Partnered With:

Bankless team's prediction for 2023: It's not the details, it's the direction

DeFi之道

Read this article in 24 Minutes

The forecast is right in every detail, but in the right direction, as ever, all the way west.

Bankless Team 2023 Forecast: Not the Details, but the Direction

Original article by Bankless

The DeFi way

2022 is full of surprises, isn't it? At least I didn't think...

A top three trading platform perpetrated one of the worst frauds in history the largest cryptocurrency fund was a massive over-leveraged scam one of the largest blockchains zeroes out and is wanted by Interpol

But should we be surprised?

While the exact details can never be predicted, the madness of 2022 is exactly what Bankless predicts will happen when we put our trust in people rather than code.

We don't know which crypto bank will fail us... We just know they will fail.

That's why we need to keep our keys safe.

We don't know which trader god on Twitter is just an over-leveraged gambler.

So what we need to do is invest in theory, not chase their narrative.

We don't know which blockchain technology will change the world next.

But we know that it's going to be those technologies that prioritize decentralization.

Protocols, not people.

Code, not kings.

We will redouble our efforts on Bankless's core thesis in 2023. We're not going to get all the details right. This is impossible. But we're on the right track. All the way west, as usual.

We're going bankless.

In the New Year, it's time to make some great predictions. We got a lot wrong last year... But really, who would have predicted the collapse of the FTX? ,

The good news is that doesn't stop us from making more bold predictions for the New Year. In hindsight, forecasts can be a useful measure of how deep we are in the echo chamber or how misguided we are by market sentiment.

"What the hell were you thinking?" It's a valuable question, and we don't ask ourselves enough.

So what about some of our overall predictions going into 2022?

Cryptocurrency market cap hits new high. The Eth2 merge occurred. The total market cap hit $5 trillion (the high is still $3 trillion). Bitcoin has been adopted by another nation state (CAR adopted it in June). Ethereum became a trillion-dollar network. (Only $0.56 trillion so far.) L2 reached $25 billion TVL. (Only $7 billion) NFT sales reached $30 billion. (More than $30 billion by April -- if you count the wash?) A DeFi deal would reach the top 10 in market capitalization. The DAO will make an eight-figure purchase for a real-world project. (UkraineDAO?) Michael Saylor is buying more Bitcoin. (He bought 5,610 BTCS.)

Overall grade: C

Now, let's look at the team's predictions, starting with Ryan, David, and William.

Ryan Sean Adams: Founder

Grade Ryan's 2022 predictions:

Crypto is worth more than $7 trillion. (The high is still $3 trillion.)

ETH to $10,000. (Only $4,500)

L2 is in the top 10 by market capitalization. (Including Polygon, it's number 10.)

Bridging billions of dollars in assets (Across, Hop has issued tokens, but is still in the millions)

BTC to $100,000. (Only $63,000)

Web3 is social. (Farcaster, Lens, Deso... Still in the early days)

DeFi is back. (DeFi did not return... But when CeFi fails, it works for us!)

Crypto Bank IPO. (No)

DAO became more eccentric. (The $8 million raised for the war in Ukraine is also odd.)

NFT adds extensions. (NFT does extend... But just BAYC)

GameFi builds a niche. (Last year wasn't even a niche... Still too early)

Overall grade: C-

Opinion: I expect 50% more upside in this bull cycle. By April of last year, the Fed's tightening had cut short the bull market, but I look back on it with joy - we needed a detox!

RSA's 2023 forecast:

There will be many ups and downs in 2023, but the crypto market cap ends up above $2 trillion. Enable ETH cash withdrawal in 2Q2023 and Proto-Danksharding in 2023. ETH drops to 3 digits, offering us one last chance to buy. Ethereum has outperformed bitcoin, but 2023 is not an upset year. A cryptocurrency law is passing Congress, but it's not the end of the world. L2's TVL hit $25 billion (yes, the same as last year). DeFi rebuild, return to $125 billion TVL. The strongest development communities still exist: Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, in that order.

David Hoffman: Founder

Grade David's 2022 predictions:

Bear markets never come. Encryption novices are less concerned with centralization concerns. (However, in 2023 it will be the exact opposite!) A merger occurs. ETH competitors try to fix the money supply schedule. (Competitors remain delusioned about the oversupply of block space and the resulting token offering schedule.) A solid fee-based market appears on the ETH competitive chain. (It did, but the bear market never came.

Encryption novices are less concerned with centralization concerns. (However, in 2023 it will be the exact opposite!)

A merger occurs.

ETH competitors try to fix the money supply schedule. (Competitors remain delusioned about the oversupply of block space and the resulting coin offering schedule)

A solid toll market appears on the ETH competitive chain. (It does, but it goes back to zero.)

Optimism & Arbitrum prospered. (These two L2s were one of the few growth areas in Crypto last year)

EVM equivalents drive Optimism to dominance. (Not in 2022, but the prospect looks good!)

NFT flipped and lost power. (Retail investors run out of money = less profit for everyone)

RAI is adopted. (RAI was certainly adopted intellectually; But it didn't translate into real adoption)

BAYC over Punks.

'Web3' became a household word. (Yes, but not the way I wanted)

The "bankless" meme picked up speed. (Thanks FTX!)

Politicians have come to the defense of Web3.

Bankless keeps exporting. (We're very proud of our coverage of the FTX event, and Bankless has a lot of stuff under construction for Q1 and Q2 2023).

Overall grade: B

David's prediction for 2023:

Ethereum L2 will continue to see steady growth and adoption throughout 2023 - Ethereum's scaling factor will grow from 2x to 5x.

At least one generic zkEVM is open for users.

The StarkNet ecosystem will maintain its advantage over other ZkevMs.

Ethereum DeFi blue chips will outperform Alt-L1 tokens. The same goes for L2 tokens.

DAO You still don't get it. Most DAOs will continue to operate at a loss and only a few DAOs will focus on their PNL.

There's always a bull market somewhere! I think this time it will be a signing with Ethereum. We'll see more sites with 'SIWE' power.

Bitcoin Maxis will continue to go crazy and lose touch with reality. Cory Klippsten will spearhead the effort.

Richard Heart will find a new scam to promote after Pulsechain fades.

The NFT collection community will follow suit. Balaji's network state theory. Those who survive the bear market will inject real utility into their assets.

The twin attacks from the CFTC and the SEC will push cryptocurrencies into their only safe zone: the invisible land of decentralization.

William M. Peaster

Score William's predictions for 2022:

Ethereum DeFi's TVL will be x2

Ethereum L2's TVL will hit $100 billion

A top 50 DeFi program will go bankrupt

Us politicians will continue to love Web3

In its history, NFT sales will reach + 50 billion dollars

Cool Cats became the Top 3 NFT brand

Overall grade: F

WMP's 2023 NFT forecast:

As alt-L1 falters, Ethereum's market share of NFT volume will once again reach the 80% mark.

Polygon's NFT sales will surpass the historical sales of Cardano, Flow and Solana for alt-L1 s.

As other market aggregators continue to gain traction, OpenSea's market share in the NFT market segment will sink below 50%.

Yuga Labs' collection (BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, Otherdeeds, and CryptoPunks) will reach $10 billion in historic trading volume.

Yuga Labs vs. SEC showdown is going to be a little combative.

Sorare will outsell the Flow-based NBA Top Shot in the sales campaign.

The NFT-based identity ecosystem (ENS, Poaps, SBTs) is poised for its next major wave of activity.

NFT use cases will increasingly drive L2 activity.

NFT Gaming Track will launch its next breakthrough project (like Axie 2020-2021).

A major project will lose control of its NFT collection due to a hacker attack.

Predictions from the rest of the Bankless team

The complexity of the team's predictions shows our excitement, interest and blind spots.

Dawson Botsford: Chief Technology Officer

Gemini Earn will return 100 percent of all frozen funds. I have a lot of assets stuck here, so I'm optimistic about this.

Brian Armstrong will become even more famous. After the rug pull of 2022, Crypto needs good actors as ICONS. Brian is going to be a knight.

Sui, Aptos or something like it will gain traction and then break through in scale.

Ethereum will open physical stores (like Solana). Before, I hated this, but now, I feel that some people need realistic experience to understand crypto.

CryptoPunks will soar.

Bankless Labs will create two more products that define web3 --Earnifi has brought more than $150 million in revenue to people through airdrop notifications. We are currently expanding more technology for your Bankless journey.

Rachel Cusack: Chief Operating Officer

Ethereum will flip bitcoin.

Lucas Matney: Editorial Director

Things get worse for Twitter, and Elon's staunchest defenders in the crypto world are distancing themselves from it, and crypto Twitter still won't move to decentralized social.

Reddit has quietly become a major crypto player.

The SEC is taking direct aim at some crypto venture capital firms.

Elizabeth Warren gave up being the face of aggressive cryptocurrency regulation in the Senate, realizing that hating the DeFi isn't the progressive rallying cry she thought it was.

A non-Kardashian celebrity has been fined more than $1 million for promoting projects.

Apple continues to wage war on crypto while quietly building teams to figure out how to monetize in the app Store.

Lucas Campbell: Head of Web3

ENS is crushing fundamentals (registered domain names, revenue, etc.).

Liquidity pledges outperform the market.

Music comes in the context of new artists and collectors entering the field. Continue to gain traction. Music is collectible.

Web3 Social lays the groundwork for a bull market (similar to DeFi 2019). Identity, the social graph, collectable content, etc. are all key parts of this new Internet social layer.

The Summer of TCR. The Token Curation Registry, a crypto primitive concept postulated in Ethereum's early days, is finally starting to see some adoption (due to the wave of web3 social).

Donovan Choy: Editor

The launch of CBDC. They will not get very far unless governments make it mandatory to link them to basic payment services, such as taxes.

StarkNet has struggled in terms of performance relative to its L2 competitors.

Technically, Ethereum's censorship issues are still a thing of the past. Another black swan such as the Tornado Cash sanctions could raise a big ruckus, but without any of the censorship issues that exist in 2022.

BTC will not break 28.7K in 2023.

Individuals are losing more money in cryptocurrencies.

Ben Giove: Analyst

Shanghai upgrade, liquidity pledge DeFi field will appear large - scale growth. Lido remained the market leader, but lost significant share to challengers like Rocket Pool, StakeWise, Frax, etc. RPL and LDO are equal in market capitalisation. All LSD pure play (LDO, RPL, SWISE) outperformed ETH this year.

Ethereum L2 s has a total TVL of more than $10 billion, driving DeFi's revival. Arbitrum became the second largest L1/L2 in TVL after launching their token and GMX became the Unicorn.

A major L1 announced that they would be Ethereum L2.

We will see November 9, 2022 as the crypto market bottom, and the year will end on a positive note. When ETH is no longer in triple digits, it will hit $3,000 sometime in 2023 and then pull back somewhat.

Jack Inabinet: Analyst

A gridlocked Congress has done little in the way of significant regulatory or legal clarity for cryptocurrencies.

Driven by GLP yields, Arbitrum's asset management protocol has been widely adopted.

SBF was convicted.

Dave Freiburger: Content operations

Fifty percent of Fortune 500 companies will enable "crypto payments," and 15 percent will add connected wallets to their websites or dabble in cryptocurrency /web3 through partnerships, dedicated features, or NFT.

Twitter is getting more involved with web3. As Twitter looks for more ways to make money, it will launch more and more web3 products/features, and other web2 companies will follow suit. However, Farcaster will distance itself from these products as the leading web3 social application.

Moonbirds DAO will be at or near the level of success of a Nouns DAO.

Kristi Klaudy: Community Manager

Further consolidation of bitcoin miners and a tighter oligopolistic market

Discussion in the Bitcoin community has flourished around making bitcoin more secure over the long term. I truly believe this will be a topic for 2023/2024 (depending on market conditions).

That's what Bankless's team is predicting for 2023.

Remember... This is not financial advice.