Crypto is very much still in the Wild West phase. I look at a lot of these tokens coming out and it reminds me of the ridiculous inventions from 1980's science fiction. No one knows what they are doing; everyone is running around like a chicken with their head cut off.
When ERC-20 was developed the ICO craze followed shortly after. Most of those projects were totally bogus solutions looking for a problem to solve combined with offensively greedy cash grabs. Four years later in the cycle we see that DEFI and yield farming are the ICOs of 2021. Surely, some of these projects will have staying power but for the most part greed still rules the market, unfortunately.
When someone has a good idea and makes a ton of money on it, that idea is going to copied into the ground. This dead horse will get beaten until all the blood is squeezed from the turnip. Unfortunately, many of the templates we do have at this point just aren't that great for where we need to go.
Adaptations:
Many developers are trying to twist old models and add crypto to it and then try to act like this is a "decentralized" solution. These projects are all quite clearly heinously centralized with a very small dev team in control for years and years after the product launches.
Jobs are not being created.
This is the ultimate metric that tells us how much we are failing. Decentralized solutions create jobs and passive/active income for everyone. Everyone is going to be their own boss (freelance). These are the targets we need to be shooting for, not JPEG NFTs that aren't even on chain.
Possible templates.
- Decentralized development
At a certain point centralized dev teams will be looked at as the archaic solution that they are. These networks don't need a dozen devs working on the core protocol, they need thousands of devs all contributing in a way that makes sense. However, the logistics of such things are so much easier said than done. Once again, we need a template that can be copied over and over again that actually works. - Local Community
Crypto is all about community and governance. There will be templates in place to empower communities with their own currency. Imagine going into a city with dozens of people and airdropping a big chunk of the people who live there. These kinds of things are going to happen. Crypto might be borderless, but most communities are not. Many airdrops will be limited to the borders of a certain area. - Gaming
Gaming is a huge focus that has been falling flat on its face over and over and over. These game companies are coming in and trying to incorporate crypto to their centralized product but then they retain all the power for themselves. I have not even come close to seeing a decentralized solution when it comes to gaming. Sure, there is some decentralization on the fringe, but the meat and potatoes are nowhere to be found. - Healthcare
Big Pharma does not have a financial incentive to pump billions of dollars into certain forms of research that we actually need. Plants/Animals don't get researched because they can't be patented. There's also the issue of food, that is clearly tied to healthcare. For some reason we're being told to get a vaccine 10 times a day but never being told to diet and exercise and get the proper vitamins. At the end of the day the more healthy we are the more money the health industry loses. This is the sad truth of corporate healthcare, and this model will eventually be obliterated by the proper crypto template.
Conclusion
Crypto is an infant and has no idea what it is doing. It will take time to build up the infrastructure and see what works and what doesn't. The entire world will be changed by this technology. Crypto is ten times bigger than the Internet itself in the long run. The entire planet is about to quake with disruption. Soon™.