Missed TOKEN2049 in Singapore? Fear not. Our BD and Research Director, Christopher N., shares his takeaways. Tune in 👇
1. Decentralized AI/DeAI felt like a hot narrative that was discussed several times.
When prodding a bit deeper, it did feel like a combination of excessive hype and buzzwords without much substance behind "Oh yea... DeAI... we're 100% looking at that. Gonna be the next hot narrative." Not many protocols spoken about specifically beyond a few.
2. DeFi Volumes & TVL continue to grow.
Institutions and DeFi-native liquid funds are interested in deploying across the spectrum of LPing, Yield Farming, locking $ in primitives, etc.
3. Differentiation through Community Management and Strong Marketing Efforts will be key due to the massive amounts of competition in the space across all verticals. With institutional interest and liquid funds starting to flow into the space, some sort of hybrid between the crypto-native "intern" marketing style and more structured institutionally focused strategies seems like the best way to capture both institutional interest and retail/degen activity.
4. Healthy debates on the prioritization of decentralization and discussion of decentralization on a spectrum... what is the bare minimum needed to consider something "decentralized" enough to differentiate it from $CeFi? At this stage—right now—it's difficult to have it all, so what are you willing to give up for a seamless user experience and deep liquidity in something like a DeFi protocol?
5. Prediction Markets as a longer narrative.
With Polymarket looking to raise tokens in the discussion, many people view prediction markets as a longer-term narrative. Protocols are focusing on adding new features such as leveraged betting, sourcing liquidity for multi-outcome events, oracle aggregators, etc. It felt like more people were long-term bullish on prediction markets, even with the most liquid and notable market—the US election—settling soon.
6. Berachain, Monad Labs, and More.
These had to be some of the most hyped and discussed L1s throughout the whole conference. A lot of builders discussed building on Monad Labs, and the Berachain community is out in full. These launches will be massively notable in 2025.
7. Chain Abstraction as a Narrative.
Continuing the theme with a seamless user experience where understanding technical details about the underlying blockchain infrastructure is less necessary. Hiding complexities of different blockchain and focusing on interoperability. Designing applications to be block-chain agnostic or deployed across multiple chains and focusing on users becoming familiar with the app rather than the chain.
8. Stablecoin Growth Continues.
The discussion focused on stablecoins beyond a means of exchange and as an on-ramp to DeFi. It also focused on financial inclusion in developing markets and leaning on opportunities in countries with limited banking infrastructure.
Thank you for your time!