Initially meant as an internal exercise, this list has been compiled by the combined giga-brains of every researcher at Cryptonary.

Before we get into it though, there is a disclaimer, and not our standard one (although that will be below as well).

As this was meant for internal use, it is a speculative, rough list. These are notepad sketches of what we think could happen, we have not extensively researched each one, we haven't worked through a tedious process to get to these conclusions. They are simply our thoughts - and we thought you may be interested in them

ENJOY

Disclaimer: Not financial nor investment advice. Any capital-related decisions you make are your full responsibility and only you are accountable for the results.

Bitcoin and Ethereum 

• In 2023, there will be some development toward a Bitcoin spot ETF, but not as much excitement as there was in 2021.
• BTC is deemed as a commodity and a lot of institutional capital will flow into it.
• People start to store their wealth in BTC as opposed to Gold or other assets for their lack of scalability and for the actual power of decentralisation.
• Ethereum becomes the core of Web3 as it will become the infrastructure to support multi-trillion companies similar to Web2.
• ENS domains get their own short lived bull market.

Layer 0s

• IBC protocols revolutionise interoperability, and the ATOM token benefits from/leads this due to the implementation of ATOM 2.0 (Interchain security, consumer chains).
• App specific chains to become a huge narrative for high transaction networks (like derivative exchanges).

Layer 1s

• Many of the new L1s that emerge will fail to gain momentum because they launch at a too high valuation and are following a playbook that worked in a bull market when consumers were drawn in by incentives and do not provide enough innovation to kickstart a new cycle.
• Solana becomes the NFT chain
• Solana becomes a top 5 chain by MCap.

 Layer 2s

• Ethereum and L2s to absorb good amounts of activity, bear market to emphasise this, real world use cases to begin to appear (esp. after Ethereum sharding solves scalability).
• Arbitrum and Optimism continue their war together, Optimism seems to be leading the race until Arbitrum becomes the winner after releasing its token.

Cross-chain

• Cross-chain issues solved to a good extent, liquidity to be shared across all/the majority of blockchains.
• Liquidity provider (LP) based cross-chain solutions (such as Synapse and THORChain) capture billions in TVL early in the next bull-run, early top performers.

DeFi

• Flaws in the competitive model of many real yield protocols such as GMX to become apparent, competitors that solve these to take huge market share (potentially someone new, potentially dYdX).
• Copy trading and other portfolio management methods become a huge narrative in DeFi.
• Structured products offer high, sustainable yields. These become hugely popular (although scalability of offering needs to be considered here).
• DeFi Options market turns from a $350M MCap sector to $10B+
• There will be a push for uncollateralized lending through the use of digital identities and on-chain credit, but as with decentralised stablecoins, it will be scrutinised following the mistakes made in the centralised lending sector.
• Synthetix grows rapidly in the bull market, they face huge regulatory battles and challenges, and these are what could make Synthetix, but they carry huge risk.

Stablecoins

• As DeFi protocols launch stablecoin alternatives, we will see more DAO discussions, but also inside the crypto community, about owning centralised stablecoins, and as Circle potentially goes public, their influence over the crypto sector will be challenged.

Macro and Institutions

• Central Banks declare BTC Holdings.
• Pension Funds, Mutual Funds, Investment Banks, start shifting BTC to ETH holdings due to ESG pressures.
• New Fiat Currency models are launched on blockchains as an experiment to replace the current faulty models.
• Institutions have access to DeFi through means such as Friktion, see huge opportunities, onboard.
• The United States will respond to the adoption of cryptocurrency by hostile nations. It will frighten many people, but it will not have as much impact on the crypto industry itself as some people might think.
• If a recession were to hit (like 2008) - we see crypto thrive in the face of inevitable to prove its actual value.

Gaming & Metaverse

• Play to earn, walk to earn, run to earn, sleep to earn, all die. If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product, and there isn’t enough value in that dataset to pay the outrageous amounts you are getting for walking 10 minutes.
• Metaverse continues to be irrelevant, until a big dog comes in and creates an actually good one (likely a major games studio).
• GameFi continues to suck, only improving when big dogs start using NFTs in game and create games that are actually fun to play.
• Mobile gaming which incorporates some part of crypto will arise, these have more potential than traditional games at this stage. 

Bull Mode 5000

• Once cross-chain interoperability and regulations are sorted out, real world businesses such as payment providers will launch their own private L2 blockchains, where they can do transactions for minimal costs, instantly and safely.

 Longer Time Frame

• We see DeFi become used outside of crypto in countries where a lot of people don’t even use regular banking services for their lack of trust in centralised authorities - easier for these people to use banking services from a computer.
• A lot of countries adopt CBDCS - each country will have its own CBDC according to its own needs. The CBDC will either be token-based or account-based.
• Multi-chain, interoperable, app specific chains, internet of things moves on chain.
• As Ethereum becomes capable of sharding, we will witness a surge in the development of apps and consumer-facing products that were previously unrelated to crypto.

 Very Speculative

• Decentralised Social Media platform onboards the next wave of market participants (like NFTs did in 2021)

• Inflation remains high through Winter 2022, coming down to 4-5% (headline) around mid-Summer 2023. Energy prices climb again as the US begins refilling the SPR after the mid-terms.