We all know that identifying narratives early enough can be profitable in crypto. Just over a year ago, not that many people cared about NFTs. But this year, everything has changed for this sector. NFTs exploded, along with the number of people that wanted to own and build infrastructure around them.

Investors, who identified the NFT narrative early, made significant gains.

So in this email, I want to cover some crypto sectors (narratives) that I think will be popular in 2022. Hopefully, my ideas will help you make wise investment decisions in the upcoming year.

NFT Infrastructure

This year was a great year for NFTs. The number of NFT projects and collections exploded, along with NFT market capitalization and trading volumes. According to DappRadar, NFT trading volume exceeded $23b in 2021, compared with just $100m in 2020.

Despite all of this growth, the NFT market still remains nascent. Price discovery and liquidity remain one major challenge for many NFTs. Very often, there is just no liquidity to execute trades.

Overall, from an infrastructural standpoint, the market remains underdeveloped. However, in 2022 this is likely to change. Infrastructural projects that solve NFT market problems can potentially produce great returns for their investors.

I encourage you to look for projects that improve the liquidity and pricing of NFTs. NFTs lending and borrowing can also become a big thing in the upcoming year.

Additionally, look for decentralized marketplaces. On Ethereum, Opensea is the dominant player. Still, we all know that the future is decentralized, so sooner or later, decentralized marketplaces for NFTs will likely become as popular as DEXes in crypto trading.

Gaming and Metaverse

Gaming and Metaverse trends will continue to develop in 2022. If you followed our Insights newsletter, where we tried to cover the gaming sector, you probably know that many big games plan to launch to a full extend next year.

Similar to NFTs, this market just started gaining momentum this year. In 2021, many big gaming projects were selling in-game items and lends but did not offer an actual gaming experience for their users.

In 2022, this will change. Finally, besides speculating on in-game items, gamers will have a chance to play actual games. This will likely attract even more people to the gaming sector and to crypto in general. We all know the success of Axie Infinity, with over one million daily active users.

If you want to become a blockchain gaming expert, follow the sector, join top gaming guilds, play these games yourself, and I am sure you will find success next year.

Cross-chain communication

We all have seen the explosion of Ethereum alternatives this year. Ethereum scalability issues and expensiveness catalyzed the growth and development of the blockchain sector.

Ethereum dominance fell, and now many teams are building dApps on other chains, as well. However, the problem with such development is that now there are a number of completely separate ecosystems that do not communicate with each other.

Projects that will solve this problem and allow smooth cross-chain communication between chains could become the biggest gainers next year.

Composability was one of the main growth factors for DeFi. Similarly, interchain composability can potentially inspire a new wave of blockchain dApps that work simultaneously on several chains.

So, look for projects that build cross-chain bridges and work on allowing cross-chain smart contracts calls. They are building an essential piece of infrastructure for the crypto market.

Did you like the content of this Email? Follow us on Twitter.

Our research team at SIMETRI is also constantly sharing alpha. So feel free to follow me: Alexander Mardar, and my colleagues: Anton Tarasov, Sergey Yakovenko, and Nivesh Rustgi.