Crypto Is Down, So Why Am I Smiling?

Namely, 2019 will mark 30 years since Stuart Haber and I began working on a contributing thread to what has become the blockchain.

As Chief Scientist at a blockchain venture capital firm, I am prepared to recommend how to invest tens of millions of dollars in blockchain efforts this coming year.

Successful blockchain efforts don't begin with technology.

New blockchain efforts should begin with a community that shares a common interest and purpose.

Successful blockchain efforts will not offer solutions in search of needs, but rather should solve current, pressing problems.

Successful blockchain applications avoid creating destabilizing incentives, while allocating value to the participants within the ecosystem who actually create value.

Unlike classical corporations that rely on conventional, hierarchical command and control, successful blockchain systems require internal incentives that cultivate communal growth and stable peer-to-peer governance.

Successful blockchain applications are no different from any other class of startup venture in that they need to adapt to the needs of their user communities.

In these early days of blockchain, in which a dominant design has yet to emerge, innovators must be flexible enough to explore new possibilities informed by their users and thinking from first principles.

Those who do so should find themselves smiling with me in 2019, as we know something others do not know: we know the fundamental promise of the blockchain.