First my top 10 things that happened last year in crypto:

1. The rise of DeFi: Digital exchanges top 1Bn$ this year. In 2017 people doubted it could be a thing and yet this year it has shown that in a few short years it can give CeFi a run for its money. Whether prices go up, down or sideways it’s clear that DeFi can provide useful financial products that generate revenue in each case. To put some metrics on this, Ethereum settled 1tr$ more than Visa last year. Even if some of that is fluff, to be at a tenth of Visa is pretty jaw dropping. And we’re only just getting started.

2. Bitcoin becoming legal tender in a country. It can’t be understated how pipe dreamish this was when bitcoin was young. It was far far away and I think many would admit that they were surprised that it happened so soon. It’s great that it’s a small enough country that raising gov bonds should not be a problem. I think it’s going to be good for the population of El Salvador regardless of what people think of their governance.

3. Polkadot finished being coded up (after 5 years of coding!) and started launching parachains. What comes next is going to be exciting, but it takes time to build things that last the test of time, so I think we will see gradual growth in this, it’s first true year.

4. Eth finally got a monetary policy: 1559 guarenteed block space (as long as you are willing to pay.) and Eth took its first step towards being ultra sound money. I totally agree that burning transaction fees and having a regular inflation with each block is more secure than Bitcoin’s relying on transaction fees alone as there’s less volatility.

5. L2s arrive: Fraud proofs and specialised zk chains. Also L2 bridges appear (thankfully!). Transaction costs plunge, but it’s only next year that all the apps will have migrated.

6. China bans bitcoin and helps bitcoin decentralise in the process. The biggest passive hash rate attack by far taking down more than half the network only suceeded in making bitcoin stronger.

7. Digital Artists onboard to digital money. Personal NFT profile pictures are clearly here to stay. Who would have thought twitter would be rolling out support for them in early 2022?

8. US Bitcoin ETF (sorta) There’s no doubt that this is the start of many and SEC looked like laggards for delaying as long as they did. But better late than never. Let’s hope the real ones are not far behind.

9. First major companies have crypto as part of their treasury.

Given all that it’s almost crazy to suggst that this next year could be bigger, but I beleve it’s got all the ingredients to smash last year out of the park.

Here’s the top 10 things I am looking forward to in the year:

1. Polkadot’s Black Swan. Parachains widen what’s viable to achieve on-chain. We are going to see ‘standard’ things that other chains have already built, but it’s the wierd and wonderful that no one will be expecting that will get this top slot.

2. The ETH merge. Crypto becomes credibly greener (alas haters still gonna hate - insert FUD here). Some people might think that this triple-halvening event will have some effect on the eth price. You may very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment. Markets will also be ‘surprised’ that eth validators seem to ‘overnight’ be suddenly more lucrative.

3. Zero Knowledge Layer 2s with full eth vm support which will be amazing but also we will see that even while ‘complete’, you might well need to do more than copypasta as the weightings of gas costs will likely be radically different.

4. More people will understand that web3 means unstoppable apps. Other apps will as usual stop working when AWS has outages :-)

5. Governments and law enforcement will take the Al Capone route of trying to jail devs working on privacy coins on anything that will stick, trying to slow the inevitable. (Like Fluffy Pony.)

6. L1 Ethereum will be a no-go zone by the end of the year, suitable for whales and rollups only. 2022 will be the gradual migration from Eth L1 to L2s.

7. Hopfully one of the climate change protocols starts to gain traction or maybe a web3 social media? Idk, that might be the following year or could be the black swan.

8. The metaverse (we want) won’t I suspect arrive this year; but hopefully the next gen VR hardware will arrive this year that will allow people to be more immersed in VR. (Side note: I loved Somnium’s 360 degree picture bubbles as a metaverse try-before-you-buy metaverse link)

9. The Rust crypto ecosystem will continue its rapid accelleration aided by the raft of new rust L1s and aided by crpypto companies giving back and investing in Rust (shout out to the DevX initiative to show how to structure this in a way that everyone is happy).

10. Zero Knowlage research and engineering will continue with breakthroughs and optimised techniques. Further attempts will be done to try and crack zkDeFi. They said decentralised Dex’s could not happen and yet here we are. I’m sure privacy can be added in. If you want a rational you only have to look at ConstitutionDAO trying to bid on an auction when the other bidders knew exactly how much they had.

There is so much happening this year, I suspect it will be a pivitol year for crypto. There is so much more money invested in development in improving all levels of crypto that we will see some amazing strides in this year and the next.