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During the bull market, everyone said “We’re all gonna make it!”

But, are we?

Is web3 going to go mainstream?

Will DeFi protocols replace centralized financial (CeFi) institutions?

Are NFTs going to redefine global cultures?

Will DAOs change the future of work?

Is Dogecoin (DOGE) going to flip Bitcoin (BTC)?

These are the million-dollar (more like trillion-dollar) questions we’re all trying to answer.

I strongly believe the answer to all (but one) is “Yes“.

Why?

Products.

In the current bear market, it’s much harder to believe WAGMI.

That’s completely understandable.

• Falling crypto asset prices.

• The collapse of $UST, $LUNA, and the entire Terra ecosystem.

• Multiple CeFi heavyweights (e.g. 3AC, Celsius, Voyager, etc) going bankrupt.

Even crypto’s biggest believers would be forgiven for being a little bearish.

However, there are a lot of reasons to still believe WAGMI.

Amidst the carnage in CeFi, DeFi protocols held up just fine and proved the essence of decentralized and trustless financial services.

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on web3 these past few months.

For me, products are our best chance of realizing web3’s full potential.

Not hype. Not tokens (even the good ones). Not speculation.

Just plain and simple products.

Time will tell though.

What do I mean by “WAGMI with Products”?

Put simply, we’re all gonna make it with products.

Products solve problems.

There’s no better way to make it than by solving problems.

Web1 made it with products like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo.

Web2 made it with products like Twitter, Facebook, and Uber.

What do all these products have in common?

They all solved big and painful problems for billions of users.

In the same vein, web3 will make it with products like —, —, and —.

It’s hard to predict which products will become the Google, Amazon, or Facebook of web3.

So I won’t try to.

Instead, I’ll list below some of the products that I believe will help web3 to make it.

• Aave — Aave is a decentralized protocol that enables non-custodial lending and borrowing on Ethereum and other EVM-compatible blockchains. Over $11B of liquidity is currently locked in the Aave Protocol.

• Lido — Lido is the biggest liquid staking protocol for Proof-of-Stake (PoS) assets like Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), and Polygon (MATIC). It currently has over $7B worth of staked tokens.

• Uniswap — Uniswap is the biggest decentralized exchange. The stats speak for themselves with over $1T in trading volume across over 105M trades.

• Synthetix — Synthetix is a derivatives protocol that enables the creation of synthetic assets (or Synths) representing real-world assets like stocks, fiat currencies, and commodities, on the blockchain.

• Hashflow — Hashflow is a cross-chain trading protocol that enables MEV-protected trades across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and other EVM networks. All-time trade volume is over $8B.

• Compound — The Compound Protocol, similar to Aave, is a lending and borrowing protocol on Ethereum with over $3B worth of assets.

• Goldfinch — Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol that provides crypto loans to real-world businesses in countries like Nigeria, Mexico, and India.

• Index Coop — Index Coop creates and manages crypto index products like the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI). They currently have about $90M of assets under management (AUM).

• Unstoppable Domains — Unstoppable Domains is a blockchain naming service that provides NFT domains with no renewal fees. Instead of trying to remember long crypto addresses, you can easily send assets to names like Alice.crypto or Bob.nft. To date, over 2.4M domains have been minted.

• Ethereum Name Service (ENS) — Similar to Unstoppable Domains, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) provides decentralized naming for crypto wallets, websites, etc. So far, 1.67M+ .eth domains have been registered by over 480K people.

• Zora — Zora is an open-source NFT marketplace protocol that enables anyone to buy and sell ERC-721 NFTs on Ethereum in a permission-less way. Zora V3 has been integrated by multiple projects including Catalog, Glass, and Spores.

• Sound.xyz — Sound is a Music NFT marketplace and community building web3 tools for artists. To date, over $3M has been earned by artists selling NFTs on Sound including Snoop Dogg, Kygo, and Vic Mensa.

• Arpeggi Labs — Arpeggi Labs is an on-chain music production protocol with an in-browser DAW that enables anyone to create and remix songs and publish them as NFTs on Ethereum in one click. Being a former music producer, it’s one of my favs.

• GALLERY — Gallery is a social app that enables NFT collectors to express their taste in NFTs through curated galleries and connect with other collectors.

• OpenSea — Probably the most popular web3 product, OpenSea is the biggest NFT marketplace in the world with over 1M users and $20B+ in total trading volume.

• PartyBid — PartyBid enables anyone to start a “Party” with other investors to bid on or purchase any NFT on Ethereum. So far, over 30K users have contributed 8,259.93 ETH (~$14,800,000) to over 5,000 parties.

• Glass Protocol — Glass is a protocol that enables creators to upload and sell videos as NFTs. Users can mint either 1/1 tokens or limited-edition collections. Grammy Award-winning producer Timbaland recently dropped a music video on the platform.

• Spores — The Spores app, built on Zora, enables you to infinitely remix and remake any music NFT. It’s also a music player so you can simply chill and listen to your favorite web3 songs.

• Royal — Royal is a music investment app that enables fans to own a share of their favorite songs by purchasing NFTs which entitle them to streaming royalty rights. Nas, 3LAU, Big Boi, and Diplo have all released NFTs on the growing platform.

• Snapshot — Snapshot is a governance platform that enables over 8,000 communities and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to create and vote on proposals off-chain.

• Syndicate — Syndicate is a protocol on Ethereum and Polygon that enables anyone to create investment clubs to invest in on-chain (e.g. ERC-20 tokens and NFTs) and off-chain (e.g. startup equity) assets. Since launching early this year, over 20,000 clubs have been created on the platform.

• Prysm — Similar to Syndicate, Prysm allows anybody with an Ethereum wallet to create an investment “Squad”. With Squads, a group of friends can pool capital together to invest and collect blue-chip NFTs that may have been too expensive for individual members.

• DeepDAO — DeepDAO is a platform that provides treasury, governance, and membership analytics on over 2,000 DAOs including Aave, Uniswap, Decentraland, ENS, and Lido.

• Mirror (of course!) — Mirror is a decentralized publishing protocol that enables anyone to write and publish articles for free. Every article on Mirror can be collected as NFTs (including this one) and readers can subscribe to publications with their wallets to receive email notifications.

• USD Coin (USDC) — USDC, issued by Circle, is the second largest stablecoin in the world with a market cap of about $54B, 1.5M holders, and over 5 trillion on-chain transactions. It’s also the most widely used stablecoin in DeFi applications.

• Zapper — Zapper is a web3 explorer that enables you to discover, use, and track DeFi apps, NFTs, and DAOs across multiple blockchains. You can also track all your wallets on the supported networks and follow other popular accounts like vitalik.eth.

• Lens Protocol — Lens Protocol is building a decentralized social graph to replace centralized social networks like Twitter and Facebook. With Lens, every profile is a user-owned NFT that can be used across multiple applications built on top of the protocol.

• Gnosis Safe — Gnosis Safe is the leading multi-signature wallet and treasury management solution for web3. With Safes, individuals and organizations have been able to securely custody $40B+ worth of assets including ETH, ERC-20 tokens, and NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes (BAYC).

• Gitcoin — Gitcoin is a community-driven platform where open-source web3 projects and digital public goods are funded. $60M+ in funding. 312K monthly active developers. Over 2,800 projects.

• thirdweb — Thirdweb provides a suite of free products (SDKs, dashboards, etc) that make it easy to build web3 apps like marketplaces, NFTs, and tokens on multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

• DeFi Llama — DeFi Llama is a free DeFi analytics platform that provides real-time data on DeFi TVL (i.e. assets under management), Yield, Stablecoins, etc.

• Nansen — Nansen is a leading crypto analytics platform with real-time insights on ERC-20 tokens, NFT collections, DEX trades, profitable wallets, and so on. Over 100,000 investors use Nansen to separate signal from noise in web3.

• RabbitHole — RabbitHole is a learn-to-earn platform that makes it easy for new users to learn and earn crypto by using the best web3 products.

I’ll stop here for now.

33 amazing web3 products providing real value to users today.

The list is endless.

Builders are always building.

Sadly, during bull markets, most of them are sidelined in favor of overhyped shit coins and NFT projects.

I’m not entirely innocent though.

I doubt if anyone is.

We’re probably all guilty of not focusing on products as much as we should.

By the next bull run, I hope we’ll collectively be more focused on products and the problems they solve.

That’s how we’ll onboard billions of users to web3 and ultimately make it.

I'm gonna make it.

You're gonna make it.

Web3 is gonna make it.

DeFi is gonna make it.

NFTs are gonna make it.

DAOs are gonna make it

We're all gonna make it.

With products.

Can I get a WAGMI?

WAGMI. 🚀