7 Hidden Web3 Opportunities to Start Building Today

The blockchain and cryptocurrency space is replete with web3 opportunities today.

Web3 is simply the new vision of the internet that uses blockchains, cryptocurrencies and NFTs to give power back to the users in the form of ownership. The future of web3 will not be limited to PFP jpegs, NFT marketplaces, CEXs, DEXs and DeFi protocols.

For web3 to be used or accepted worldwide, there are several tools that need to come on board in a thriving ecosystem. Getting involved in building these web3 tools can fetch you billions in the near future.

How Big is the web3 market?

The global Web 3.0 blockchain market size was USD 1.36 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44.9 per cent from 2022 to 2030.

The growth can be attributed to the rising demand for data privacy through the decentralized identity of Web 3.0 and the technological advancements in the internet.

Best Web3 opportunities to start building

Here is a selection of the best web3 opportunities for you to begin with:

1. WALLET INTEGRATION ECOSYSTEM

Web3 allows people to BYOI (bring your own identity). Your digital assets and on-chain history come with you. Users will have complete ownership of their data and can enjoy the privilege of peer-to-peer, permissionless transactions.

As a result, they would receive full control of their digital identities alongside the methods and timing of sharing data by using different online applications.

Interoperability enables you to bring skins and achievements across blockchain-based games. This is web2 cookies on steroids. Users can benefit from this interoperability in various ways, such as shared account information that enables faster logins on applications.

Web3 wallets today provide only a basic abstraction over your assets. Future web3 wallets will:

• Know the sites you have connected to and your transaction history to recommend other dApps (recommendation engines)

• Intelligently highlight the assets most applicable to different dApps

• Utilize credibility scores to prevent scams and bad actors

• Connect to IRL experiences (i.e. Pay with crypto == Apple Pay)

• Don’t require opening your entire crypto portfolio to sign a simple transaction

• Enable wallet-first social media and eCommerce applications

2. NFT COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

An NFT community of stakeholders comprises customers, clients or an audience. The goal of community management is typically to increase satisfaction and build loyalty.

There is not only a relationship between the holder and the brand but also relationships between the holders. Future web3 tools will reflect this relationship.

Today, Discord and Twitter are the makeshift way communities are being managed but there will be a dedicated platform that:

• Manages the perks of membership.

• Facilitates digital and IRL experiences and meetups.

• Facilitates direct feedback between community and brand.

• Tracks all member, and brand interactions to better serve and reward power members.

• Enables opportunities for members to be compensated for brand outreach as brand ambassadors.

• Leverages on-chain activity and web2 data to grow the community and brand.

3. WEB3 ONBOARDING User Experience

User onboarding is the process or action of integrating or familiarizing a new customer or client with particular products or services. A positive user experience (UX) is one of the elements that affect the success rate of onboarding web3 users.

Onboarding onto web3 today is high friction. You need to store your 12-word phrase securely IRL, buying cryptocurrency is either incredibly time-consuming or has exorbitant fees and signing a single malicious transaction could drain your entire portfolio.

Web 2.5 custodial wallets will obfuscate full wallet ownership in exchange for traditional web2 services like customer support, forgot password and scam protection, and fraud insurance. Although against the pure web3 ethos, this is the only way to onboard the masses.

4. PHYGITAL PLATFORMS

Phygital is a marketing term that describes blending digital experiences with physical ones. This term was basically created to improve customer experience.

Companies that utilize aspects of both the physical and digital worlds do so to provide their consumers with a way to experience their products like never before.

NFTs enable a completely new wave of bottoms-up brand building. Specifically, physical products backed by NFTs will emerge as a superior asset class. Many tools and platforms need to be built around this phygital ecosystem.

• Manufacturing physical goods tied to NFTs

• Platform to manage, trade, and burn NFTs for physical goods

• NFTs as product lifecycle metadata (from cotton field to t-shirt designer and store sold)

• Data analytics for consumer buying/trading of phygital goods.

5. CUSTOM BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTIONS

Blockchain has become very popular in several industries. The fast growth of blockchain can be traced to its use of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. This makes all blockchain-based applications a high level of trust.

Custom blockchain solutions can resolve many business issues and can help in creating innovative solutions. Some of the business benefits of custom blockchain development services include:

• Seamless transactions by eliminating intermediaries

• Reduced risks with cyber-proof security levels

• Enhanced level of brand trust and better ROI

• Better business operational efficiency

• Reduced costs for international transactions

• Innovative solutions to gain new clients.

On-chain data is public which prevents many use cases that require private data. Certain gaming projects may have specific requirements for the blockchain they deploy on.

Deploying a blockchain will be as simple as deploying a new AWS S3 instance. A few knobs to define are:

• Scale of transactions

• Transaction speed requirements

• Public/private

• Interoperability with other blockchains

Technical complexities (ZK rollups) will be abstracted away.

6. TOKEN-GATED EXPERIENCES AND PRODUCTS

Token gating allows access to perks, benefits, content, or events exclusively to the holders of a particular type of token.

Think of the NFT as a pass into the VIP level of certain parts of an NFT community. With token gating, holders get exclusive access to whatever is token-gated only when they own the NFT.

The rise of NFTs and Web3 has made digital token gating a useful and engaging way to push the possibilities of NFT utility further.

TokenProof enabled NFT communities to gather IRL in a secure and simple fashion. Shopify even released token-gated merch shops. This is only the beginning.

We will see:

• APIs to enable token-gated experiences for other dApps

• Flexible filters based on multiple NFTs and timeframe of holding

• Tracking IRL attendance to enhance NFT

• Self-serve event and ticket creation. Anyone in the community can create an event.

• Discoverable events based on NFTs

7. CROSS-CHAIN ABSTRACTION

Cross-chain smart contracts are decentralized applications that are composed of multiple different smart contracts deployed across multiple different blockchain networks that interoperate to create a single unified application.

This new design paradigm is a key step in the evolution of the multi-chain ecosystem and has the potential to create entirely new categories of smart contract use cases that leverage the unique benefits of different blockchains, sidechains, and layer-2 networks.

In an ideal user experience, users don’t know and care about the underlying blockchain. Just like when we visit a website, we have no idea if it is being hosted on AWS or GCP and if the database is SQL or NoSQL.

Bridges for currency, assets and experiences will serve as the underlying foundation for the web3 experience. Interoperability is only possible if the different blockchains play well together.

In summary, we are only scratching the surface of what a web3 future looks like. Talented builders all over the world are quietly building incredible user experiences in the bear market. It will take time to be built and adopted by the masses.

Which of the web3 opportunities are you most excited about in the web3 space? If you are not building something, now is the perfect time to start.