The 2024 Crypto Market Outlook: Key Trends and Predictions

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The cryptocurrency market experienced a remarkable recovery in 2023, with total market capitalization doubling. This resurgence signals that the asset class is moving beyond its "winter" phase and is currently undergoing a significant transformation. While it may be premature to declare a complete revival or view the positive performance as a rebuttal to skeptics, the developments over the past year have exceeded expectations. These advancements underscore that cryptocurrency is here to stay. The challenge now is to seize this momentum and build a more robust ecosystem.

Catalysts for the 2023 recovery were not solely tied to technological innovation. Events like the U.S. regional banking crisis and escalating geopolitical conflicts reinforced Bitcoin’s role as a safe-haven alternative. Moreover, applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs by major U.S. financial institutions implicitly acknowledged crypto’s disruptive potential. This may herald clearer regulatory frameworks, reducing friction that has hindered capital flow into this asset class.

The foundation for broader adoption is already visible—ranging from web2 analogues in payments, gaming, and social media to crypto-native advances like decentralized identity and decentralized physical infrastructure networks. The former are easier for investors to grasp, but these projects face fierce competition from established web2 giants. The latter could reshape the technological landscape, though development timelines are longer, and meaningful user adoption remains more distant. Nonetheless, blockchain infrastructure has improved dramatically over the past two years, providing the necessary conditions for experimentation and innovation and bringing us closer to a tipping point.

Tokenization represents another critical use case, attracting traditional finance participants. Full-scale implementation may take another year or two, but the renewed interest in tokenization reflects current economic realities. In a higher interest rate environment, the capital efficiency offered by instant settlement for repurchase agreements, bonds, and other capital market instruments becomes increasingly important.

Against this backdrop, we believe the long-term trend of institutional crypto adoption will accelerate. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the latter stages of the 2023 rally began attracting a broader range of institutional clients, from traditional macro funds to ultra-high-net-worth individuals. The anticipated launch of a U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF is expected to further drive this trend, potentially leading to more sophisticated derivative products that rely on compliant spot ETFs as their foundation. Ultimately, this should improve liquidity and price discovery for all market participants.

We believe these elements represent some of the foundational themes for the 2024 cryptocurrency market, which we will explore in this report.

The Next Cycle: Bitcoin’s Dominance

Market flows in 2023 aligned closely with projections from earlier outlooks. A shift toward higher-quality digital assets drove Bitcoin’s dominance steadily above 50% for the first time since April 2021. This was largely propelled by multiple established financial giants filing for spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S.—their participation validates and enhances the prospects of cryptocurrencies as an emerging asset class. Although some capital may flow into riskier segments of the market in the coming year, we expect institutional inflows to remain anchored in Bitcoin, at least through the first half of 2024. Additionally, pent-up demand from traditional investors seeking entry may make it harder to displace Bitcoin’s hegemony in the short term.

Bitcoin’s unique narrative helped it outperform traditional assets in the second half of 2023, and we expect this trend to continue into the next year. Unless a broad risk-off environment triggers liquidity demands, Bitcoin may perform well even in challenging macroeconomic conditions. For example, fiscal dominance in the U.S. and other countries could constrain restrictive monetary policies, leading to marginalized capital. The vulnerable U.S. commercial real estate sector may further pressure regional banks. Both developments could accelerate the long-term trend of adopting Bitcoin as an alternative to the traditional financial system. These factors may also reinforce the narrative around Bitcoin’s deflationary supply schedule ahead of the April 2024 halving.

The New Trading Regime

The previous crypto winter (2018–19) ended with the emergence of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the rise of multiple alternative layer-1 (L1) networks, built ostensibly to meet anticipated demand for on-chain block space. Protocol experiments on these platforms helped bring cryptocurrency further into the mainstream before overall activity stalled in late 2021. As it turned out, more block space was not necessarily needed. With dampened expectations, developers used the crypto winter to build, addressing technical obstacles that had hindered the development of new blockchain use cases.

The first phase of this progress involved constructing the infrastructure needed for a web3 future—such as scaling solutions (layer-2s), security services (restaking), and hardware (accelerators for zero-knowledge proofs). These remain significant investment opportunities within crypto, but arguably, substantial infrastructure has now been built. As this enables more decentralized applications (dapps) to emerge, we expect the market’s trading regime to shift accordingly. That is, we anticipate more market participants focusing on identifying potential web3 applications that can help cryptocurrency bridge the gap between early adoption and mainstream usage.

Many market participants rely on web2 analogues for their investment theses in this space, such as payments, gaming, and social media. Other more uniquely crypto-native use cases have also emerged, including decentralized identity, decentralized physical infrastructure networks, and decentralized computing. We believe the challenge lies not only in identifying promising sectors but also in selecting winners. Achieving dominance in any particular area isn’t just about first-mover advantage—it also involves realizing and monetizing the right network effects. Before early 2004, at least six other social media platforms, including Friendster and MySpace, had gained some traction but failed to achieve Facebook’s network scale or prominence. Given the nascent nature of the digital asset class, we expect many market participants to rely more heavily on proxies and platform plays to capture the opportunities we see in the next cycle.

Layer-1 Equilibrium

We believe the slowdown in on-chain activity over the past two years has reduced the demand for “general-purpose” alternative layer-1s. Ethereum’s dominance among smart contract platforms remains firm, with little room for direct competition. Approximately 57% of the total value locked in the crypto ecosystem resides on Ethereum, and ETH’s 18% share of total crypto market capitalization is still larger than any other token except BTC. As market participants increasingly focus on applications, we expect more alternative L1s to repurpose their networks to better align with evolving narratives. For example, more industry-specific platforms have prolifer within the ecosystem. Some focus on gaming or NFTs (e.g., Beam, Blast, Immutable X), while others concentrate on DeFi (dYdX, Osmosis) and/or institutional participants (Avalanche’s Evergreen subnets, Kinto).

At the same time, the concept of modular blockchains has gained popularity within the crypto community, with many L1s stepping in to handle one or more core blockchain components, including data availability, consensus, settlement, and execution. Notably, Celestia, which launched on mainnet in late 2023, reinvigorated the conversation around modular blockchain design by providing an easily accessible plug-in data availability layer. Other networks and rollups can use Celestia to publish transaction data with the guarantee that this data is available on-chain for anyone to inspect. Other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible L1s have chosen to focus on smart contract execution by transitioning to Ethereum L2s, such as Celo.

That said, integrated (or monolithic) chains like Solana still hold an important place in the crypto ecosystem, meaning the debate between modular and integrated may not be resolved soon. Nonetheless, we expect the trend toward increasing chain differentiation—whether by industry or function—to continue into 2024. However, the value of these blockchains will ultimately depend on which projects are building on them and how much usage they attract.

The Evolution of Layer-2s

The emergence of new rollup stacks like OP Stack, Polygon CDK, and Arbitrum Orbit, along with the abstraction of functionality into specialized layers, has accelerated the rapid growth of layer-2 scaling solutions. As a result, developers can more easily build and customize their own rollups. However, despite the proliferation of L2s, they have done little to divert activity from the Ethereum mainnet, instead cannibalizing activity from alternative L1s.

For example, if we compare canonical bridges connecting Ethereum with L2s and alternative L1s, the share of ETH locked in rollup bridges has grown from 25% of all bridged ETH in early 2022 to 85% by the end of November 2023. Meanwhile, despite growth in rollup usage, the number of transactions on Ethereum has remained relatively stable, averaging around 1 million per day. In contrast, the total activity on Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and zkSync currently averages over 2 million transactions per day.

Moreover, modular theory is manifesting in entirely unique ways within the L2 space. Eclipse, a “general-purpose” scaling solution that relies on a modular architecture, challenged existing conventions and garnered significant attention in 2023. Notably, Eclipse relies on (1) the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) for transaction execution, (2) Celestia for data availability, (3) Ethereum for settlement (security), and (4) RISC Zero for zero-knowledge fraud proofs. This is just one example of how we are beginning to experiment with different (non-EVM) virtual machines at the execution layer, though the impact on the ecosystem remains to be seen. With the Dencun upgrade (including the Cancun fork) expected in the first quarter of 2024, we may also see a reduction in transaction fees for L2s settling to Ethereum.

Resetting the Macro Framework: The Long Road Away from Dollar Dominance

De-dollarization is likely to remain a long-term theme in 2024, especially in an election year. However, the reality is that the U.S. dollar faces no immediate threat of losing its global霸主地位 (or, in the words of former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, “exorbitant privilege”). What is evident is that the dollar is at an inflection point. Although de-dollarization may take many generations to unfold, the global monetary system has begun to move away from dollar dominance—and for good reason. U.S. macroeconomic imbalances are growing as the cost of servicing the nation’s debt burden is expected to rise. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal deficit will increase to $1 trillion, or 3.1% of GDP, by 2028. Over the next decade, the CBO expects the federal deficit to expand from an average of 3.5% of GDP to 6.1%.

On the other hand, the de-dollarization theme has been a topic of discussion since at least the early 1980s, and yet the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency. In fact, the dollar’s outsize role in global finance and trade means its share in all international transactions has hovered around 85–90% for the past four decades. What has changed is the weaponization of global finance, which began with the U.S. escalating sanctions against Russia due to the war in Ukraine. This has accelerated interest in developing new cross-border payment solutions as more countries sign bilateral agreements to reduce their dependence on the dollar. For example, France and Brazil (among others) have begun settling commodity trades in yuan. More experiments with central bank digital currencies are underway to avoid today’s cumbersome correspondent banking system.

Crypto advocates argue that Bitcoin and other digital stores of value will play an important role in the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world, as the value of owning a supranational asset not owned or controlled by any single country seems self-evident. Monetary transformations often occur during periods of socio-economic turmoil, and these changes are only fully understood in hindsight—such as paper money in 11th-century China, bills of exchange in 13th-century Europe, or credit cards in the mid-20th-century U.S.

On the other hand, while digital cash and distributed ledgers will likely be a major part of the next transformation, displacing the dollar in the global financial system is no easy task. For one, the entire crypto market capitalization is only a fraction of the $13 trillion in U.S. dollar-denominated bonds available to non-bank institutions outside the U.S. The dollar’s share in foreign exchange reserves has declined over the past three decades but still constitutes a majority at 58%. Bitcoin does not necessarily need to disintermediate the dollar to serve a valuable function as an attractive alternative in unstable times, which may help it find a place in the reserve assets of more countries. The structural adoption of Bitcoin and crypto also does not depend on the collapse of the dollar, which explains why we saw Bitcoin strengthen in tandem with the dollar earlier in the second half of 2023. In the long run, the ongoing changes in the monetary regime and crypto’s role in them could be significant, even if we may not live long enough to see the old order overturned.

The 2024 Economic Outlook

The probability of the U.S. avoiding an economic recession in 2024 has increased sharply in recent months, though the risk is not zero—as highlighted by the still deeply inverted U.S. Treasury yield curve. America’s unique economic resilience this year has been driven by high levels of government spending and near-shoring efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing. However, we expect these effects to fade in the first quarter of 2024, leading to a weaker economy amid relatively tight financial conditions. But we do not believe this will necessarily lead to a recession. Instead, a downturn would depend on endogenous factors, such as the possibility of renewed weakness in the U.S. banking system or the overall speed of disinflation.

Regarding the latter, we have argued since March 2023 that inflation has peaked and that slowing aggregate demand should cyclically support stronger disinflationary trends ahead. To a large extent, this has already materialized, and structural forces like artificial intelligence could bring greater automation and lower input costs. That said, demographic changes—such as baby boomers leaving the workforce—may play a balancing role. Taken together, we believe an economic slowdown and moderating price pressures should pave the way for the Federal Reserve to cut rates by mid-2024 or even earlier.

We think lower capital costs could support risk assets in the second quarter of 2024, but the first quarter may present some challenges, depending on how entrenched the Fed’s stance becomes. In such a scenario, cryptocurrencies may not be fully immune. But our economic outlook also translates into a weakening trend for the U.S. dollar next year, which would present an opportunity for crypto, as these assets are often priced in dollars. Although the correlation between changes in many macro variables and Bitcoin (and Ethereum) returns diminished last year, a conducive macro backdrop remains a core part of our overall constructive market thesis for 2024.

Reading the Regulatory Tea Leaves

In a recent institutional investor survey commissioned by Coinbase, about 59% of participants said they expect their firm’s allocation to the digital asset class to increase over the next three years, while one-third said they had already increased their allocation over the past 12 months. This confirms that cryptocurrency remains an important asset class globally with broad commercial and investor appeal. However, while many jurisdictions worldwide are taking decisive action on crypto regulation, uncertainty in the U.S. is leading to missed opportunities and an enforcement-centric approach that restricts markets. Indeed, 76% of survey respondents believe the lack of clear and sensible crypto regulation in the U.S. threatens the country’s position as a leader in financial services.

Moreover, regardless of the specific language used in 2023 guidance and other public statements, the market’s perception is that U.S. banking regulators’ stance toward the digital asset ecosystem is at best unfavorable and, some would argue, outright hostile. As a result, all but the largest and most reputable crypto companies may encounter difficulties in establishing banking relationships. Whether intentional or not, the regulatory gatekeeping established through no-action letters and other permission-seeking requirements has disincentivized banks from investing in digital asset technology or onboarding clients actively engaged in these activities.

On the positive side, we believe more U.S. lawmakers recognize the rising risk of global regulatory arbitrage, as multiple committees in the U.S. House of Representatives advanced the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act and the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) in 2023.

Additionally, the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. could expand crypto access to new classes of investors and reshape the market in unprecedented ways. Compliant ETFs may become the basis for a new set of financial instruments (e.g., loans and derivatives) that can be traded among institutional counterparties. We believe the foundation for crypto regulation will continue to be laid in 2024, leading to greater regulatory clarity in the future and more institutional participation in the space.

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Connecting the Real World: Tokenization Redux

Tokenization is a critical use case for traditional financial institutions, and we expect it to be a major part of the new crypto market cycle, as it is a key component of “updating the financial system.” This primarily involves automating workflows and removing certain intermediaries that are no longer necessary in the processes of asset issuance, trading, and record-keeping. Tokenization not only has a product-market fit well-suited for distributed ledger technology (DLT), but the current high-yield environment makes the capital efficiency it offers more important than it was two years ago. That is, for institutions, tying up capital even for a few days is much more costly in a higher rate environment than in a lower one.

During 2023, we witnessed dozens of new entrants on public permissionless networks begin offering access to tokenized U.S. Treasury exposure directly on-chain. Total assets in on-chain U.S. Treasury-like exposure increased sixfold to over $786 million as digital-native users sought yields uncorrelated with traditional crypto yield sources. Given client demand for higher-yielding products and the need for diversified return sources, we may see tokenization expand to other market instruments in 2024, including equities, private market funds, insurance, and carbon credits.

Over time, we believe more commercial and financial sectors will incorporate aspects of tokenization, though regulatory ambiguity and the complexity of managing different jurisdictions continue to pose significant challenges for market participants—along with integrating new technology into legacy processes. Due to risks associated with public networks, such as smart contract vulnerabilities, oracle manipulation, and network outages, this has so far prompted most institutions to rely on private blockchains. While private blockchains will likely continue to grow alongside public permissionless chains, this may lead to fragmented liquidity due to interoperability obstacles, making it more difficult to realize the full benefits of tokenization.

An important theme to watch around tokenization is the regulatory progress made in jurisdictions like Singapore, the EU, and the UK. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has sponsored “Project Guardian,” which has developed dozens of proof-of-concept tokenization projects on both public and private blockchains by global tier-one financial institutions. The EU DLT Pilot Regime establishes a framework that allows multilateral trading facilities to use blockchain for trade execution and settlement instead of going through central securities depositories. The UK has also launched a pilot regime seeking a more advanced framework for issuing tokenized assets on public networks.

While many are now looking for possible commercialization of “proofs-of-concept,” we still expect full-scale implementation to proceed over multiple years, as this theme requires regulatory coordination, advances in on-chain identity solutions, and critical infrastructure scaling within major institutions.

Can We Play the Game?

After a sharp decline in trading activity in the early phases of the recent crypto winter, interest in web3 gaming rekindled in the second half of 2023. Currently, the space is largely focused on attracting the attention of mainstream gamers beyond the “crypto-first” communities. Overall, the gaming industry’s total addressable market is currently around $250 billion and is expected to grow to $390 billion over the next five years. However, although the investment opportunity may be substantial, users have broadly rejected existing web3 “play-to-earn” models, epitomized by early projects like Axie Infinity. In fact, such models may have led to greater skepticism toward web3 integration among many mainstream gamers.

This has prompted more experimentation from developers trying to fuse the network effects of high-quality AAA games with sustainable financialization mechanisms. For example, gaming studios have considered minting web3 primitives like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be used, transferred, or sold in-game or on designated marketplaces. However, surveys indicate that the vast majority of gamers dislike NFTs, largely reflecting their rejection of the “play-to-earn” or “pay-to-play” ethos. Meanwhile, for the gaming industry, the value-add of leveraging web3 architecture lies in its promise to improve user acquisition and retention, though this remains an unproven thesis so far. As the game development process for many projects reaches the standard 2–3 year mark (following substantial fundraising in 2021–2022), we think some web3 games likely to be released in 2024 may soon provide the statistics and data needed to better evaluate the sector.

Building a Decentralized Future

A major theme for 2024 (and likely longer, depending on development timeframes) is the decentralization of real-world resources. We are particularly focused on the related concepts of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and decentralized computing (DeComp). Both DePIN and DeComp leverage token incentives to drive the creation and consumption of resources for real-world constructs. In the case of DePIN, these projects rely on creating economic models that help incentivize participants to build physical infrastructure—from energy and telecom networks to data storage and mobility sensors—that is not controlled by large companies or centralized entities. Specific examples include Akash, Helium, Hivemapper, and Render.

DeComp is a specific extension of DePIN that relies on distributed computer networks to fulfill specific tasks. This concept has been rejuvenated with the mainstream adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI). The computational cost of training AI models can be high, and the industry is exploring whether there is an opportunity to adopt decentralized solutions to alleviate this problem. It is still unclear whether expressing AI themes in blockchain is feasible, but the sector is growing. For example, an independent but related field of research called zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML) focuses on privacy and promises to revolutionize how AI systems handle sensitive information. ZKML could enable large language models to learn from a set of private data without directly accessing that data.

DePIN represents a powerful real-world use case for blockchain technology with the potential to disrupt existing paradigms, but it remains relatively immature and faces many obstacles. These include high initial expenditure, technical complexity, quality control, and economies of scale. Moreover, many DePIN projects have been focused on how to incentivize participants to supply the necessary hardware for these projects, but only a few have begun to address the financialization models that drive demand. Although the value of DePIN may become apparent earlier, realizing its benefits could still take years. Therefore, we believe market participants will need to take a long-term view to invest in the sector.

Decentralized Identity

Privacy is a new frontier for blockchain developers, who are leveraging innovations like zero-knowledge (ZK) fraud proofs and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to perform computations on user data while keeping it encrypted. The applications are vast, particularly as they relate to decentralized identity—which describes an end-state where users have full control and ownership over their personal data. For example, this could enable healthcare research organizations to analyze patient data, helping them discover new trends or patterns for specific diseases without exposing any patient’s sensitive health information. However, to achieve this, we believe individuals need to control their own identity data—a departure from the status quo where this information is housed on servers owned by many different centralized entities.

To be sure, we are still in the early stages of addressing this problem. But ZK systems and FHE, once considered purely theoretical concepts, have seen more experimental implementations within the crypto industry recently. Over the next few years, we expect greater progress in this area, which could bring us closer to end-to-end encryption in web3 applications and networks. If so, then we believe decentralized identity may have strong product-market fit in the future.

The Future of Blockchain: Better User Experience

A major theme emerging from the recent bear market cycle is the focus on making crypto more user-friendly and easier to use. The additional responsibility of managing cryptocurrencies and all that entails—wallets, private keys, gas fees, etc.—is not for everyone, making it difficult for the industry to mature unless it can overcome some key user experience-related challenges. Progress around account abstraction appears to be yielding meaningful results in this regard. The concept of account abstraction dates back to at least 2016 and refers to the idea of treating externally owned accounts (like wallets) and smart contract accounts similarly, thereby streamlining the user experience. With the introduction of the ERC-4337 standard, Ethereum enabled advanced account abstraction in March 2023, opening new opportunities for users.

For example, in the case of Ethereum, it could allow application owners to act as “payers” and cover users’ gas fees, or enable users to fund transactions using non-ETH tokens. This capability is particularly important for institutional entities that do not want to hold gas tokens on their balance sheets due to price volatility or other reasons. This was highlighted in J.P. Morgan’s proof-of-concept report as part of Project Guardian, where all gas fee payments were handled through Biconomy’s Paymaster service.

Since the Dencun upgrade is expected to reduce rollup transaction fees by 2–10x, we think more decentralized applications (dapps) may pursue a “gasless transactions” path, effectively allowing users to focus solely on high-level interactions. This could also facilitate the development of new non-financial use cases. Account abstraction could also enable robust wallet recovery mechanisms to create fail-safes against simple human errors, such as losing private keys. The goal is to attract new users to the crypto ecosystem and encourage existing users to become more active participants.

Validator Middleware and Customizability

Developments like restaking and distributed validator technology (DVT) enable validators to customize key parameters in new ways to better adapt to changing economic conditions, network demands, and other preferences over time. From an innovation perspective, the growth of validator middleware solutions was a major theme in 2023, but we believe their full potential in enhancing customizability and unlocking new business models has yet to be fully realized.

In the case of restaking, currently pioneered by EigenLayer, this could be a way for validators to secure data availability layers, oracles, sequencers, consensus networks, and other services on Ethereum. The potential rewards from this process could provide validators with new revenue streams in the form of “security-as-a-service.” EigenLayer officially launched the first phase on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023 and will begin registering active validation services (AVS) for operators in 2024, after which restakers will be able to delegate their staked positions to these operators. We believe these developments are worth watching to see what percentage of staked ETH will be allocated to additional security provisions once EigenLayer is fully open to the public.

Meanwhile, distributed validator technology (DVT) for proof-of-stake networks can offer stakeholders more design choices in setting up and managing validator operations. DVT distributes the duties (and private keys) of a single validator across multiple node operators, thereby limiting single points of failure. This can reduce the risk of significant penalties and enhance security, as the compromise of a single node operator does not lead to the entire validator being compromised. Moreover, for individual stakers, DVT enables participants to run validators and earn rewards without having to put up as much collateral (assuming they collaborate with others through platforms like Obol, SSV Network, or Diva Protocol to meet staking thresholds), thus lowering the barrier to entry and promoting greater decentralization. As a result, we may see DVT enable validators to distribute geographically to mitigate liveness and slashing risks.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What were the main drivers of the crypto market recovery in 2023?
The recovery was driven by a combination of factors, including macroeconomic events like the U.S. regional banking crisis, which highlighted Bitcoin's safe-haven attributes. Additionally, institutional interest grew significantly with applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs by major financial institutions, signaling broader acceptance and potential regulatory clarity ahead.

How might the approval of a U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF impact the market?
Approval could open the doors for a new class of investors, including those who prefer traditional investment vehicles. It may also lead to the development of more sophisticated financial products like derivatives and loans based on these ETFs, improving overall market liquidity and price discovery mechanisms.

What is tokenization, and why is it important for traditional finance?
Tokenization involves representing real-world assets as digital tokens on a blockchain. It can automate workflows, reduce intermediaries, and enhance capital efficiency—especially important in a higher interest rate environment. This innovation is attracting traditional finance players seeking to modernize legacy systems.

What are the key challenges for web3 gaming adoption?
Mainstream gamers have been skeptical of existing "play-to-earn" models, often due to their association with speculative financialization. Overcoming this requires delivering high-quality gaming experiences that prioritize fun and engagement over purely financial incentives, while seamlessly integrating web3 elements.

How do decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) work?
DePIN projects use token incentives to encourage participants to build and maintain physical infrastructure—like wireless networks or data storage—without centralized control. This approach aims to create more open, competitive markets for essential services, though it faces hurdles in initial funding and technical complexity.

What improvements does account abstraction bring to blockchain usability?
Account abstraction allows for features like gasless transactions, where dapps cover fees, and the ability to pay costs with tokens other than the native blockchain currency. It also enables better wallet recovery options, making crypto more accessible and user-friendly for a broader audience.