Looking ahead to 2023
How Web3 can achieve impact
CRADL published nine reports over the course of 2022 analyzing the way that builders, investors, and people who use cryptocurrency and Web3 applications understand and interact with technology and build communities. This report outlines the themes that the CRADL team expects to evolve in 2023.
“It’s time to make things that people want and return back to first-principles of decentralization, self-custody, privacy, and removal of middlemen.”
Jenna Pilgrim Managing partner, Mayflower Capital
Report Goals
To summarize our research from 2022 to identify core themes to watch as the Web3 industry evolves in 2023 and beyond.
To explore what a shift from a "bull market" to a "build market” means for the Web3 industry.
To outline how attracting an inclusive workforce and creating accessible tools could actually make Web3 a fertile ground for contributing to and generating solutions for some of the world's most pressing and complex problems.
What’s in it:
Our assessment of how the industry will evolve in 2023 and beyond along three core vectors: impact, workforce, and infrastructure.
We highlight the work of builders who deeply understood the systems they were trying to improve (or reimagine), such as Jeffrey Miller of OccSaviors and Sheila Lirio Marcelo, co-founder and CEO of Proof of Learn.
We highlight snapshots from interviews with Ashley Taylor Buck, Founder and Principal at ReSource; Jenna Pilgrim Managing partner, Mayflower Capital; Calanthia Mei, Co-founder of Masa Finance; Alex Wykoff Web3 product leader; Joe McCann Founder of Asymmetric; Sheila Warren, CEO of Crypto Council for Innovation and Co-founder of CRADL; Anna Lerner Nesbitt Climate Collective.
Key Takeaways
The industry is nascent. While the technology an ethos of Web3 shows a lot of promise, the industry is still in its early stages. We expect to see continued evolution of the industry’s workforce and infrastructure over time.
Impact. Leading up to 2023, many Web3 projects have showed the potential for impact in novel ways through pilots and proofs of concept. To demonstrate real impact, these projects will scale in 2023 and beyond. Before that can occur, the industry will need to evolve in the workforce it attracts and the maturity of infrastructure they have to build with.
People. While the Web3 industry’s early days were made up mostly of technologists and financial experts, our research showed that people with more diverse experiences and skills were joining. If Web3 will grow in its impact, it will need to continue to attract people with a broad range of expertise.
Infrastructure. While there have been profound improvements to the underlying infrastructure of Web3 in the last several years, there is still a lot of inefficiency and builders still find it difficult to implement projects that would be simple in a Web2 world. For the industry to continue to grow, it will need to continue its investment in core infrastructure.
Our research indicates that if the Web3 industry can first achieve a greater demonstration of impact in 2023, it will likely require the expansion and diversification of its workforce, as well as the ongoing development of infrastructure that supports teams.
Related CRADL Content
Read our report
Fill out this form to access a Google Slides and PDF version of our reports.
Our primary goal is impact. We encourage readers to share, iterate on, and apply our research findings. All of our reports are available as Googles Slides and PDFs so that you can easily copy and paste content from the slide deck into your materials.
Be sure to attribute CRADL as the source.
All of our research is under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license.