It's the first week of 2024, so, yeah, you're seeing an awful lot of predictions on where crypto goes this year. Of course, most of these calls end up being way off, but in the heat of a bull market, it's just too much fun to place bets, and I can't resist making my own calls.
So, here are my top five predictions for crypto in 2024! 👇👇👇
1️⃣ EigenLayer passes $10B in TVL
My first prediction is that the heat around EigenLayer will continue to be up-only for the entire year of 2024. I've been beating this drum repeatedly, and as I'm an advisor to the project (Bankless Disclosures) maybe you'll shrug off my enthusiasm, but you shouldn't.
EigenLayer mainnet should launch in Q2 or Q3 of 2024, with multiple billions of dollars worth of ETH deposited into its staking contracts. Then, AVS services will start to roll out and begin to add yield to ETH. The additional ETH yields will be marginal at first, but they too will be slowly up only for the first 24 months of EigenLayer's life. Sub-prediction: If EigenLayer airdrops its token in 2024, it will be the largest airdrop of all-time in terms of the amount of capital airdropped to users.
2️⃣ 1 Million ETH is burnt
Ethereum has burnt 335,000 ETH in the 461 days since the merge.
In 2024, Ethereum will burn 1 million ETH. We simply haven't seen the full effects of Proof of Stake + EIP1559 during the heat of a bull market. The furnace will be hot.
3️⃣ Over $5 Billion Airdropped in 2024
It's airdrop season. In 2024, I believe $5 billion worth of tokens will be put into the hands of users who were early to crypto protocols.
The airdrops will be across all the ecosystems; Solana, Ethereum, Ethereum L2s, and the newer Alt chains will attempt to leverage airdrops and incentives to attract new users.
4️⃣ ETH L2 meta shifts towards optimized VMs and parallelized EVMs
Many VM-optimized L1s are arriving on the scene in 2024. Monad and Sei, to name a few. Eclipse is bringing the SVM to Ethereum with a mainnet in 2024.
The meta around L2 VMs will shift away from the EVM and towards more execution-optimized VMs. The Ethereum community will beg Monad to pivot to being an L2, a plea which Monad will reject.
The big thing to watch? How will Arbitrum, Optimism, and other EVM chains progress in their VM optimizations, and how far will they drift away from the EVM?
5️⃣ Solana goes down
It doesn't matter how well or fast Solana can scale. If it onboards too many users too quickly, a chink in the armor will be discovered.
It won't be catastrophic (probably), but it will be humbling (hopefully). It will also be a symptom of Solana's success, not its technological shortcomings.