Last year was bullish yet volatile for apex cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). In 2021, between Jan. 1 and Nov. 10, Bitcoin swung 140% higher from the $27,700 level to reach an all-time high of almost $69,000. Ethereum began the year at just $717.10 and soared about 572% higher to reach a Nov. 10 all-time high of $4,867.81.

1. Chatterjee believes Ethereum’s scalability will improve with the arrival of Eth2 and many L2 rollups. He also expects competing L1 chains to continue growing such as Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), and new L1 chains that focus on specific markets such as social media and gaming to emerge.
2. The CPO believes significant improvements in the usability of bridges between L1 and L2 will happen this year and that as more L1 chains emerge and L2 chains grow, speed and usability will continue to improve.
3. Chatterjee sees Zero-knowledge proof technology, an alternate encryption scheme, gaining traction and believes investors and users will become more interested in ZK-rollup technology --a type of layer 2 construction that runs on top of the Ethereum blockchain to improve scalability. Chatterjee also sees new privacy-safe applications being developed.
4. Chatterjee predicts Defi protocols will become more regulated and create KYC user pools, which will play an important role in connecting users’ real identity with Defi wallet endpoints. He also sees the sector showing more acceptance of ENS type addresses.
5. He predicts an increase in institutions adopting Defi as it becomes more regulated and secure through on-chain KYC attestation. Chatterjee notes that institutions are attracted to Defi because it offers reduced costs and higher returns in comparison to traditional financial products.
6. Chatterjee predicts the emergence of Defi insurance, which will protect users from security breaches and hacks.
7. He sees NFTs continuing to grow and evolve as they begin to serve as competition to Web 2.0 social networks. Chatterjee predicts NFTs will become the “passport to the metaverse” and that they will serve as a basis for virtual community creation. Chatterjee believes this will threaten the advertisement-revenue-driven social networks currently in use.
8. Chatterjee anticipates more corporate brands will embrace the NFT space to promote and advertise products, with more celebrities jumping on board to promote their personal brands.
9. He expects more traditional Web 2.0 big tech companies to begin to evolving into Web 3.0 versions, although he believes many will develop closed versions of the metaverse.
10. Chatterjee sees decentralized autonomous organizations (DOA) becoming more mainstream, which he believes will challenge the traditional definition of employment. Although he believes DOAs will initially be forced to navigate through a learning curve in order to overcome challenges from how to run payroll to completing mergers and acquisitions, new tools will be developed to help DOAs become efficient.