Last week I had the pleasure of attending Token 2049 in Singapore, it was a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues and clients and attend the biggest conference in the virtual assets sector to get a sense of what the industry is predicting to be the next big thing.
Key takeaways include:
1. There is an increasing focus on infrastructure plays rather than customer-facing, user adoption dApps. Most start-ups have cottoned on to the fact that regulations are now here and in most sophisticated, onshore jurisdictions (like Singapore, HK, UAE, Europe, etc.) the regulations will continue to roll out. By focusing on technological layers and APKs that build interconnectivity and infrastructure between L1s/L2s and dApps, builders can focus on the tech without having to worry about regulatory compliance in their own right – passing the compliance burden on to their customers.
2. The industry is responding to VC demand, which is increasingly for infrastructure projects with a liquid token for maximum return with minimum legal interference. The emphasis seems to be more about the narrative of the company rather than the strength of the tech or its revenue-generating potential.
3. Facilitation of existing consumer-facing projects is being prioritised over encouraging greater user adoption of blockchain tech – while this is helpful to individual projects to scale faster, it sandboxes the use cases and size of the industry as a whole.
4. Gaming companies and real world asset tokenisation companies continue to provide the most compelling use cases for mass adoption of blockchain technology, while pure crypto has begun to flag in the depths of a bear market.
As always, Token 2049 presents a microcosm of wider industry trends and I am excited to see what happens next year!