Blockchain Trends to Expect in 2022

Blockchain industry spending is expected to break the $11 billion mark next year thanks to the growing interest in cryptocurrency, smart contracts, and other technologies fueled by blockchain. There’s no doubt that in the previous years, the entire cryptocurrency domain had to sustain worldwide regulatory resistance until the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.

However, the pandemic taught us to accept a new normal way that might spark the need for a Blockchain-based world. You might be wondering how the top trends related to Blockchain might impact you in the coming year. We’ve compiled a quick report that will highlight the Blockchain industry trends that you will see in 2022 and why you should be ready for it:

Adoption of Blockchain in Finance and Banking

With the launch of Ethereum in 2015, developers found a way to exploit the years-old finance and banking system in the world. The introduction of smart contracts made it possible for many businesses to dream of a system where making a contract will be easier than thought before. In 2022, we will see the adoption of the blockchain ecosystem by many major finance and banking organizations. Reports show top banking institutes like JPMorgan, Citi, and Wells Fargo have already accepted blockchain. Other popular payment gateways like VISA and Paypal might also keep investing heavily in Blockchain in 2022.

Source: Infosys

Co-founder of Aurora, Alex Shevchenko has been highly optimistic about blockchain and announced the implementation of the Ethereum 2.0 vision—a sharded EVM environment—in Aurora in production. In a recent interview Alex discussed the four main trends regarding blockchain apart from finance and banking:

1) Scalability (L2s, Rollups)
2) GameFi
3) DeGov
4) Generative art on the blockchain (NFTs v2.0)

A Shift in Demand: NFT vs Web3

“The market is becoming more and more mature as Web 3 progresses parallelly with GameFi and DeFi. I believe that in this year there will be a big growth in social finances, med-fi (medical finances). I don’t see a big development of the NFT market as it was in the last year. The NFT collectible items will probably be on a decline but the technology itself will progress. Also, a key trend will be financing public goods – there will be more initiative to finance and support the research of Web3 development, says N.H, a core member of the founding team for Mate and Orakuru.

Source: Reddit

It’s hard to deny that the 328% growth of the NFT marketplace in the first quarter of 2021 will be a difficult thing to see in the coming years. But the co-founder of NEAR Protocol, Illia Polosukhin, is seeing potential in Web3. He said, “NEAR’s goal is to get to 1B users in web3 in the next 5 years. We see next year as a fundamental shift to mass adoption – where social apps that are integrated with web3 and crypto are going to start becoming mainstream. Comparing with the existing social landscape – because web3 is highly composable, this will mean not just a single app but the whole clusters of apps that work on common protocols will drive future usage.”

Evgeny Yurtaev, the CEO of Zerion believes the NFT trend is an evolving one with its own nature and is here to stay. In a recent interview he elaborated on the future plans for the project, “Next year, we are going to release the best social wallet to take the UX of DeFi & NFTs on mobile to the next level. Partnering with more chains allows us to onboard new users and give them a much cheaper trading experience.”

Additionally, thanks to Web 3 evolvement 2022 will see an explosive growth of DAOs. Ivan Fartunov who is an acting Head Of Ecosystem for Aragon, in particular, sees the growth of composability of DAO tooling:  “We believe the biggest trend is towards composability of DAO tooling and making sure that teams that want to build something can seamlessly utilize multiple products and services regardless of the framework they are using. Most DAO creators will be Web 3 natives and working with them will be essential for making useful and scalable services/products to set the stage for new entrants into web3. ”

Blockchain for Metaverse

Since Facebook announced the new name Meta, the word ‘Metaverse’ got the attention of millions. Blockchain will be fuelling the components of the metaverse. These components can be NFT and Defi that already got strong traction in the previous years.

Source: Google Trends

Sergey Kravchenko, CEO at Tank Metaverse announced, ”In accordance with global demand and tendency, we are building the next generation NFT metaverse that harmoniously embodies modern social interaction on the blockchain with opportunities for creativity, p2e income, and pleasure.”

Research on Central Bank Digital Currencies

Central banks around the world are reporting a possible shift towards the cryptocurrency-like national currency. Already, China said that they will implement a digital version of their own currency in the coming years. Although countries like the UK will delay the implementation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) until 2026 we must keep in mind that many central banks have already started researching blockchain technology. There will be a sudden shift in cryptocurrency regulations in the next year thanks to the involvement of some government agencies and regulatory boards worldwide.

Wrap Up

The year 2022 is a year when many investors, founders, bankers, and developers will look for new opportunities to go beyond the traditional means. Blockchain is certainly the technology that gives them the power to change the world. Innovators from the automotive industry to healthcare saw how blockchain can bring a balance in the world using the power of decentralization. So, companies and government authorities will surely invest in blockchain technology in 2022 and pave the way for massive transformation in the blockchain industry.

Image: Pixabay