I will argue that the most exciting and relevant project in 2018 will be Ethereum. I predict that this is Ethereum´s year.
There are a number of well known milestones upcoming for the protocol itself but I find the milestones in the Ethereum eco-system even more exiting and game changing.
Ethereum will become the leading and eventually most talked about network outside the crypto world in 2018. It will also remain relatively unchallenged by upcoming tech like EOS, IOTA, Raiblocks because of the huge lead it has on the newer projects. This might change after 2019.
Here is why:
In the coming weeks several major projects that have been in the works since 2015/16 will launch on the Ethereum main net. A lot of them are true game changers like Augur, Melonport and Golem. All of which have huge disruptive potential individually. Augur introduces a whole new concept, a use case that was entirely impossible until now. Melonport has the potential to disrupt the fund industry and make Fidelity as obsolete as your local travel agent.
Ethereum currently has 91% market share of all tokens. It might lose some ground on the token front but the vast majority of new projects will still run on Ethereum = further mainstream adoption incoming.
Early in the year Ethereum will continue to struggle to keep up with an increasing number of daily transactions especially as more Dapps are launching (already at 1,4 million per day - more than any other network). Major Ethereum network upgrades will remedy that. First the Constantinople Hard fork and hopefully the switch to PoS / Casper will settle TPS issues for the near future. I predict that Casper is launched ahead of schedule (this one is speculation but considering it´s running on the testnet right now I´m calling it) which would certainly be a nice surprise after having been delayed for 2 years.
I predict most newcomers in the second half of 2018 will learn about crypto by usind a Dapp - they will not be speculators but users. They will use Dapps and only as a second step learn about the tech that drives it. Since most of Dapps in 2018 will run on Ethereum it is likely that it will be the most talked about tech.
Finally, you can already see a shift in how the mainstream media is reporting on crypto. 3 months ago there was only ever a mention of bitcoin. Now all mainstream journalist are writing "what´s the next bitcoin" pieces that usually includes 5 alts - Eth always one of them. It´s easy to see how this will shift when more and more Dapps launch and people learn that most of them run on Ethereum. I predict we will see a shift in the focus of news reports on Ethereum just as we saw with Bitcoin in 2017.
Why does that matter? I will drive the price up like we saw happen with BTC in 2017 and it will make Ethereum the hottest think to talk about.
Ethereum and all the 1st gen Dapps will be THE showcase for what blockchain is, can do and how it can change the world. Blockchain 3.0 projects might challenge this status eventually but not yet. The delays in projects like Augur, Golem and IPFS have shown that it´s quite complex to build a solid and secure dapp. It´s safe to extrapolate that Blockchain 3.0 networks and their respective Dapps will face the same hurdles and not be ready to have a significant impact before 2019.