These Are the Top 5 Blockchain Trends to Watch For

Blockchain has had a rough year, what with the suddenly plunging crypto exchanges and casual investors discovering that Bitcoin is volatile in both directions. But there are other, more significant trends that will affect all parts of the blockchain ecosystem in the years ahead. Here are some of the biggest game changers to look out for.

Web3 Is Nearly Here

Web3 is the predicted next evolution of the internet into a fully decentralized P2P network. Blockchain is central to this, since smart contracts and bridging services from oracle chains are the only practical way a full decentralization could work.

Oracles See the Future

Decentralization has been the holy grail of blockchain since the earliest of days. While no chain is 100% decentralized quite yet, oracles such as Chainlink (LINK) are early adopters that provide a fee-based solution to the overcentralization that has plagued ambitious chains. The dApp-support-for-a-fee model LINK pioneered has a big future.

Better Living Through Scaling

In any enterprise, scaling is the key to unlocking economies of size. The increasing scalability of today's blockchain networks has equipped them to run ever more users' transactions in a faster, more useful environment than ever before.

Interoperability Is Crucial

Early blockchains, like early computers, had no easy way of executing trades on each others' networks. Increasing interoperability is changing that, with bridging chains like Binance linking Ethereum to the less-commonly-used chains elsewhere.

The Ironic Virtue of Bear Markets

People don't usually think of bear markets as being good, but for blockchain they may be. After the irrational exuberance of 2020-22's crypto rush, a lot of unwise investments now have time to cool off and consolidate into more realistic blockchain-based portfolios going forward.