As someone who went heavy into crypto/web3, it does pain me to admit that there really are no use cases besides making money. Which isn’t a bad use case by itself, but after using practically hundreds of protocols and projects, there’s not a single one I’d use if there was no prospect of making money off of it. My dApp usage has cooled off almost completely. And all data shows that this is true for most others as well
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As someone who went heavy into crypto/web3, it does pain me to admit that there really are no use cases besides making money.
In 2022, is there any money to be made there, other than:
1. Money that comes from 'less lucky' entrants in the various zero sum schemes?
2. Money that comes from selling shovels to the con artists running #1?
As a bystander, I'm not seeing any other ways that 'web3' is making money - and I'd argue that if it's just those two, then that's a pretty bad use case. I mean, it's good for the participants who are making money, but all that money comes from impoverishing others.
There really isn't. I'm deep in the crypto hole and have a whole bunch of close friends in private telegram groups scouring for opportunities. And collectively, we've only been down outside of a few lucky plays and/or airdrops (like the BAYC $APE airdrop).
Which is precisely why you see dApp usage numbers crater. Check out OpenSea's daily volume on Dune.xyz as an example - down to $30M/day from consistent $150M/day even a month ago.
> As someone who went heavy into crypto/web3, it does pain me to admit that there really are no use cases besides making money. Which isn’t a bad use case by itself, but after using practically hundreds of protocols and projects, there’s not a single one I’d use if there was no prospect of making money off of it. My dApp usage has cooled off almost completely. And all data shows that this is true for most others as well
I appreciate the candor -- I still hold out hope, thinking maybe PoS (with equally bought-in parties) could work, but at that point you might as well have regular old paper and pencil coordination/contracts...
The tech is novel, but the applications just don't seem to be falling into place at all... I even consider the ability for it to function as cool points (not NFTs but just a way to make and check exclusive tokens) is OK because it gives community builders a way to pull forward revenue. If I think of it like a self-hosted app for managing exclusive tokens then I can kind of see a use -- if before people didn't have an on-ramp to enforcing their own manufactured exclusivity then maybe it has some positive effects...
Unfortunately right now it looks like the ecosystem is just a backdoor to unregulated securities. Some of the automated exchange stuff (uniswap and co) seemed cool too though I haven't looked too deeply at them.
The one thing that still makes me excited for this tech is web wallets and being able to pay/send money with them. If they are widely adopted, and a safe stablecoin (maybe even a CBDC) becomes the defacto transacting currency with quick on/off ramps, it would really change the way we pay for things online.
Like buying a monthly subscription for a tool like, say, Icy.tools, is so much faster when you can pay directly with metamask. No accounts, no logins, no credit card screens.
The catch, of course, is that for the tech to get adopted by the mainstream, you will need way more regulations and safeguards. Maybe KYC on wallets (which means creating accounts/logins), maybe the ability to reverse transactions to reduce fraud.
All of these regulations might introduce enough friction that the final experience doesn't differ much from current legacy systems.
But a built-in browser wallet that makes payments (including micropayments) easier is really needed. It's the only antidote to our current advertising dependent model of the web.
Crypto wallets double as a kid of single sign-on identity. If you have a crypto wallet in a browser add-on, you already have a paudonymous account usable on tens of thousands of crypto enabled web apps. All you have to do is one-click sign-in.
No sign-up flow, no emails, no commitment. You just tap login and you have an account. One more tap and you've paid.
Plus other benefits like effectively free micro-transactions as small as thousands of a penny at a transaction rate in tens of milliseconds, for some chains (e.g. Solana w/Phantom or SolFlare browser extension).
All this adds up to being able to try, pay, assess, and "logout" of any completely novel (to you) service/site faster than a WSJ article page can load.
The effortless of the user experience doesn't translate well to words. Getting use to this frictionless use of compatable web apps is an experience qualitatively similar to browsing the web with an ad blocker. You can't go back. Going back feels broken, messy, slow, and outright aggravating.
I fear that any regulation that enables wider adoption of these wallets will also bring in additional steps that will kill the biggest pros of these wallets currently - privacy and anonymity
Which is why I said that the tech really needs a lot of improvements. But the core idea of a browser wallet that takes care of logins and payments is really powerful and might just be crypto’s killer app
100% over for now. No one is making any money right now, except for developers getting salaries and smart contract auditors
Whether it comes back or not will depend, imo, on Bitcoin adhering to the 4 year cycle. So far, Bitcoin has gone up after every halving. Bitcoin leads and the market follows on the “inevitability” of Bitcoin going up after a halving.
But Bitcoin has also only existed in a relaxed regulatory regime and a monetary policy of low rates and cheap money. Now cheap money is off the table and the market has become too big to go unregulated.
If Bitcoin doesn’t go up in the next cycle, it might just break faith in the market and then who knows?
I’d check back in mid-late 2023 if I were you. You might also want to learn some solidity development. All the decent devs I know who were active from 2019 onwards made 8 figures this run
