2024 Q2: Reflections on the State of Crypto

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The crypto landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, revealing new trends, maturing ecosystems, and emerging opportunities. Every six months, I take time to reflect internally on where the industry stands and where it’s headed. This quarter’s analysis—now shared publicly—focuses on three core areas: what’s working, what else is happening, and what I’m excited about for the future.

My goal is to ground this reflection in data while acknowledging that personal perspective inevitably shapes interpretation. If this resonates, I may share more of these updates going forward.

What’s Working in 2024

When I say “what’s working,” I mean projects or trends showing signs of sustainable product-market fit, expanding the crypto economy, or both. These developments aren’t just noise—they’re foundational shifts creating real value and second-order opportunities.

Here are 10 key areas currently gaining momentum:

1. Stablecoins

Stablecoins remain a cornerstone of on-chain finance. Net inflows into stablecoin supply have reached approximately $25 billion since late 2023, with consistent positive momentum through Q2 2024.

👉 Discover how stablecoins are reshaping global financial access today.

The demand for permissionless, global dollar exposure remains strong. USDC and other regulated stable assets are increasingly used not just for trading, but for cross-border payments, lending, and yield generation—proving their utility beyond speculation.

2. Bitcoin as an Alternative Asset

The approval of 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs in January 2024 was a watershed moment. By June, over $80 billion in assets had flowed into these ETFs—a clear signal of institutional adoption.

Bitcoin is increasingly viewed as digital gold: a non-correlated store of value, hedge against macro uncertainty, and an alternative to traditional equities. Unlike gold, however, Bitcoin offers verifiable scarcity, borderless transferability, and growing balance sheet adoption by corporations and nations.

This shift has catalyzed a wave of innovation aimed at unlocking Bitcoin’s economic security for other chains—from Layer 2 solutions like Stacks and Merlin to interoperability protocols leveraging Bitcoin’s hash rate.

3. Farcaster: The Rise of Open Social Networks

Farcaster, built on an open protocol architecture, is gaining traction as a decentralized social network. Growth accelerated in late January with the launch of Frames—mini-apps embedded directly within user feeds that enable interactive experiences without leaving the app.

This innovation blends content, community, and commerce in ways previously impossible on closed platforms. Developers are building games, prediction markets, and NFT mints directly into posts—ushering in a new era of programmable social.

4. Token Creation Surge

New token creation is booming—especially on Solana and Base. On Solana alone, more than 10,000 new tokens are minted daily.

While many are memecoins, their popularity reflects genuine user engagement. More importantly, they’re driving technological innovation. For example, $BERN leveraged Solana’s new Token Extensions to implement automatic burn mechanics on sales—a novel redistribution model now influencing wallet standards.

This activity underscores two enduring truths: the power of permissionless issuance and the value of on-chain trading venues.

5. Community-Trained AI Models

We’re entering an era where large language models (LLMs) are abundant and cheap to run. In such a world, value shifts from computation to curation—specifically, taste and attention.

Projects like Botto, an autonomous artist trained weekly by its token holders, exemplify this shift. As the community guides the model using cultural preferences, output quality improves—and so do auction prices for Botto’s digital art.

This model proves that decentralized communities can align incentives around subjective creativity. With proper attribution and reward mechanisms, crypto enables fairer value distribution in AI-generated content.

6. Solana’s Resurgence

Solana is back—with daily active addresses up 2–3x year-over-year and monthly actives hitting all-time highs in May 2024.

The network now generates meaningful fee revenue, validating its low-cost, high-throughput design. Increased usage across DeFi, NFTs, and social apps confirms Solana isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving.

7. Ethereum’s Enduring Strength

Ethereum remains the bedrock of decentralized innovation. Monthly active addresses are up ~30% since年初 and nearing 2021 peaks.

Beyond Ethereum mainnet, the broader ecosystem—including Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and Polygon—shows robust growth in combined daily activity. This multi-chain future reinforces Ethereum’s role as the dominant settlement layer.

8. Zora Network

Zora Chain has grown steadily since launch, with weekly active users up 60% in 2024 and recently surpassing 250,000.

Its ~34% margin on transaction fees demonstrates that vertically integrated applications can capture meaningful economic value—validating the idea that successful dApps can build their own blockspace.

9. Coinbase’s Expanding Role

Coinbase has emerged as a central player in multiple domains:

Coinbase proves that viable business models exist around crypto primitives—from custody to infrastructure to consumer products.

10. On-Chain Trading Platforms

Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap are seeing explosive growth. Unique trader counts on Ethereum have doubled in six months.

Uniswap’s 7-day average trading volume has even exceeded Coinbase’s at times—a milestone showing DeFi’s growing relevance. On Solana, Orca and Raydium also report significant volume increases.

These platforms aren’t just protocols—they’re revenue-generating businesses with real economic moats.

Other Notable Trends

While not yet proven at scale, several trends are shaping behavior and developer strategy:

Social-Fi Applications

Apps like Friend.tech and FantasyTop have generated millions in fees by blending social interaction with financial mechanics. While long-term sustainability is uncertain, they highlight user appetite for novel engagement models.

Speculation may kickstart interest—but lasting success will require deeper utility and community alignment.

Proliferation of New Chains

Dozens of new L2s and L3s have launched, especially within the Ethereum ecosystem. Differentiation now hinges less on tech specs and more on brand and community.

Base exemplifies brand-driven growth—achieving developer momentum without immediate token incentives. Meanwhile, chains like Blast and Berachain experiment with novel economic models (e.g., yield-bearing staking).

Ultimately, mature chains combine strong tech, aligned economics, and vibrant communities.

Looking Ahead: What’s Next?

New Distribution Channels

I’m excited by emerging distribution vectors:

These platforms combine identity, social graph, and payments—enabling powerful new use cases.

Imagine targeted promotions sent directly to wallets based on on-chain behavior or social activity—with spend only triggered upon conversion. This is programmable marketing, made possible by open protocols.

👉 See how next-gen platforms are redefining user acquisition in web3.

Building Blocks for the Future

Innovations like:

…are laying the foundation for frictionless user experiences.

Together, they suggest a future where crypto isn’t just an asset class—but an operating system for digital interaction.

Emerging Opportunities

Three underexplored areas deserve attention:

Verifiable Credentials

Blockchain can securely issue tamper-proof certificates—employment records, academic degrees, licenses. Public ledgers ensure authenticity and permanence. Use cases span hiring verification to credential portability across platforms.

Price-Differentiated Assets (PDAs)

Some goods have high economic value but inefficient pricing due to opacity or artificial scarcity—like restaurant reservations scalped by bots.

Tokenizing these assets could bring transparency, fairness, and new revenue models (e.g., shared resale royalties). This applies broadly—from event tickets to luxury access.

Novel Token Distribution Models

Blackbird rewards users with NFTs for dining out—a simple yet effective loyalty mechanism. By aligning incentives with existing behaviors, it increases engagement without coercion.

This model can scale across industries where data insights and customer loyalty create mutual value.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is the surge in memecoins sustainable?
A: While speculative, memecoins drive real engagement and spur innovation (e.g., Solana’s Token Extensions). Their long-term impact may be technological rather than financial.

Q: Can decentralized social networks like Farcaster compete with Twitter or Instagram?
A: Not in raw user numbers yet—but they offer ownership, composability, and monetization tools absent in legacy platforms. Their potential lies in enabling new economic models for creators.

Q: How important is Coinbase to the broader crypto ecosystem?
A: Extremely. Beyond being a gateway for retail users, Coinbase influences regulation, custody standards, and infrastructure development (e.g., Base, World ID).

Q: Are new L2s just hype or do they add real value?
A: Many will fade—but the best solve real problems: scalability, cost reduction, or improved UX. Success depends on developer adoption and user retention.

Q: What makes community-trained AI different from traditional models?
A: It aligns output quality with economic incentives. Communities vote with tokens to shape model behavior—rewarding taste and curation over pure computation.

Q: Will Bitcoin ever become programmable like Ethereum?
A: Through layers like Ordinals, Runes, and potential upgrades like OP_CAT, yes—though cautiously. Bitcoin prioritizes security over feature bloat.

👉 Explore the future of decentralized finance and AI convergence now.