On Wesnesday (5 January 2022), Paul Brody, Leader of Blockchain Technology at EY, which is one of the largest professional services networks in the world, explained why he believes that “2022 is all about Ethereum.”
According to his EY bio, Brody “drives EY initiatives and investments in blockchain technology across consulting, audit and tax business lines.” He has “held a number of leadership positions in the areas of internet of things, supply chain and operations and business strategy, working with many client organizations.”
Brody’s comments were made in an op-ed piece for Coindesk that was published yesterday.
Brody believes that “just about everything innovative and important happening in the world of blockchain right now is happening in the Ethereum ecosystem” and that there are “three key trends driving growth in the Ethereum ecosystem in the coming year.”
First, he argues that “decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) represent the future of how communities, missions and enterprises are converging in a single format” and that DAOs “have been around for a while,” 2022 is “the year in which they start to take center stage as a preferred format for building new entities.”
Second, he thinks that “decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem will continue to integrate with mainstream finance” and he predicts that “we will see the emergence of some decentralized identity management components that add a layer of know your customer (KYC) to DeFi, as providers work to meet regulatory requirements without adding centralization.”
Third, he believes that by the end of this year Ethereum will “primarily be a blockchain that is used for other blockchains (layer 2 networks) to interact with each other.”
So, which projects will be this year’s winners?
According to Brody, “the first big winner is the Ethereum ecosystem itself.” Although we don’t know which Ethereum layer 2 solution will be the most successful, the Ethereum ecosystem will be a winner any case since “the absolute dominance of Ethereum in both developer skills and participating capital is hard to argue” with and “it is too late for other platforms to dethrone the king.”
The second big winner wil be “the Ethereum-ecosystem native market leaders, especially in DeFi and DAOs, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs),” he says.
As for the third big winner, perhaps rather surprisingly, Brody thinks this will be “regulators” since “the intense regulatory focus on stablecoins and DeFi signals what are likely to be very positive changes in the year ahead.”
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
IMAGE CREDIT
Featured Image by “elifxlite” via Pixabay
