Recently Brian Armstrong, The CEO and founder of Coinbase made a video talking about 10 idea’s he would start a start up for in crypto if he had the time. “I’m sharing the 10 ideas I’m most excited about in crypto right now. If you’re building something in crypto or thinking about doing so” – Brian Armstrong. In this article we will take a look at the 10 ideas he has put forward. As Coinbase’s CEO and someone who has been in this industry for a long time Brian Armstorng is probably one of the best positioned individuals to know the areas where crypto is changing the landscape an will make a big impact. Brian’s list of things he’s excited about are absolutely areas within the crypto space we should be paying attention to! Lets get into it:
Number 1: ‘Flatcoin’
What is a Flatcoin:
Right now we have a number of forms of ‘money’ in crypto bitcoin and stablecoins. Bitcoin is of course volatile, and stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar leaving their value pegged to the central banks mainly the FED. A Flatcoin could offer a better form of ‘money’. A flatcoin is a stablecoin that maintains a fixed value linked to the cost of living, ensuring its purchasing power remains steady even in the face of rising living expenses. You want money to preserve its purchasing power and if you pegged this coin to the CPI of a country it would certainly do that.
Some examples of already existing projects:
- Ampleforth $AMPL
- Nuon $NUON
Number 2: ‘Onchain Reputation’
What is Onchain Reputation:
Right Now we have things like ENS (Ethereum Name Service) and Things like ADAHandels to try to give an identity to a wallet. However people can easily change 1 letter or make it look the same as the Name or address like we see a lot of scammers do on X (formerly twitter). The internet (web2) right now has reputation scores for websites like ‘PageRank’
What’s PageRank:
PageRank, Google’s algorithm for ranking web content, assesses the significance of websites and webpages by considering the number and quality of inbound links. In essence, a website with a greater number of links, particularly from reputable sources, is considered more authoritative by Google and is more likely to receive higher rankings in search results.
There is no reason something similar to this can’t be built in the blockchain space. Once a onchain reputation decentralized (trustable) system is created it can be used for a large basket of things:
Use cases:
- Lending (FICO score)
- Merchant rating (Yelp)
- Fruad prevention
- targeted Airdops
Number 3: ‘Onchain ads’
In the Web2 world (the internet) Ads have been a major business if not the best business generating billions $ in revenue annually. It’s very likely that Web3 (crypto) will have similar opportunities.
the industry of web2 ads evolved from CPM (Costs per impressions) – CPC (Costs per Click) – CPA (Costs per purchase/action). Google again was at the forefront of all this! Given the unique properties of web3 we might be able to do this better given that all transaction are onchain and actions are tracible.
an example of how this could work is by imagining a smart contract that has metadata that dictated that is a certain action was done like a referral to a service or sight a % would be given and verified onchain. This can then be indexed and standardised! This is just one example and onchain ads could be a big deal!
Some examples:
- Spindle
- Hypelab
Number 4: ‘Onchain capital formation’
Right now raising capital and gaining access to capital has major barriers to it, and is unevenly distributed. For your average joe with a brilliant idea raising capital can be almost impossible. Not only that it is incredibly expensive with the likes of Goldman Sash’s charging up to 11% for doing so… this is a huge shame is it stifles innovation and prevent many great ideas from becoming realities.
In 2017 we saw the ICO boom which of course brought with it a lot of scammed and disguised unregistered securities that lead to the demise of retail investors. Retail investors could give their money to own some of the tokens the project offered as a way to raise funds. this in most cases (not all) ended horribly. Many countries like China and South Korea in 2017 ban the ICO.
If there was a way to raise capital, complying with the legalities of the country you where in, in a trusted manor, with KYC and accreditations this could be huge and transform the industry of Venture capitalists and fund raising. It would make it more decentralised meaning retail could help to fund and thus benefit from projects, significantly lower the barrier to gaining access to funds and globalise it! there could be a real opportunity here!
Number 5: ‘Job / Task marketplace’
Imagine a global web3 application for Job / Tasks, anyone anywhere could post a job that they wanted doing and due to the global nature of crypto (as a payment) this could be facilitated. right now in the web2 work we have websites like Fiverr, Web3 is the next wave of the internet (web2) and arguably you could create a more global, thus cheaper and potentially more efficient and safer market place using crypto!
Number 6: ‘Privacy for Layer 2’
So things being on-chain has brought way more benefits then downsides, however with most blockchain you can see what went where. this can be problematic in some cases. It makes sense that there is a need for privacy. Imagine if a company wanted to pay its employees for example they may not want this information to be public but they would want a proof of that transaction. Or perhaps your bank account, the bank may require information on it but do you want that information to be accessible to the public?? the internet went through a similar transition.
We already have many ‘privacy coins’, like Monero, zcash and others, but these are often meet with push back and in some cases outlawing of these cryptos. so we are seeing layer2s and rollups that take the coin from the layer 1 and encode it or put it on to a layer 2 that looks to hide publicly the transaction taking place. often with many of these project there is protocol built into them so that if the transactions where needed by let say the FBI they could be accessed and turned over to the authorities, which you could argue is that really true privacy but at the same time it is a happy medium for companies and institutions who have to declare those transaction for things like accounting and logistics but don’t want them to be public.
Two projects that are doing this are:
Number 7: ‘P2P Exchange Fully Onchain’
Peer to peer exchanges are an amazing onramp to the crypto space, the difference with a decentralised exchange like Uniswap is that you need crypto to begin with to swap. With a P2P its an onramp for people who can’t gain access to centralised exchanges and allows them to enter the market. very important in less developed markets.
an onchchain P2P exchange would illimanate centralization risks, as things such as:
- Escrow
- Reputation
- mediation
Could all happen onchain and in less developed markets it could drop the barriers to entry for many.
Number 8: ‘Onchain Games’
In 2022 the gaming industry stood at $217.06 Billion dollars and is expected to grow annually with a rate of 13.4%! Just like with many things in web2 that web3 is changing gaming is a massive industry that it could revolutionise. Also with the metaverse which is still a while of but will be here eventually and may even play a role in our daily lives, gamefi and the need for onchain gaming has never been so needed
where web3 changes the game here, is that as a player you could actually own the items you pick up in the game, THIS WOULD BE MASSIVE! right now a big part of revenue is generated from the ‘skins’ or collectable’s you can purchase in game. even though you’ve bought these items they are not in your possession, web3 would enable you to contractually and actually own these items, can you imagine the secondary items for these and the possible industry that gets spawned out of it!
a cool feature with something being onchain is a governance could be set up where players direct developers of the game and decide its direction! Gamefi is a big thing and set to get bigger there are some project out there looking to do exactly this like immutable x $IMX
Number 9: ‘Tokenizing real world assets’
right now we do currently have a form of tokenized assets, stablecoins but with the blockchain the tokenization of LITRALY anything is made possible, this completely changes the entire asset space! often with assets like, stocks, bonds, derivatives, property, art, and money there are fees and hurdles to overcome. With tokenization those hurdles are broken down and things like costs, trust and verifiability are maximised. Everything will become tokenized not because its ‘cool’ but because it makes things more efficient. the project or projects that facilitate this are walking into a class worth 100s of trillions!
Not only does this mean changed for the already existing assets into a tokenized form, but it means many assets that are currently not tracked can become tracked in the same way we track stocks today, brining 100s of trillions into the financial system. a large % of the world population currently struggles to gain access to finance and credit this would completely change with the tokenization of things and bring billions into the global financial system and trillions of dollar $ in value.
Larry Fink CEO of BlackRock has been quoted as saying – ‘ I believe the next evolution of markets in tokenization’
Number 10: Tools for Network states
A new idea, people are now creating network states, where they will implement their own laws and rules to live by using the help of blockchain to enforce it meaning the rules are fair and transparent for everyone. Its basically this idea of an onchain government, where the rules are defined by the chain and its governance system and also citizenships are verified onchain. its a very new idea and we are seeing many DAOs emerge trying to do this! I think the person who builds the abilities to do this could be looking at a big opportunity
These are the 10 idea Brian Armstrong put forward for areas he’s excited about!
