. ETH will no longer have triple digits, will hit $3,000 at some point in 2023, and then pull back.
Jack Inabinet: Analyst
A gridlocked Congress has made few significant moves toward regulation or legal clarity on cryptocurrencies.
Arbitrum's asset management protocol has seen widespread adoption, driven by GLP yields.
SBF was convicted.
Dave Freiburger: Content Operations
50% of Fortune 500 companies will enable "crypto payments", 15% will add connected wallets to their websites, or venture into crypto/web3 through partnerships, dedicated features or NFTs.
Twitter will dabble more in web3. As Twitter looks for more ways to make money, it will launch more and more web3 products/features, and other web2 companies will follow suit. However, Farcaster will distance itself from these products as the leading web3 social application.
Moonbirds DAO will basically be at or near the level of success of Nouns DAO.
Kristi Klaudy: Community Manager
Further Consolidation of Bitcoin Miners and a Tighter Oligopoly Market
Discussion in the Bitcoin community has flourished around improving Bitcoin security in the long term. I really believe this will be a talking point in 2023/2024 (depending on market conditions).
The above is the Bankless team's prediction for 2023. ?
Remember...this is not financial advice.
