The long-awaited mainstream use of blockchain technology, a topic of debate among crypto skeptics and believers for years, may finally be on the horizon. Despite the deployment of thousands of decentralized applications, mainstream use cases have been limited until now. However, recent developments suggest that this could soon change, marking a significant shift in the crypto landscape.

Drawing an analogy to the Big Bang theory, the crypto world is at a similar point of singularity, where the infrastructure has improved to the point where application developers can focus on what they can achieve, rather than being limited by infrastructure constraints. Over the past year, developers have provided fast and inexpensive blockspace to builders, paving the way for a potential explosion of mainstream use cases.

Significant progress has been made by major players in the crypto space, such as Ethereum, which deployed its Dencun upgrade in March, reducing transaction costs for users of layer-2 blockchains to less than $0.01. Solana has largely resolved the downtime issues that plagued it until last year, leading to a substantial increase in economic value on the protocol. New entrants have also been emerging rapidly, with new layer-1 blockchains such as Sui, Sei, and Aptos launching in the past 18 months, promising unprecedented levels of throughput.

This trend is expected to continue, with more new and innovative blockchains expected to enter the market throughout 2024 and beyond. The availability of multiple blockchains that can operate reliably at scale and at low cost has facilitated a shift in focus from infrastructure limitations to what can be achieved. Recent developments have seen the emergence of novel ideas for decentralized social media and social finance, DePIN networks that utilize high throughput blockchain solutions to enable real-world utilities, and AI-adjacent tools such as decentralized compute networks and AI agent platforms.

The market will ultimately decide which solutions work best once they can be tested at scale. This could result in scaled applications running on modular solutions reverting back to Ethereum, or perhaps Solana, Monad, Aptos, or Sui becoming the preferred blockchain of the masses. As the crypto infrastructure continues to evolve, one thing is certain - the future of blockchain technology is bright, and mainstream adoption is just around the corner.