The industry calls for more applications, not infrastructures
There seems to be a misalignment of views between VCs and builders/founders after speaking with dozens of peers investors and founders at EthCC
VCs are calling for more apps to drive mass adoption; but founders are building more infras believing it’s an easier narrative to raise money (which is still true, 7 out of 10 projects that recently raised are infra)
Some nascent sectors like ZK, FHE, and AI might need further development on the infra, but generic L1/L2s will need more applications to stress test them and start getting real adoption
I believe DePIN, Games, Social and other Consumer applications will be the main drivers for the next wave of mass adoption
DePIN – solid real-world usecases, decentralized systems reduce costs of deploying and maintaining physical infrastructure, token incentives to promote adoption and efficient collaboration across the network.
Games – fun-to-play & easy to understand, low onboarding friction with the introduction of account abstraction, TON games have showed impressive traction with onboarding non-cryptonative users, poised for massive growth when all stars are aligned.
Social – expect to find product-market-fit relatively quickly given the inherently community-driven nature of crypto, already see successful iterations like -, Farcaster etc., adoption for social apps should scale rapidly with the right UX, scalable infra and well-designed token incentives.
Other consumer apps – applications related to contents consumption (streaming, writing), arts, loyalty program, and especially gambling/betting is expected to gain popularity after some more iterations on the UI/UX of such products. Polymarket, a prediction market that allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events e.g. politics, sports, entertainment etc. has gained tremendous traction (surpassing $100m in betting volume last month), thanks to recent events like the speculation on ETH ETF launch & US presidential election.
Applications that deliver interactive and financially rewarding experiences will the the big winners in this cycle.
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