I think mostly at this point there is no one here who cares about the revolution of the blockchain space (or maybe just me and a few others) and that's totally okay. The blockchain space as a whole right now feels very dead despite the massive changes that have recently brought so much of it into the mainstream - or, actually - because of those changes. I think, for many of us, blockchain was something magical - a way to empower the disempowered,
a way to level up without having to follow the traditional path of 'be a slave for a while and then get a mortgage and be a different kind of slave' - and then it became this amazing huge casino that still had the underlying magical ability to give a jumpstart to any good idea. I've used the word magical a few times here because essentially - there was a lot of magical thinking involved. i.e. If I put this thing on blockchain it will succeed even though it wouldn't otherwise.
In a lot of cases there seemed to be evidence of that - but time has shown that was really just gamblers taking a calculated risk and scammers finding a new way to leverage hope into emptying wallets. Don't get me wrong - the free money and the insane profits were real - for some.
The truth is though, just 'putting something on blockchain' whether it was art, books, dental practice, or a game was never a magic bullet. It would always require good business decisions, effective marketing, and work - actual hard work. Also - you simply can't have a two dimensional thinker taking a one-dimensional product and turning it into a three-dimensional game-changer. I can think of a dozen NFT projects (hundreds if I waste the time) that tried to do that. The most obvious being Pixel Vault in which a non-creative non-innovative lawyer tried to turn a badly written comic into a new interactive Marvel universe - and completely ignored every storyteller, imagineer, marketer, PR advocate, visionary, radical, or disruptive voice in favor of having board meetings with more lawyers, setting up expensive contracts to pay more lawyers, and worrying about every detail of legality while spending no time worrying about creating a story or an idea or an emotional hook that would excite. people. The one person who was really good at that with PV was thrown under the bus at the first opportunity - probably at the suggestion of the lawyers. PV made huge deals and failed to get people excited about them, failed to make them materialize in a meaningful way, and from where I sit - failed at everything except disappointing everyone who ever believed in it.
The same was true of so many other projects in the NFT or meme space. The projects that have survived and that will survive are either
1) well run, boring businesses run by boring business people who lack vision for anything other than business as usual (see Michael Saylor and other BTC maxi folks.)
2) community centric projects that are more about community and relationship building, creativity, and the connections between people that don't care about money (but sometimes have it anyway)
3) that rare unicorn of a project that manages to be both - i.e Yuga, DeGods, OnChainMonkeys, Pepe, Mfers
Personally, I think we are in a perfect trough right now where the majority of the projects we've seen over the past years are going to be dying out and disappearing - just like so many stupid businesses in the post dot-com era. Only the extremes of good business or good community will survive from the current and past multitudes. Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, Yuga, Metagood, etc - almost everything else will consolidate, fade away, or explode. But in that trough - there is the perfect opportunity for something new to be born. Personally, I am looking at Lamina1 (and Avalanche) , Base (with Farcaster), and to a lessor extent Blast.
I really think we are on the specific part of the wave where magic can happen. It can come from any direction and it can disrupt entire industries. The internet did it, mobile phones did it, AI did it, blockchain wanted to do it but so far (from my perspective) hasn't succeeded at the same level (yet). Yes, it has made a lot of money for a lot of people - but it hasn't really disrupted shit. It tried with art and artists and royalties - but it failed (so far). It tried with the metaverse but it failed (so far). It tried with banking and investment but it failed to bypass or surpass the legacy financial system's gatekeepers and regulators (so far).
What I personally see with blockchain is what I was writing about above - people who want to be bankers and people who want to create new worlds. In general, bankers and people who want to be bankers are fucking terrible at creating new worlds because you have to give new worlds space to define themselves, unregulated ability to grow, and you have to let go of control. Where that can happen is where the world change can happen. Just like the way that decrepit neighborhoods give birth to amazing art movements, grunge, punk, or rock and roll music scenes, or social movements that shake worlds.
That's where we are - this is the bust cycle of a boomtown - and while it may just become a shithole that eventually gets bulldozed to build a glittering highrise, it might also unleash the creativity of Compton, Liverpool, Brooklyn, or dying Northwest timber towns and change the entire world.