Most Exciting Trends in Crypto - The Year Ahead

We want to hear from you. What topics or trends are you most excited about heading into next year?

We’re getting closer to that wonderful time of year when everyone’s inbox suddenly gets bombarded by year-end recaps, 2024 predictions, and tax-loss harvesting threads from armchair CPAs.

But here at Delphi, we don’t just slap together a bunch of random disconnected views and call it a report.

Our flagship Year Ahead reports have become a staple for anyone actively allocating capital and resources in crypto, and we don’t take this responsibility lightly.

We use these as an opportunity to battle-test, reevaluate, and refine the core theses, ideas, and convictions we’ve spent countless hours developing, leveraging our years of experience in just about every corner of this space.

But one thing we know is we don’t have a monopoly on great ideas. And that’s why we want to hear from YOU!

Chances are if you find something compelling, we will too. So we want to hear it!

What topics or trends are you most excited about?

Are there areas you think we should be paying more attention to?

Drop us a comment below — or upvote someone else’s! Put the Delphi hivemind to work for you.

Leave your comment...

Deep dive on ZK tech & rollups. What's the differentiator between all of them and what's a good mental framework for investors to make sense of the opportunity. Is it a 0-to-1 change or just an incremental improvement to existing tech? Where is the value accrual?

Zooming ou from the tech, what do we think potential crypto killer app(s) will come from? (think: inflows) Some nondescript examples below:

  • P2P payments
  • Gaming
  • AI
  • Institutional adoption of tech
  • Social media

Curious what we think these applications are, that are only/uniquely enabled by crypto? From here, we can think about what L1/2, teams, dependencies are required to build it.

Will NFTfi ever return? Is this the biggest opportunity in the making as there's virtually no new competition and existing teams like will consolidate/shut down/lose motivation?

I read the recent NFTfi report which was awesome. Just cannot take my eyes off the space, thinking this was it. Opportunity feels large enough but will existing projects just get a restart or need to reinvent product?

What are options for investors, eg liquidity aggregators, NFTfi lending platforms? What are index bets in the space?

This relates to BTC: What are Spiderchains, Drivechains, etc? Is EVM-compatibility a reality for BTC or pipe-dream?

If there's potential, what should investors look for to gauge the most promising projects and what type of infra needs to be in place (eg native USDC, bridges, etc)?

The role of privacy going forward? And which are the teams building KYC-compliant privacy (eg privacy tools where users can prove what they did if asked). Do we really need separate chains for that?

Account abstraction and projects working on UX improvements. Some teams are building products although they might have a DeFi focus (eg Instadapp building Avocado Wallet) -- could this prompt a re-rating as the space gets more attn?

What's the future of Alt-L1s? Will the likes of NEAR, AVAX etc go hyper-focused on specific verticals or remain general purpose by aligning closer with existing Tier 1 L1 ecosystems.

What's Cosmos' ecosystem role in the future? Part of the modularity narrative or just a competing ecosystem to ETH, Solana.

How does TON (Telegram) fit into all of this?

Forms of token distribution models (read: wealth creation). All previous cycles had their own model (Mining, ICOs, gov tokens, airdrops, Pool 2, NFTs) and what are mechanics to watch out for...? Or will previous formats get a second life (eg ICO v.2)?

...also: What's the future of airdrops? Is this becoming a hyper-specialised game (eg airdrop farming Cos employing entire teams) or are projects employing techniques to keep the process retail-friendly.

...to add to this: When will Tier 1 projects launch tokens, eg SAFE? Celestia is obv out of the box. All these projects that are highly awaited and might add fundamental improvements to prevailing narratives & UX.

Question might tie into return of liquidity ...or whether these projects would/can launch in a low-liquidity environment?

SocialFi but a la Lens, Farcaster et al. It's a space that I've always been curious about but somewhat struggle to prioritize on my research list given the niche profile. Will it break out? What are catalysts and how can investors/degens/noobs participate?

One stop shop crypto apps. What an all in one crypto/DeFi app that bridges TradFi and Crypto need to be the “killer” crypto app. How is the development progress going? (PayPal, MetaMask, Coinbase wallet, Binance?, or others…) What chains, sectors, projects are best positioned for value extraction?

our recent coinbase report touches on this a bit. curious to get your thoughts on it: what’d you like/not like? things you want us to go deeper on?

fwiw, I think a deep dive comparison of “everything apps” is sorely needed too, and it’s something we’ve been discussing a lot internally. we should have more to say on this soon…

Modular Blockchains are a must have for the next report, aka Application Based Chains like Cartesi, Celestia, AltLayer, Fuel.

I believe they are the gateway for companies that don't want to come to blockchain because of the costs and speed. You can't rely on L1s and L2s for global industry companies and Modular Chains are probably the solution.

  1. liquidity! when will the financial system finally break & force QE (imo by far the most important factor for token prices)
  2. crypto legislation implications from the upcoming election cycle in US
  3. RWAs - long-term benefits and upside have been covered ad nauseam this year; be more interesting to explore the medium-term regulatory hurdles ahead and possible solutions.