Introduction

This is really a huge topic because so many things will change, and so many things will be affected. Adoption will not take place in a linear or gradual fashion. It will go in cycles and there will be many external factors which will affect it. For example, when token prices go up, more people pay attention and get involved. But there are many use cases other than trading and speculation. We all know by now that the price is extremely volatile, And adoption doesn't necessarily correlate with price. There are many external factors or events which could affect usage/adoption (such as a war, or legal regulations, etc. etc). Here is a link to a twitter post discussion about the adoption rate over the last 5 years, and projecting the next several years, based on historical data: https://twitter.com/raoulgmi/status/1392939136689053699?lang=en

An ideal world In several years, decentralized finance will definitely be more mature and prevalent. It was the first and most obvious use-case. I assume that it will get easier to use, and become safer and more secure. The current problems are mostly technical and can be resolved. Otherwise, most people will stay away. High returns are not enough to draw people in if there is too much risk compared to the tradfi or fintech systems that they are using now. There has to be compelling reasons. For example businesses will start to migrate when they see their competitors doing it successfully and getting benefits. Most businesses don't want to be early adopters. Here are some improvements I would like to see - In the future, you shouldn't have to think about what chain you are on and what wallet to use. Most of the technical details will be abstracted from the user and take place behind the scenes. You will focus on the apps and not what chain to use. The developers will make these choices based on the best fit for a particular use case. Chains will be more specialized, and focus on doing a specific job really well. Smart contracts will be able to operate across chains to get the best functionality. For example liquidity will be sourced from the locations where it is most abundant. You won't find the same app on multiple chains since this is much less efficient. Moonbeam and Astar have been developing these types of contracts. You will be able to move digital assets around as needed, with safer protocols like IBC and XCM. (https://moonbeam.network/builders/connected-contracts/).

There will be more tokenization of real world assets (like houses, or cars etc) so that they can be used in transactions for things like collateral, or fractional ownership.

Dapps like social media make a lot of sense for obvious reasons (https://coinavalon.io/blog/what-is-socialfi-blockchain-social-media-platforms-explained/ The benefits are evident to anyone who has used these types of decentralized apps. But some people will take a long time to move. So, I suspect we will see people using both web2 and web3, mostly because of network effects. So it will take a while, but when it does it will happen quickly. Things audio NFT's make sense for new musicians who aren't signed to record labels. Fans will be abvle to share rights to songs with the artists. Middlemen will be dis-intermediated but won't go away. They will probably take on different roles like aggregators or curators. Many new roles will be created that didn't exist before.

For now, Deso has a pretty big lead based on implementation and user addresses: https://www.openprosper.com/stats/deso-dashboard

But there are many other others attempting to do web3 socialfi, such as Lens (limited beta), Project Bluesky from Jack Dorsey of twitter fame (or infamy), Frequency on Polkadot, Farcaster and many others which are in the early stages. The best strategy seems to be integration partnerships so that the various services can complement each other and inter-operate, which is one of the major advantages of Web3. Otherwise we will end up with centralized, siloed systems which has similar problems to the current web2 oligopoly.

AI has progressed significantly over the last few years. My last blog post was about AI text to image generation: https://diamondapp.com/u/fblauer/blog/ai-tools-for-text-to-image-generation

I expect people using AI for things like image generation, but also animations and videos, web site content, even blog posts. They will still probably require human intervention, but have the potential to save labor and produce interesting results.

Conclusion In 5 years, there will still be a mixture of tradfi, fintech and Defi. So there will have to be good on-ramps and off-ramps and ability to move easily between systems. But, it is difficult to have hybrid systems since each country has different rules for fiat and crypto. New nation-states may be formed on-line with new social contracts. It will be clearer what your responsibilities are in order to receive benefits. Voting will be on-chain and take place for all important changes and decisions. Maybe your vote will be weighted by how much your contribute (ex. taxes, or labor for example). Everything will be transparent since the smart contracts are open source and immutable, so it will be much harder to cheat the system. Good behavior will be rewarded, and bad behavior will be penalized monetarily. This will all be codified in contracts.

Dao's and "for-profit" companies will co-exist for a long time, but many people will chose to migrate if there are proven advantages. Governance will change at many different levels. Work and education will become more flexible if they can be done on-line. People can work or take courses from anywhere in the world. This will disrupt education by improving access and lowering cost.

There will be more business applications for things like supply chain tracing. It will be possible to track goods from place of productions thru to the end consumer, and verify that it is not fake. same for things like art. But, In order for existing businesses to start making use of blockchain, there will have to be more privacy built in. For example payroll payments to employees cannot be public, or sensitive trade secrets for example.

5 years is a long time in the crypto world since things move so fast in this space. It is hard to imagine some of the things that will change. The internet took several decades to evolve. Many of the early apps were just duplication of existing services like newspapers, or magazines. It took a little longer for people to start adopting things like social media, which couldn't exist before the read/write capability of the internet. I look forward to seeing what kinds of services gain traction that make use of Web3 digital ownership and ability to transact value autonomously.