There are three layers: core loop, retention, and SuperFan.

The core loop is what makes the game “fun”. The retention layer is what keeps players playing. The SuperFan is the…

Throughout this progression we see the rise and fall of various projects taking on an ever-expanding set of applications for blockchain technology, making bigger strides at driving crypto into mainstream adoption.

“What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” — Satoshi Nakamoto on the Bitcoin whitepaper

Satoshi Nakamoto first presented Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system in the midst of the financial crisis. The original whitepaper envisions a decentralized payment system powered by proof-of-work.

This idea of using blockchain for currencies was by and large the main use-case for crypto in its early days. The trend accelerated with the creation of the Silk Road marketplace, where people could then buy goods online anonymously.

This was before people learned that the blockchain’s transparency and immutability meant it would leave a trace of where this digital cash was being spent. However, this was not the main reason for the demise of the “crypto as in cryptocurrency” era.

Instead, it had to do with the core attributes of a currency: a medium of exchange, unit of account and a store of value.

With Bitcoin and Bitcoin forks being volatile in price, it served neither as a proper medium of exchange or unit of account. In order to be a medium of exchange, a currency should be widely accepted (typically with low transaction costs). And to be a unit of account, it should be relatively stable in value. Bitcoin fails at these two, but shows potential as a store of value.

For an asset to be considered a store of value, it must retain its worth or appreciate over long periods of time. Historically, this has been the case for Bitcoin despite its volatility. Moreover, widespread belief that something will hold its value creates reflexive properties resulting in it actually sustaining it.

This is why long-term investors carry the baton for the store of value use-case.

Hodlers, or addresses that have been holding for over a year, in aggregate increase their balance during bear markets. Moreover, once they begin accumulating, they historically have not diminished their balances significantly until after Bitcoin sets new highs.

This conviction by long-term investors sets the base for Bitcoin as a store of value, as consensus among the majority of holders (58% of addresses have been holding over a year) is presumably that it will sustain or gain in value or else they would not be growing their positions.

While other cryptocurrencies from this era are still around such as Litecoin or Dash, their use-case as a store of value has been limited to a small audience. Like Bitcoin, these assets are distributed as mining rewards and have similar accumulation patterns where long-term holders increase their balance progressively over time.

That being said, for the most part these have not achieved widespread adoption and have vastly underperformed Bitcoin. Plus, their inherent characteristics also make them fail as a medium of exchange or unit of account. Likely for these reasons, people started exploring ideas of expanding crypto beyond currency, leading to the next era of sectors and use-cases.

“Satoshi’s blockchain was the first credible decentralized solution. And now, attention is rapidly starting to shift toward the second part of Bitcoin’s technology, and how the blockchain concept can be used for more than just money.” — Vitalik Buterin on the Ethereum whitepaper

Though there were certain blockchains Namecoin attempting use-cases other than money (decentralized domain names in their case), at the time there was not a generalizable platform where multiple different applications could be deployed.

Vitalik first announced Ethereum in 2014, proposing it would be the infrastructure for decentralized applications to be built on top of. It then conducted the first ICO to fund the development of the platform, which would launch the following year.

Then people began tinkering with smart contract-powered applications, with The DAO being the first to gain traction. As a decentralized venture capital fund, The DAO raised 11.5 million ETH in 2016. While it ended up failing, it further validated the use for distributed crowdfunding that Ethereum had previously pioneered.

This led to the ICO mania, where thousands of teams raised capital from the crowd, promising to take over a myriad of industries.

Most ICOs turned out to be empty promises. However, they served to highlight the potential of the blockchain to coordinate capital and resources on a global scale.

The billions of dollars raised, mainly on Ethereum, led to the first signs of product-market-fit for smart contract platforms. This is further evidenced by users paying over $20 million in fees per week on Ethereum during the ICO mania, a figure that felt significant at the moment but is an almost negligible amount in the 2020s.

Similarly, the number of addresses holding Ether rapidly increased, growing from 400k in January 2017 to 8 million in January 2018. This pales in comparison to the 71 million addresses with ETH in 2022, albeit at a smaller growth rate.

Beyond Ethereum, many other smart contract platforms raised capital and began development during this era. While some like EOS failed to materialize, others like Solana and Terra have grown to support a thriving ecosystem of applications.

“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome” — Charlie Munger

This brings us to the current era in crypto, where thousands of applications are actually deployed and being used across dozens of blockchains. While these applications are still far from mainstream, they have managed to attract hundreds of billions of dollars, boosted by token incentives.

The first sector to gain traction was decentralized finance (DeFi). Although early DeFi applications deployed in 2017–18, they suffered from attempting to use the same models as their centralized counterparts. For instance, EtherDelta attempted to recreate an order book on-chain but failed to effectively match orders due to the low throughput of blockchains.

Purely peer-to-peer transactions were not optimal given these technical constraints. Hence, DeFi applications shifted to the peer-to-contract model, where smart contracts would aggregate several users’ funds and automate away complexities. This model gained steam with automated market makers (AMMs) such as Uniswap and lending protocols such as MakerDAO.

Despite finding a suitable model, DeFi still lacked liquidity. Here is when ingenuity and incentives came into play. Protocol teams, starting with Synthetix, realized that they could offer token rewards in order to attract greater liquidity, which would serve their systems to operate more safely and effectively, mimicking mining rewards in proof-of-work. This is how liquidity mining came about.

Then the lending protocol Compound, launched its liquidity mining by issuing COMP to depositors and borrowers in the platform. This accelerated the amount of deposits into the protocol and others quickly followed. Within months total value locked (TVL) grew from $1 billion to $10 billion in what is commonly referred to as DeFi Summer.

DeFi’s growth continued, reaching as high as $270 billion in value locked. A major factor behind this has been that token incentives began being provided not only by the applications, but also by their underlying platforms.

Polygon first successfully bootstrapped its DeFi ecosystem on the back of issuance of its MATIC token to users of select applications. This drove users and capital en masse to try their side-chain. Although the amount of value locked in Polygon declined as incentives faded, it remained at a significantly higher level above what it was prior to the program. It also planted the seed for the seed for a broader ecosystem of applications to develop now that there were users to cater to.

Just as we saw with Compound and other DeFi protocols, once Polygon showed what could be done, other smart contract platforms followed. This accelerated the adoption of a multi-chain universe, driving valuations of smart contract platforms along with it.

Asides from DeFi, perhaps an even greater evidence of adoption has been non-fungible tokens (NFTs). With NFTs crypto reached broader cultural relevance, attracting users not interested in money or financial services.

Following the landmark Beeple $69 million sale in February 2021, NFT volumes grew exponentially as famous artists, musicians and athletes began embracing NFTs.

In the chart above, it can be observed how even in a logarithmic axis, NFTs have been on a robust up-trend. This culminated with the search term “NFT” briefly surpassing “crypto” based on Google trends.

Although NFTs are often associated with the art and collectible use-cases, they are also increasingly used in games and other applications. In fact, Axie Infinity, the original play-to-earn game, has the highest historical sales out of any NFT collection, reaching over $4 billion. While the success of these games has thus far been limited compared to console or smartphone games, they point to another sector being disrupted by crypto.

Overall, throughout the past decade we have witnessed how use-cases for crypto have expanded far past Satoshi’s original vision of Bitcoin. This has led to three different eras, each with their own winners and losers. Each time, blockchain technology has managed to attract a wider set of bright minds to invest their time and money into the space, pushing adoption to greater heights. Ultimately, this suggests that crypto, despite its short-term ebb and flows, is on track for boundless opportunity in the disruption of a multitude of sectors.

Gazing into a crystal ball I hope to see a comfortable retirement in one of the world’s most expensive cities. But what I see looks more like a future based on can and bottle collecting. Manhattan is really, really, really expensive.

I’ve dabbled in crypto tokens for a few years. I bought Bitcoin when it was cheap and sold it when it was even cheaper. I bought XRP, LTC, NBC and KGB or any tokens that had a buzz around it or sounded cool. Usually two seconds after I bought in it tanked.

After I mentioned crypto to a broke buddy in Utah last year he promptly made $11,000 on his first ever crypto investment. In Shiba-Inu for f’sake. He bought it because he likes dogs! That was the trigger for his first crypto investment. Dogs.

I hadn’t made that much money. on my canine token Dogecoin. I had to listen to him raving about how Shiba-Inu, which was then a shit-coin, was going to change the world. His good fortune only increased my FOMO.

Then I watched a YouTube crypto shill extolling StrongBlock. But I was too nervous about investing $7K, the then buy-in on 10 StrongBlock nodes. I began looking for cheaper alternatives. One of the Strongblock spruikers mentioned a DAO called Time Wonderland.

So I cashed in my Fidelity Go account that had made me about $0.63 in ten years and began day trading in DAO’s. Time Wonderland DAO, Olympus DAO, Spartacus DAO, Rome DAO. Any Tom, Dick and Hector DAO. I was in.

In the midst of this DAO frenzy I noticed a token with a funny name like PRKV mysteriously appeared in my MetaMask wallet. As I’d been handing out my wallet address willy nilly for airdrops maybe the PRKV token came from an airdrop? So I continued my DAO all day-trading.

While exchanging some USDT tokens to invest in a DAO on Zapper.fi my tokens disappeared into the ether. I clicked the verification link to see if it had gone through on etherscan.io and landed on a webpage in Cyrillic. Aaargghh! I knew I was no longer in Kansas and quickly shut down the webpage.

On Zapper I could see my USDT was in a MetaMask wallet with other crypto tokens I had bought. There was $2,300 worth of tokens in the wallet. I just couldn’t access them. How could I have misplaced $2,300 I wondered?

Thats when I discovered that far from offering any useful tech support, MetaMask was not a finished product. It was strictly an AYOR beta-test. I read stories of people losing thousands of dollars on MetaMask. I was now one of them. Then I noticed a new transaction in the missing wallet. How could that be when I couldn’t access the wallet?

It took a few days for the penny to drop that the $2,300 in the missing wallet was not mine. Only the $260 in USDT tokens that went AWOL on Zapper was mine. I came to this realization at 3 am one morning when I got up to have a pee. Phew! What a relief for both my bladder and to realize that I hadn’t lost $2,300 only $260! Only!

That page in Cyrillic! Russian hackers! I immediately moved all my tokens out of my ‘hot’ MetaMask or online wallet into my cold or offline Ledger wallet. Why had I not done this before? Why? Because I was still learning how to trade using MetaMask. I hadn’t realized I could store these uncommon DAO and other tokens in my ledger wallet until then.

So I began to search for a simpler and safer alternative to DAO trading. Just one investment instead of the multiple DAO’s. Then a light bulb went off in my bald bonce when I read about Drip.

Follow Boomtowner to see how I make out on my Drip journey.

I am part of the Cryptozoa DRIP team. We are a global community of DRIP enthusiasts who are welcoming and helpful. We converse on our own private Telegram group where we share DRIP tips, strategies, breaking news, and more. If you would like to join in the conversation, please join the Cryptozoa team by buying some DRIP using my Buddy address 0x5a037c903C875783C10C1FA7066126d4F89d4EaF. You need a buddy to start. and then head over to the Cryptozoa Telegram Gateway. Let the admins on duty know that Boomtowner sent you — then once you are onboard find me and DM me to say howdy.

What is a DAO?

Learn about Cryptocurrency

Disclaimer: This article is not to be considered investment advice. You need to do your own research before investing and only invest what you are willing to lose. We are in the infancy of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Please familiarize yourself with the risks and rewards of DeFi and being an early adopter before investing.

GameStop Chairman, Ryan Cohen, has been tapping top executives from companies of the likes of Amazon, to help turn the brick-and-mortar video game retailer into an e-commerce company. GameStop has begun asking key video game developers and publishers to list NFTs on its marketplace after it launches later this year.

GameStop has already hired over 20 people to stop its new NFT and crypto division, whose first task is building an online marketplace that will enable users to buy, sell, and trade NFTs from video games. GameStop envisions that the first NFTs trades will include avatar outfits, weapons, and other in-game items, but could easily expand as the market grows.

Throughout 2021, retail investors have been active in purchasing GameStop shares as part of the Wall Street Bets movement. It appears that GameStop may be doubling down its turnaround strategy based on these retail traders and there is typically an overlap between fans of Wall Street Bets and crypto. Personally, as a video game fan myself, I am excited to see where GameStop takes this.

Looking to Learn More

If you are looking to learn more about cryptocurrencies, check out my book ‘Introduction to Altcoins: Cryptocurrencies Beyond Bitcoin’, follow me on Twitter @hallett_drew, follow me, and check out my website for additional content and reading suggestions!

Now, as 2021 has finally come to an end, let’s take a look at one high performing token that has the potential to give investors astronomical returns in the coming years. A token that has outperformed the likes of Bitcoin, Cardano and Ethereum in 2021, can Solana’s SOL token be the safest investment strategy for the long term? Let’s take a look.

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If you had invested $1 worth of Solana’s token (SOL) at the start of 2021, you would have enjoyed a monumental return of 236x when the coin reached its all-time high just 6 months later. SOL has soared by a crazy 19,000% in under 12 months, which is enough to satisfy investors for an entire lifetime.

The token is pretty new to the crypto space, only founded as late as 2017. Providing investors with an open-sourced platform that is designed to host various decentralized and scaling applications as we see on Ethereum. After a historic rally in the summer months of June and July, Solana has corrected to $186 as of December 29 according to Coinmarketcap. But a pullback is normally a good time to invest in the token once again since it is quick to consolidate before its next breakout.

One of the biggest reasons Solana became popular was when it was termed as the ‘Ethereum killer’. Solana’s market cap is over $50 billion, making it the 5th largest cryptocurrency in the world. This is still a long way behind Ethereum’s almost half a trillion-dollar value.

But, the main reason why Solana has out-performed Ethereum throughout 2021 is due to the network services that the investors can benefit from. Solana in comparison to Ethereum provides a much faster transaction speed and a low cost. While Ethereum’s blockchain can make about 15–20 transactions a second, Solana can handle close to 75,000 a second. Solana uses smart contracts to attract developers who can create new projects and DApps on the blockchain.

Since Solana uses a Proof-of-Stake(PoS) consensus over Ethereum’s choice of Proof-of-Work, it makes the network much faster and easier to scale.

Solana’s impact on NFTs makes them a must-watch token in the coming years. NFTs have been one of the biggest growing spaces in 2021, and Solana has made $500 million off of NFT transactions in just under a year. In September alone, Solana made a record $189.4 million worth of NFT sales. While Ethereum is still the central hub for NFT marketplaces, Solana is a cheaper alternative that is growing extremely fast.

Solana’s market share is also increasing with the launch of Solanaart, which is the blockchains own NFT marketplace. One of the biggest advantages is that investors have to pay a much lower fee compared to Ethereum’s.

Finally, Solana is still a coin that has a lot more growth to be seen. It is more than 30% down from it’s all-time high and is a favourite among investors. This is the year where the token has started to become mainstream, and the future of SOL looks very bright. Within the next year.

Furthermore, reputable analysts such as the Wallet Investor are extremely bullish on SOL. The company’s 1-year forecast predicts a potential price of $548 by the end of 2022. This is a potential upside of more than 350%, which is surely not out of the question for a coin as fundamentally sound as SOL.

With Solana potentially bringing hundreds more DApps and projects to their faster and easy-to-use blockchain, this Layer-1 altcoin is going to be an interesting token to follow for 2022.

FTM Launch is a fully decentralized and permissionless crowdfunding platform launching the next generation of disruptive applications on Fantom.

Launchpads built on blockchain ecosystems are an essential part of the survival of the blockchain. Launchpads help projects reach their potential and grow from an infancy stage to product/project launch.

WeFund and FTM Launch are both top-tier launch platforms that will provide a number of benefits to each other and to their respective blockchain ecosystems.

Some of the benefits include collaborating on fundraising and incubating projects together. The project sponsor can choose which launchpad they want to fundraise on. When it’s time to move forward both parties can do so based on the rules of the platform and the desires of the hosted project.

Both communities will drive up engagement, resulting in increased interest from potential investors and then converted into an investment opportunity.

Working together will create an opportunity for both FTM Launch and WeFund to share technologies and resources in order to put their best foot forward in the marketplace.

Finally, it will draw attention from the Fantom ecosystem to the Terra ecosystem and vice versa. As blockchains develop, it makes sense to shine light wherever possible.

Ika Co-Founder and CMO Comments, “We are so proud to be a partner with FTM Launch. Together we will merge our armies to help grow and support each other.”

FTM Launch Team, “A partnership and collaboration between two solid community-focussed launchpads will not only boost synergy in the crypto space but also build strong foundations for providing innovative opportunities to both investors and developers.”

We hope that in the future the FTM Launch partnership will nurture many projects and launch them to the moon and beyond.

First Decentralized and Permissionless crowdfunding Platform launching the next generation of Disruptive Applications on Fantom.

FTM Launch aims to provide a realistic, transparent, and fair launch platform for projects looking to launch on Fantom. We prioritize our community and the public by our fair distribution model and also reward long-term holders.

Website:

https://www.ftmlaunch.com/

Social Media Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/FTMlaunch

Telegram: https://t.me/FTMlaunchchat

Email: contact@ftmlaunch.com

WeFund is a cross-chain, decentralized incubator crowdfunding platform for the crypto-startup project industry and beyond implemented for a real-life use case. The vision of WeFund is to become the connector of the blockchain ecosystem that exists on the market.

To fulfill this vision, WeFund’s initial development stage would be in the Terra ecosystem and will develop to use additional ecosystems such as Solana, Etherium, Cardano, etc. in the near future.

Website:

https://wefund.app/

Social Media Links:

Twitter https://twitter.com/WeFund_Official

Telegram — https://t.me/talkwithwefundhttps://t.me/wefundofficial

Email: info@wefund.app