2022 web3 Predictions

Looking back grade: 38% 1. FAIL: 2+ on-chain SVG in top 10: completely missed on this one. Still think on-chain SVGs are cool and still hold my Lil Noun and Loot. 2. 50%: 2 50M+ social networks launch token-gated: Instagram and Reddit launched wallet integration and basic NFT functionality, but didn’t do full-scale roll outs of token gated UX. 3. FAIL: Olympus DAO 500K+ holders: complete miss here. Olympus is just a cute way for people to take on massively risky, highly leveraged positions. DeFi should be regulated. 4. SUCCESS: DAO competes with Wikipedia: Golden.com launched a DAO for its contributors to earn revenue share on their SaaS revenues. I still think DAOs can unlock novel business models, but need to be tied to clear user problems.

January 2, 2022

For the least few years I’ve written out my own tech industry predictions, but I’ve never been bold enough to publish them externally. After spending the last 9 months going down the web3 rabbit hole, I thought it’d be worthwhile to call out 5 ways I think web3 will influence the software industry in 2022:

At least 2 of the top 10 projects on OpenSea will be powered by on-chain SVGs.

Most NFTs’ image assets live off-chain using something like IPFS. While this makes sense in many cases where the assets remain static, these projects are only using a fraction of the potential enabled by the blockchain.

In 2021 we’ve seen a few projects emerge where the image files are actually encoded into the smart contracts using SVGs (ie, Nouns DAO, Blockheads, ChainRunners) which enables a whole new level of functionality and composability. I believe this is going to be a critical part of NFT infrastructure moving forward, and 2 of these projects will break into the OpenSea Top 10.

2 large (50M+ DAU) social networks will launch token-gated functionality.

Discord is the de facto home for NFT communities today because it lets a dedicated group of fans interact with each other around a niche topic. However, there’s so much left to be desired in order to enable authentic community building on the web.

In 2021 some forward-thinking startups (ie, CollabLand, Aesthetic) brought token-gated functionality to the world and in 2022 I believe we’ll see mass-scale adoption of token-gated access to communities across the internet.

2 large ($1b+ valuation) web 2 companies will launch web3 business models.

Today we separate the world into “web2” and “web3”, but in reality things aren’t that simple. Whereas all early web3 startups are new companies that build native to this new technology, we’ll going to seem many hybrid “web2.5” companies in 2022.

In particular, I think 1 creator platform (ie, Substack, Patreon) and 1 real estate company (ie Opendoor, Compass) will launch crypto native functionality where they either bring a large part of their existing business on-chain or create a new on-chain business line.

Olympus DAO will reach 500,000 holders, signaling that DeFi 2.0 has entered its next phase of adoption.

Olympus DAO is a partially collateralized, floating price currency that aims to be the de facto reserve currency for all crypto projects in the future. When it was released in April ‘21 it introduced many new DeFi primitives to the world and is credited with creating, “DeFi 2.0”.

There are currently ~100,000 “OHMies” who are currently holding and staking OHM—referred to as (3,3)—and I believe that the number of OHMies will quintuple in 2022.

A web3 competitor to Wikipedia will emerge.

Wikipedia remains one of the best examples in the world of internet-scale collaboration. Roughly 100,000 people are active contributors to Wikipedia today, with no clear incentive to do so other than to feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

In 2022 a new, real threat to Wikipedia will emerge that combines modern web2 technology with a web3 incentive structure. I believe Golden is best positioned to do this but think there’s also room for a new incumbent to go to market and gain traction here quickly.