Author: The Spartan Group Source: medium Translation: Shan Oppa, Golden Finance

2023 is a year spent in a bear market. While the year has been tumultuous, it has also provided room for incredible new technological innovations. Here’s a shortlist of things that have partners across Spartan’s investment, consulting, and labs teams excited about what 2024 holds.

AAA Web3 Games

I am excited about the next generation of AAA quality Web3 games, including Some games will be launched in 2024. I believe these games will bring millions of new Web3 users and prove why Web3 games are the logical next generation evolution of existing Web2 games.

— Kelvin Koh, Co-Founder and Partner, Chief Information Officer of Spartan Capital (@SpartanBlack_1 em> on style="text-align: left;">There are four things I’m particularly excited about for 2024:

• Unleash the power of the Bitcoin blockchain, built on the Bitcoin asset.

• The next generation of consumer applications marks the next evolution of NFTs.

• Asian markets as a hub for cryptocurrencies – from cryptocurrency trading to corporate adoption.

• Capital flows to regulated exchanges and local exchanges - liquidity will become more dispersed, but this also forces projects to Invest in local partners and exchanges instead of doing the “lazy” thing of listing on an offshore exchange but not really leveraging your token to drive local adoption.

— Melody He, co-founder, partner, and co-head of Spartan Advisory (@melmelmelting on X)

Merger-driven integration

I predict that 2024 will be a year of growth and consolidation for the entire Web3 industry. In particular, I think we will see consolidation between centralized exchanges. This consolidation mainly takes 3 forms: 1/domestic consolidation between competitors in a single market, 2/regional consolidation among exchanges operating in adjacent markets, and 3/cross-continental consolidation through the entry of large global players into strategic markets. We will also see a sharp increase in M&A activity in other Web3 areas, including custody, prime brokerage, data and analytics, staking, payments, and more. Following the wave of consolidation driven by Web3 native M&A, we will see a second wave of M&A leading to non-Web3 native companies looking to enter the market inorganically, as well as the IPOs of some of the larger Web3 platforms.

— Casper B. Johansen, co-founder, partner, and co-head of Spartan Advisory (@CasperJohansen on X)

Main applications, ZK and modular blockchain

I'm excited for the industry to validate the infrastructure we've built over the past few years by adopting major applications. In Web3 we will start to measure the success of this in a different way, we will start to realize the value of calculating ownership in addition to individual assets. Privacy and security will become key drivers, and this is where we will see the value of ZK primitives and modular blockchains being recognized by users who didn’t even know they relied on it on the backend for a wide range of applications like digital identity They play games.

— Leeor Groen, Managing Director, Spartan Group ( @leeorgroen  on X)

On-chain agency, virtual goods and aesthetic crypto brands

2023 brings concepts like intent, networked playable characters, cryptographic AI agents, NFT applications, and modular account abstractions. By 2024, I expect these decentralized cryptocurrency sparks to converge into a robust economy around autonomous on-chain agents.

Secondly, Apple’s Vision Pro is about to be launched. I’m excited about the corresponding wave of virtual goods and experiences that new space formats will bring.

Finally, I look forward to seeing more aesthetically driven crypto-native brands from innovators like Family, Blackbird, Bebop, Seed Club, Zora, FWB and more lead.

— Adrian Lai, Chief Creative Officer (Studio Head), Spartan Labs (@adrianlai< em> on X)

DePIN and the Bitcoin Ecosystem

I'm excited about DePIN taking off; projects that leverage cryptoeconomics to reduce structural costs will be strong competitors to existing Web2 businesses. Furthermore, with the upcoming Layer 2 upgrade of Bitcoin infrastructure, the BTC ecosystem becomes more practical and usable; coupled with newly created asset classes such as BRC-20 offering high speculative value, the ecosystem is poised for strong growth.

— Cody Poh, Investment Associate, Spartan Group ( @0xhopydoc on X)

The intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain

2024 What I’m most excited about this year is the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain. We have research and new use cases around zero-knowledge and machine learning (ZKML). We have games that allow you to train AI agents using ERC6551 (in parallel). I believe that over the next year we will see more ways to leverage AI to enhance the user experience and efficiency of Web3, and more blockchain technology being used as a guardrail and transparency layer for AI.

— Audrey Taylor-Akwenye, Chief Technology Officer, Spartan Labs (@0xOddrey  on In 2024, I’m excited about the following areas of cryptocurrency:

• We could see relative Another wave of power and appeal for the newer L1/2. I hope to see more developer events, TVL, the emergence of these on-chain “killer dapps”, and community building. Companies like Sui, Sei, Aptos, Base, Scroll, and others still have a lot of work to do in 2024 to prove and validate themselves.

• Expect an increase in retail-oriented consumer applications in the cryptocurrency space: success of friend.tech, and potential airdrops in the coming year , leading to a proliferation of copycat projects. This is just the beginning. This trend marks a significant shift in industry focus towards consumer and social applications. I’m excited to test more products with enhanced UI/UX, improved incentive flywheel and token utility, and a more sustainable business model.

• Looking forward to the emergence of more complex Web3 games and metaverses in the industry: After development over the past few years, numerous AAA and MMORPG Web3 games Will be launched in the next 1-2 years. With advances in hardware (such as Apple's Vision Pro) and software (Metaverse Engine Inc.), I think there's considerable potential for growth in the gaming and Metaverse sectors, and I'm excited to test more of these areas in 2024.

— Dana Gan, Consulting Associate, Spartan Group ( @cornergirl999 on X)

RWA and the tokenization of the Bitcoin network

• RWA’s tokenization expands across categories and possibilities for security on the Bitcoin network.

• The Bitcoin network took off with L2s solutions that provided scalability and interoperability, releasing 850B+ of unproductive BTC capital and paves the way for institutional adoption.

• DeSci is receiving increasing attention as a powerful use case for blockchain - building secure, durable Records of scientific contributions, thereby enabling equitable credit distribution, simplifying transactions, allowing global resource sharing and overcoming economic barriers.

— Yan Ma, Assistant, Spartan Group (@zi0nn_eth< em> on X）