2024 Crypto Technology Development Forecast: Enterprise Adoption, Modular Technologies, and More Will Become Mainstream
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
2024 Crypto Technology Development Forecast: Enterprise Adoption, Modular Technologies, and More Will Become Mainstream
These predictions are as reliable as any others and are equally sophisticated in terms of technical content.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Bradley Keoun
Translated by Luccy, Sharon, BlockBeats
Editor's Note:
Bradley Keoun is the Managing Editor of Technology & Protocols at CoinDesk, overseeing a team of reporters covering blockchain technology and previously managing the global cryptocurrency markets team.
Bradley has compiled predictions for blockchain developments in 2024 from 10 experts including Ripple, Coinbase, a16z, and Starknet. This article is part of CoinDesk’s “Crypto 2024” forecast series and the latest edition of The Protocol. The original translation follows:
Many blockchain developers may feel they are at the peak of building future financial and commercial infrastructure—an almost revolutionary moment. Based on what we’ve seen and reported, they’re not wrong. Or at least, innovation and new developments in the blockchain space rarely pause, except during periods that look eerily similar to each other.
This year’s downturn in the crypto market hasn’t offered much breathing room—constant announcements, product launches, integrations, partnerships, collaborations, fundraising, rollouts, deployments, migrations, and transitions keep coming. There’s so much change and information, highly technical and complex, that keeping up can be extremely difficult, let alone staying ahead. Imagine navigating through a dense asteroid belt while simultaneously playing a game of focus against individual asteroids. Pattern recognition might be your only hope.
Experts broadly anticipated several key trends in 2023, but many developments were still unforeseen. Frankly, no one truly knows where all this is heading. For 2024, we’ve selected 10 predictions from blockchain technology experts. These forecasts are as reliable as any others—and highly technical.
Blockchain Interoperability
David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple Labs: "Advancements in blockchain interoperability protocols will drive a major shift by 2024 and beyond, breaking down existing silos between different blockchains. This transformation will enable various blockchain platforms to interact seamlessly through shared data and value transfers, creating a unified and more efficient blockchain ecosystem. Interoperability protocols will play a crucial role in this evolution by fostering innovation and enabling new applications and use cases in DeFi."
Bitcoin Transaction Fees
David Duong, Head of Institutional Research at Coinbase: "With the fixed block reward for miners decreasing, increasing the variable block reward—i.e., transaction fees—will become increasingly important. The core Bitcoin protocol remains largely stable; the only significant protocol upgrade in the past five years was Taproot in November 2021, at least in terms of changes requiring soft forks. Therefore, we believe catalysts will come from technological innovations primarily within the framework of existing network protocols—such as increased use of blob data (like Ordinals and Atomics), Layer-2 solutions built on Bitcoin (like the Lightning Network), or general-purpose smart contract environments such as future implementations of Rootstock, Stacks, RGB, or BitVM."
Modularity
Abdelhamid Bakhta, Ecosystem Lead at Starknet and core Ethereum developer: "We’re also seeing the consolidation of modular theory, with an increasing number of hybrid solutions entering the market—such as Ethereum rollups using Celestia as a data availability layer. At the same time, we see blockchains like Solana continuing down their monolithic path and rejecting Layer-2 adoption, arguing that L2s fragment liquidity and harm user experience. It will be interesting to observe how these two narratives evolve in 2024, especially as some Ethereum rollups begin exploring the use of the Solana Virtual Machine."
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Sam Ragsdale, Investment Engineer at a16z: "SNARKs allow the creation of cryptographically verifiable 'receipts' for computational work, provided by untrusted 'provers.' In the past, generating such a receipt cost roughly 10^9 times more than the original computation; recent advances are reducing this ratio to around 10^6. As a result, SNARKs will become feasible in scenarios where the initial computation provider can bear a 10^6 overhead, but clients cannot re-execute or store the original data. The resulting use cases are numerous: edge devices in IoT can verify firmware updates; media editing software can embed provenance and transformation data; remixed memes could automatically credit their source. LLM inference could include authenticity metadata. We could have self-verifying IRS forms, tamper-proof bank audits, and many consumer-beneficial applications."
Key Management / User Interface
Friederike Ernst, Co-founder of Gnosis and Gnosis Pay: "The emergence of account abstraction means we’ll soon overcome the technical hurdles of self-custody. 2024 will be the year mnemonic phrases finally become a thing of the past for most users. The idea that securing assets hinges on possessing a set of 12 words—never lost, never accessible to others—is outdated and has significantly hindered real-world user adoption. Blockchain is poised to fulfill the inclusive finance promise that has been central to our values since the beginning."
Censorship
Ryan Selkis, Founder and CEO of Messari: "Centralization concerns boil down to two core questions: Does a centralized vector create network performance issues, putting applications at risk of disruption? And does centralization create censorship risks? The separation of block building, relaying, and validation in Ethereum makes it possible to clearly delineate censorship risks across three distinct layers of the Ethereum transaction stack—an interesting development. After the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash addresses last summer, major Ethereum relays began censoring transactions. This issue only started to ease once Flashbots open-sourced its dominant relay, allowing permissionless relays like Ultra Sound, Agnostic, and bloXroute to become more competitive. Today, it’s block builders who are increasingly engaging in transaction censorship. I expect some of the biggest breakthroughs in 2024 to emerge in areas like mempool encryption, which could protect transactions from potential censors before they’re included in a block."
Security / Privacy
Ramani Ramachandran, CEO of Router Protocol: "In 2023, the crypto space saw numerous hacks and fraud incidents, including those affecting Euler Finance and Angle Protocol. We will see blockchain protocols develop more robust security solutions and place greater emphasis on privacy."
Enterprise Crypto
Vanessa Pestritto, Partnerships Program Director at Agoric OpCo (a JavaScript-native smart contract platform and proof-of-stake blockchain): "Networks and development platforms should prepare to welcome builders from enterprises and startups, as well as independent developers. Protocol teams must be ready to deliver user experiences that integrate into the native digital lives of millions of end users. Larger companies are moving beyond viewing crypto merely as an asset class, instead treating it as a product and tool for user engagement. The crypto industry needs to expand its reach and usher in the next wave of on-chain activity."
L2 Liquidity
CCData Outlook Report (formerly CryptoCompare), a digital asset data and analytics firm: "Mid-year, activity on L2 chains remained relatively flat, with most liquidity still concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet. As a result, DeFi protocols residing on L2 chains experienced liquidity outflows for much of the year. However, as gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet rise with increased activity, a portion of new capital will flow into L2 chains next year, making them their new home."
(Alternate or Simultaneous) L2 Consolidation
Mathew Sigel, Head of Digital Asset Research at VanEck: "Ethereum will implement EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding), which will reduce transaction fees and improve scalability for L2 chains such as Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Within a year of the upgrade, Ethereum’s L2 landscape will consolidate into two or three dominant players in terms of value and usage."
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
CoinDesk
