- Academic Nature of L2 Development: Most of the work surrounding Layer 2 feels akin to academic endeavors. The problems are complex and intricate, and the timeline for implementing solutions seems almost implausibly long-term. I wouldn’t be surprised if alternative, more immediate solutions emerge before all of Ethereum’s scalability plans come to fruition.
- Dependency on Grants and VC Funds: The ecosystem largely relies on grants from organizations like the Ethereum Foundation or venture capital funds awaiting their token allocations. It’s unclear how most projects could generate value beyond token speculation to sustain themselves.
- Unclear Value Proposition: Many projects lack a clear value proposition. While some are crucial for infrastructure development, something valuable needs to be built on top of this infrastructure. Most existing projects, stripped of their speculative layer, offer limited utility.
- DeFi’s Risk Factor: DeFi attracts smaller players with the promise of potentially high returns but seems less appealing for larger, institutional investors due to overlapping risks.
- Ethereum’s Promising Outlook: Despite scalability issues and other challenges, Ethereum appears to be the most promising and future-oriented blockchain ecosystem. It has a well-thought-out plan, a growing community, some scale, and seems to be bulletproof.
- Web3 Realism: The Web3 world is gradually coming to terms with the fact that some compromises will be necessary, and not all ideals can be achieved, at least not in the short to medium term.
- The Limits of Education: Advocating for more education is somewhat futile. Education won’t convince users to adopt solutions they don’t find valuable. It can only help when there’s a barrier to entry for a genuinely useful solution.
- Blockchain as a Commodity: If all goes well, most blockchain technologies will become commodities, serving as layers for building further solutions. Technical details and infrastructure will then only concern developers.
- The Mobile Gap in Web3: One significant barrier to Web3 adoption is its limited use on mobile platforms.
Conclusion
These are my observations as of now. Given that I’m not deeply involved in the Web3 world, it’s quite possible that my views will change or that I may get some things wrong. But for the moment, these are the issues and trends that have caught my attention.