How crypto trends are emerging, and which industry may rise in 2024
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Every year, speculators, investors and people who are interested in the crypto industry follow the trends. GameFi, NFT and AI projects have grown so quickly that many investors could only see the events surrounding new technologies.
As the industry grows, new industries appear regularly. Therefore, it is already possible today to assume in which area projects will be created that are interesting for investment in the coming years.
Crypto trends. Which industry will be the new driver
Crypto trends usually arise around new tools, technologies and infrastructure that add value to the community. Projects that provide large profits to early investors also grow rapidly. This was the case in 2020 when DeFi startups grew, this was in 2021 when the industry discussed GameFi, and in 2023 AI projects became popular.
This is the latest trend being discussed in the financial and business world. Many AI-based crypto projects have shown growth this year. But in the crypto industry, events happen quickly, which means that the investment opportunities of AI startups have already been left behind.
The emergence of AI projects has an interesting feature. In fact, this technology appeared many years ago, but the market success of crypto projects with AI at the core only came this year. This is one example, but we can assume that the next crypto trend will also come from the field of already existing technologies. Games have already been transferred to Web3, which means that other businesses that are popular on Web2 can be decentralized. For example, we can take a closer look at social networks. Projects to transfer them to decentralized platforms are already underway, and together with this the SocialFi system is being formed.
What is SoFi and how do decentralized social networks work?
The SocialFi concept combines the idea of a decentralized Web3 Internet and a new generation of social networks. The idea of SocialFi is to create a community managed by users directly, instead of a monopolist – the owner company.
In crypto-social networks, personal information is stored by the user, not on the company’s servers. In SocialFi, the author is not just a content creator. He becomes the owner of the digital resource. This is what makes it possible to implement a new business model in the social crypto network.
In the SocialFi world, income is distributed differently and does not depend on the number of integrations and native advertising, but on approval from the community. People’s interest in content is the basis of revenue generation for creators in decentralized social networks. But in SoFi, all users can be rewarded for their activity – commenting, moderating content, creating NFT or buying project tokens.
Due to the lack of feed algorithm monopoly in SoFi, content is ranked according to its value as well as the trust it inspires in the community. This is another difference from traditional social networks, which promote content that is easy to monetize. Moreover, the classic business model prioritizes “fast” content to increase advertising revenue. And it kills the fans and the creative economy.
The first decentralized social networks
Crypto social networks appeared back in 2010. The first attempts were poorly scalable and their mechanics were not fully thought through. Then many blockchain-based networks were created. Some of them are still popular today.
For example Minds, a combination of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, or BitClout. This project was scandalous and is known for copying profiles popular on Twitter.
Another cryptocurrency network is Steemit, which appeared in 2016. The project rewards users for publishing and viewing content. Every day, new STEEM tokens are printed on the Steem blockchain, which go into the reward pool for the most active authors. The more votes users earn for their content, the more tokens they get in distribution. The coins give network members the right to decide how the platform will develop.
Strong SoFi projects today — MAIN
A more modern SoFi project is MAIN. Conceptually, this crypto network is similar to Reddit. MAIN also has boards — communities of interest, but they are managed by the users themselves.
Board tokens can be bought and sold, and the more popular a community becomes, the greater the capitalization. Both content creation and people’s activity in the social network are income-generating. Users can invest in common coins and receive rewards for communicating, publishing and moderating content. Coins are distributed daily.
Today in MAIN the top management is worth more than $30k. Users can also invest in the project’s original token – MAIN. You can use it to buy table coins or keep it as an investment. As the audience grows, the complexity of the network increases, the demand for the token increases, and therefore the cost increases. The biggest competitive difference between MAIN and Steemit is that the issuance of MAIN tokens is limited to 1 billion coins.
Why classic social networks will lose out to SoFi projects
SoFi projects have several advantages over traditional social networks. All of them are due to the technological superiority of the Web3 Internet over Web2. No matter how progressive the current social networks are, they cannot solve the technological and conceptual problems that the last generation of the Internet has:
Income generation
Traditional social networks are developed by advertising revenue and take most of the profit for the benefit of the owner, not the author. SoFi projects are built on servers that do not belong to a specific business. Therefore, in crypto-social networks, the authors are the owners of their own content, and receive all income from it.
Personal information
When users register on a social network, they enter their phone number, email and other information. This data remains on the companies’ servers. If there is a bug or a hacker attack, all personal data will be in the public domain.
Each user in Web 3 owns his own personal data. A decentralized approach will save users from the problem of protecting personal information. DApps do not collect or store user data. They are also protected from hacking thanks to blockchain.
Freedom of expression and protection of property rights
The moderation system in traditional social networks does not allow all content to exist. Sometimes blocking and censorship comes not only from a company, but also from states trying to control unwanted content. In decentralized social networks, content is managed by the network members themselves. This makes it impossible to censor or block users without appealing.
Moreover, decentralized social networks guarantee authors the protection of property rights. Technologically, this can be ensured by NFT, because any created content is already equipped with digital rights, and it is easy to find its owner through a smart contract.
When SoFi takes over traditional social networks
Today, Web3 projects have hundreds of millions of users. SocialFi is a new trend that has not yet won its audience. We’ve already seen the hype in GameFi startups, and no one is arguing with the value of their products anymore. AI projects have taken off even in the bear market this year.
To assess the prospects of decentralized social networks and guess when they will succeed, we need to look at the Web 2 era. The maturity of SocialFi today can be compared to Facebook when it developed on the university campus. But an important difference between decentralized social networks and traditional ones is that crypto projects allow any investor to invest in an early-stage startup. This is another advantage of Web3 over Web2 – anyone can become a co-owner of a crypto-social network.
