Pantera Capital – a blockchain-focused institutional asset manager – has released a report reviewing the state of the blockchain industry in 2022, and what to expect on the technological and adoption front going forward.

The report predicted that crypto has already bottomed and that the next market cycle will be defined by greater adoption of decentralized finance (Defi). 

According to Pantera’s co-Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Joey Krug, the crypto industry has been trending toward self-custody and trust minimization since the fall of Mt. Gox in 2013. Today, wallet providers like Trezor and Ledger – alongside smart contract protocols like Uniswap and 0x – are helping mitigate issues related to centralization and mismanagement. 

“It seems fairly evident that the historical arc of the world’s financial rails will end up as blockchain-based systems using smart contracts,” wrote Krug in the report. He cited scaling solutions enabling sub-ten cent transaction fees coupled with ease of writing smart contract-based systems as drivers of such adoption.