To make sense of the moment, consider Gartner, an American research and consulting firm focused on information-technology markets. It periodically publishes its flagship \u201chype cycle\u201d report. In the summer of 2024 the firm issued an update on blockchain and Web3 trends.<\/p>\n Gartner\u2019s model charts the path of new technology trends from birth (the steep rise on the left), through a peak, a trough, a modest incline and, finally, a plateau of productivity (on the right). Any durable technology, the model holds, must traverse this S-shaped arc from start to finish.\u00a0<\/p>\n The firm has tracked crypto for almost a decade, but 2024 is the first year its analysts saw no genuinely fresh innovations in the field. In their view, only a handful of older trends sit near peak hype: L2 solutions, stablecoins, DAOs, provenance, and Web 2.5.<\/p>\n The last of these is usually taken to mean a bridge between Web2 and Web3, covering infrastructure built for the \u201cnew internet\u201d. Telegram provides a telling example, integrating blockchain features into its messenger app.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most other trends have ebbed, and no longer stir much excitement\u2014something obvious even without professional analysis. Legacy projects jostle for position within their niches, while launching new ones is harder amid intense competition and limited liquidity. In that vacuum a fresh look at memecoins has emerged.<\/p>\n It suddenly became clear that one could attract an audience with minimal effort by selling the very urge to make money, rather than finished products like blockchain networks or apps.\u00a0<\/p>\n No promises, no accountability, nothing typical of investment activity\u2014just the desire for a quick return. That, in effect, is today\u2019s product.<\/p>\n However utopian it seems, this tendency could spawn a distinctive market with novel forms of community, whose tokens are backed by deeds or, say, an idea.<\/p>\n It resembles MicroStrategy\u2019s approach: buying bitcoin for its balance sheet, educating institutions and tirelessly promoting the first cryptocurrency and the HODL creed. That buoys its share price, yet is not tied to the firm\u2019s operating success.<\/p>\n A new metric even emerged\u2014\u201cbitcoin per share\u201d. Public companies far removed from crypto have started acquiring digital gold. For instance, American firm Semler Scientific, which makes products for managing chronic diseases, holds<\/a> 1,012 BTC on its balance sheet.<\/p>\n Canadian miner Cathedra, in a letter<\/a> to clients, went further, saying a bitcoin accumulation strategy is far more effective than mining and announcing a pause in expanding production.<\/p>\n This strategy can be described as boosting one\u2019s own value by funding a third-party brand\u2014in this case bitcoin\u2014rather than improving one\u2019s own operations.<\/p>\n A similar shift in how value is created is visible in crypto. One example\u2014so far unsuccessful\u2014was Friend.Tech, which let users of its social network trade \u201cshares\u201d of accounts. Popularity itself, the pitch went, could be sold in tokenised form.<\/p>\n An even bolder experiment is to create or augment value through \u201cgood intentions\u201d, championed by Vitalik Buterin, who sells almost all liquid meme tokens and sends the proceeds to charity, thereby drawing liquidity and attention to the tokens.<\/p>\n “Although I would prefer that you guys send the money directly. Maybe even create a DAO and involve your community in the decision-making and process,” the Ethereum founder commented on another token sale.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Buterin\u2019s post<\/a> on the episode sent one memecoin up nearly 20-fold.<\/p>\n It is plausible, then, that the rush to buy anything with a ticker will give way to new forms of DAO\u2014or satellite communities\u2014built around brands or a culture of action.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps there is no longer a need to build new \u201cphysical\u201d products; it may be enough to harness the \u201cdesire to move money\u201d in support of existing infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n How is a DAO, dedicated to buying, say, bitcoin with revenues from trading a memecoin, worse than MicroStrategy\u2019s shares? To make it work, there is no need for intricate corporate linkages, a team of specialists or a downtown office.<\/p>\n Such DAOs fit neatly into Gartner\u2019s cycle, in which decentralised communities have yet to reach the initial sheer peak, with a time to the productivity plateau of five to ten years. That suggests a serious trend toward users banding together by interest and goal over the coming decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n This could mean co-investing in projects or ideas capable of nudging individual capital into motion. Note, too, that launching a DAO does not require smart contracts with a governance token\u2014only distributed control.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first cryptocurrency has no governance token, yet it is a bona fide decentralised autonomous organisation, steered by multiple independent stakeholder groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a burst of innovation, crypto appears to be in an ideas slump. The impasse has spawned narratives out of thin air that will, sooner or later, peter out. What comes after memecoins? Oleg Cash Coin takes a closer look.\u00a0 Hype cycles To make sense of the moment, consider Gartner, an American research and consulting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1144],"tags":[80,1161,200],"class_list":["post-18052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-longreads","tag-dao","tag-memes","tag-vitalik-buterin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"46","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"tsikly-hai-pa\"](\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/tsikly-hai-pa-1024x675.png\")
Birth of a trend<\/h2>\n
The \u201cButerin effect\u201d\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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![\"Grafik-tokena-Ebull-posle-soobshheniya-Buterina.-Dannye-CoinGecko\"](\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Grafik-tokena-Ebull-posle-soobshheniya-Buterina.-Dannye-CoinGecko.webp\")
Back to Gartner<\/h2>\n