In 2024, the Web3 industry is expected to become more robust, with increased Bitcoin involvement, mergers, acquisitions, and RWA tokens.
Blockchain investment and advisory firm The Spartan Group has highlighted a few exciting things in the Web3 space that are expected in 2024. In a recent Medium publication, the company revealed predictions made by several stakeholders connected to the Spartan Group, each one offering their thoughts on blockchain and Web3 next year.
According to Spartan Capital’s co-founder, partner, and CIO Kelvin Koh, 2024 will be an exciting year for AAA-quality Web3 games. Koh believes there will be several game launches next year, many of which will attract players in their millions. Koh also believes that the success of these games will “demonstrate why Web3 games are the logical next evolution to existing Web2 games.”
Web3 to Introduce More Bitcoin Involvement, RWA Tokenization and M&A in 2024
Spartan Advisory’s co-founder and partner, Melody He, has more expectations for next year, mostly around Bitcoin and consumer apps. He expects more power on the Bitcoin blockchain and improved consumer apps that integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Another expectation from He is a major focus on crypto from Asian markets. This includes everything from basic crypto trading to institutional and enterprise adoption.
For Spartan Group Associate Yan Ma, the highlight for Web3 in 2024 will be the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). This may also extend to minting and securing these tokens on the Bitcoin network. Ma is also quite bullish on Bitcoin, expecting more layer-2 (L2) solutions to help Bitcoin with interoperability and scalability. According to Ma, this will assist with “unlocking $850B+ [in] unproductive BTC capital and paving the way for institutional adoption.”
Away from Bitcoin into the broader blockchain is Ma’s optimism about Web3 and decentralized science (DeSci). According to Ma, “DeSci [will be] getting more traction as a strong use case of Blockchain – using Web3 technology to establish a secure, lasting record of scientific contributions that enables fair credit allocation, simplifies transactions, allows worldwide resource sharing, and overcomes economic barriers.”
Casper B Johansen, another Spartan Advisory co-founder and Partner, believes that the Web3 industry will see a lot of growth and consolidation, reflected by mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Johansen thinks this will happen in 3 ways: local consolidation among competitors, regional consolidation among players in neighboring markets, and strategic cross-continent consolidation among major players. The M$A consolidation will also spread to Web3 sectors like staking, payments, data and analytics, prime brokerage, and custody.
Hardware, Software, AI and Blockchain Union
2024 is also likely to come with some cohesion between hardware and Web3-related software. Spartan Labs’ Chief Creative Officer Adrian Lai expects more “crypto sparks,” resulting in a “robust economy around Autonomous Onchain Agents.” Lai’s expectations stem from the introduction of concepts like NFT applications, Networked Playable Characters, and Crypto AI Agents, in 2023. Lai also believes there will be a “corresponding wave of virtual goods and experiences” stemming from the expected Apple Vision Pro.
According to Spartan Labs CTO Audrey Taylor-Akwenye, another exciting prediction is the union between blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI).
“We have research and new use cases around Zero Knowledge and Machine Learning (ZKML). We have games allowing you to train AI agents using ERC6551 (Parallel). I believe over the next year, we will see more ways AI can be used to enhance the user experience and efficiency of Web3 as well as more blockchain tech being used as guardrails and transparency layers for AI,” said Audrey.
