Inventory of 7 Major Potential Tracks to Watch in the Second Half of 2024
In the first half of 2024, the dominance of Bitcoin, decentralized AI, the use of DePIN, the rise of Solana, and ETH staking became the main highlights of the market.
Various subfields of DeFi are also flourishing under new sources of income, airdrop frenzy, and the promotion of meme coins.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, there are 7 potential trends worth paying attention to. At the beginning of 2024, we predicted 12 key trends and ideas to embrace the new bull market wave. Most of them have become hot topics in the top cryptocurrencies, with significant growth in prices, active users, on-chain indicators, developers, and funding activities.
After 6 months, market sentiment and the macro environment have changed. It is now time to focus on the remaining time of this year and the new catalysts for early 2025.
First, you may need to prepare a cup of coffee and save this article for later use, as it will be a volatile journey.
In the next six months, macroeconomic conditions and institutional adoption will be key to shaping the future development of cryptocurrencies.
U.S. macroeconomic conditions
After two years of record-high interest rates, the first rate cut may take place in September. The November U.S. presidential election is expected to see Trump re-elected, according to market forecasts. Both of these factors could be favorable for the cryptocurrency market at the end of the year.
Continued institutional adoption
After approving the U.S. spot BTC ETF, the SEC has also approved the listing of several spot ETH ETFs, setting the tone for the market trend for the whole year. We expect institutions to delve deeper into DeFi, infrastructure, AI, and consumer applications.
Given these factors, here are 7 exciting areas that we believe are worth paying attention to in the remaining time of 2024 and early 2025.
1. Bitcoin’s scalability and DeFi
The Bitcoin market is expanding through native cryptographic methods such as ETFs, Ordinals, BRC-20s, and Runes. However, scalability issues are becoming increasingly prominent.
@Stacks
@citrea_xyz
@MerlinLayer2
@BitlayerLabs
@BSquaredNetwork
are working on second-layer solutions for BTC.
Early Bitcoin DeFi players include
@bounce_bit
@babylon_chain
@SolvProtocol
@MezoNetwork
.
2. Ownership Economy Applications
Blockchain technology allows users to regain sovereignty over personal data, creative content, and computing resources. These applications are highly synergistic with the rise of AI and machine learning. Two areas worth noting are:
DePin:
@AethirCloud
@ionet
@rendernetwork
@Hivemapper
DeSoc:
@farcaster_xyz
@LensProtocol
3. Real-World Assets
Despite an impending rate cut, we expect RWAs to benefit from a relatively higher interest rate environment. Projects focusing on tokenizing national debt include:
@OndoFinance
,
@MountainUSDM
,
@tangibleDAO
,
@MakerDAO
Institutions and general lending:
@maplefinance
In addition to RWAs, support for infrastructure such as oracles (
@PythNetwork
,
@chainlink
), decentralized identity, interoperability (
@LayerZero_Labs
,
@wormhole
), and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) for data privacy (
@mindnetwork_xyz
,
@zama_fhe
) are also expected to gain momentum.
4. Web3 Games
Web3 games are making a mark in various genres, from super casual games like
@thenotcoin
to well-designed games like
@ParallelTCG
,
@pixels_online
,
@playSHRAPNEL
,
@PirateNation
.
A strong and sustainable in-game economy and fully on-chain operated games will be the next major leap for Web3 games.
5. Abstracting User Experience
The current crypto user experience is decentralized and complex, involving over 100 multi-chain environments. Users face challenges in managing wallets, interacting with dApps, and cross-chain asset handling.
Account abstraction and Paymaster have become new user onboarding standards.
But this is just the beginning.
In the next 6-9 months, new progress is expected in chain abstraction, including key management, gas abstraction, transaction abstraction, and cross-chain interoperability.
Keep an eye on the following key projects:
@ParticleNtwrk
,
@NEARProtocol
,
@EverclearOrg
,
@burnt_xion
,
@lifiprotocol
6. DeFi Subfields
The broad market rebound will bring a lot of capital inflows to DeFi. While we have not seen any major events like the “Uniswap moment” yet, some DeFi subfields are showing strong growth momentum.
Re-staking/LR:
@eigenlayer
,
@symbioticfi
,
@solayer_labs
,
@Karak_Network
,
@ether_fi
Lending:
@MorphoLabs
,
@0xfluid
,
@aave
New types of derivative markets:
@HyperliquidX
,
@SynFuturesDefi
,
@WhalesMarket
,
@DriftProtocol
Prediction markets:
@Polymarket
,
@azuroprotocol
Yields:
@pendle_fi
7. New Infrastructure
The infrastructure sector has raised over $2.58 billion in capital, becoming the largest category in venture capital, showing strong interest in expanding solutions, interoperability, modularity, and new blockchain infrastructure.
Some top funding projects include:
@monad_xyz
,
@berachain
This article is a collaborative reprint from:
Deep Tide