Most companies fail (or are perpetually flat).

Most apps in app stores don’t have meaningful revenue.

Most SaaS struggle with competition or market fit.

Most promising projects get eaten by giants.

Most DApps are experiments riding on the coattails of the blockchain buzz.

Most traditional revenue models will remain relevant, sadly.

Most ICO tokens are securities and the projects may get stalled/killed by legal challenges.

Most legit projects are extremely ambitious and clear advantages once deployed in real-world are still uncertain and lack empirical supporting data (need 5–10 years of effort to analyze data and have important clarity).

Most consumers don’t care about what’s under the hood, sadly.

Most apps, services, networks don’t truly require a token beyond the often deceptive fundraising utility and are thus abuse of crypto token technology.

With that said, there must be some use cases where success is attainable. This may rely on hybrid models for a while (offchain/onchain, traditional rev models/token economies etc). It may take a fundamental shift in attitude of millions of users who need to demand flexible movable value and a breakdown of silos. This does not appear to be on the immediate horizon, sadly. Might need a decade+ to make a dent in the cultural attitudes of consumer users who are giddy with brands and “free” easy to use apps/services despite being captive prisoners with little/no control over their data and valuables.

I do see some light ahead in the tokenized gaming/virtual worlds market, especially if/when tokens can permeate into and traverse across all economies and “worlds”. I also see good traction in p2p exchange protocols and crosschain tech to help empower this. Likewise, direct user-to-user/p2p and OTC token transactions along with broader p2p markets will be critical plumbing as many centralized exchanges begin to fall.

Focusing again on hybrids, I think the loyalty/rewards points incentive programs and models will increasingly find crypto assets useful as long as they are willing to tear down walls and economic frictions to allow for value to flow in and out and trust that their business models around incentification will not be disrupted as long as their true value proposition and service offerings are consistently high quality and in-demand (which is what they should be relying on anyway!).

No easy answers… Time, change, evolution, innovation, risk, patience…. Without looking into the broader and deeper aspects, then we’re just putting lipstick on a pig.