Web3: 10 trends to watch in 2023

1/ Back to basics: self-custody and privacy

As recent events have shown, claiming to be "crypto" or "Web3" is not enough to be better than traditional financial players. Far from it! The collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem led to the bankruptcy of crypto-lending company Celsius and the Three Arrows fund, which themselves accelerated the fall of FTX in November, exposing a completely sclerotic system.

While we wait to find out whether the worst is over (more on this below in the Big Focus), this debacle in centralised finance (CeFi) has put the spotlight on a hot topic: keeping one's own cryptocurrencies.

The only way to avoid losing your funds remains to keep your cryptos yourself 💡

This is the Web3 philosophy based on decentralisation and taking back control of our data and our money. This is partly what led to the creation of a certain... Bitcoin.

There are no 36 solutions for ensuring the safekeeping of your cryptos yourself: either with non-custodial wallets (MetaMask, Spot, Rabby, etc.) or hardware wallets (Ledger). One sure sign of this is that all these players have seen their business soar in recent months.

"We have reached historic figures", confirms Ledger boss Pascal Gauthier. The same goes for Spot; in an interview, the start-up's co-founder confessed to us that he had exceeded 500,000 downloads.

Of course, we shouldn't be naive. Keeping your cryptocurrencies clean isn't easy, and there are risks: one mishandle can lose you everything 😒

Privacy protection, which has been somewhat forgotten of late, should also feature prominently. The reactions to the conviction of one of the developers of Tornado Cash (a tool that anonymises transactions) and the change in the terms of use of MetaMask (which collects its users' IP addresses) have shown just how sensitive the subject is.

The strong comeback of cryptos specialising in anonymous transactions is also an indicator. Monero (XMR) is currently making a remarkable comeback in the rankings of the sector's largest capitalisations.

2/ The value of DeFi is no longer in doubt