Nansen CEO: 6 major crypto trends in the next cycle

Many people have asked me what the future crypto trends will be. I believe the next cycle will mainly revolve around six major themes, which are summarized below.

1. Financial technology front end + encryption back end.

PayPal already has stablecoins. Revolut lets you stake ETH. And crypto startups like BasedApp already look like fintech products. In the long run, cryptocurrencies will eventually replace the back end of fintech.

2. Spinach and betting

It would make more sense to use a DeFi backend. It can survive on capital gains instead of charging the difference. L2 and account abstraction make applications more accessible to ordinary users. LooksRare launched Yolo; there are also products such as Rollbit and PoolTogether.

3. RWA real-world assets (especially short-term Treasury bills)

This is the continuation of the stablecoin arc. Superstate, Mountain Protocol | USDM, OpenEden, etc. will come to the fore in 2024. Tokenized short-term treasuries could actually consume a large portion of the stablecoin supply! Circle and Tether should make some moves in this regard.

4. Web3 Games

I have been saying for a while about the Web3 gaming trend. But in the next 6 months, we will see a lot of games that took more than 2 years to develop and released. Most of them will fail miserably, and some will be huge successes. Web3 games I support are SIPHER Odyssey, MixMob, and of course Axie Infinity.

5. SocialFi

Again, not surprising. But if you pay a little attention to what’s happening on-chain, you can see the true purpose of friend.tech. Again, L2 and account abstraction make these applications more accessible. Of course, it will take a few iterations (and forks), but I think SocialFi will be a long-term trend.

6. Physical NFT

Our amazing Fat Penguin CEO Luca Netz has shown us the way to Walmart. Companies like IYK will help others try and succeed.