What challenges could we see with cryptocurrency or NFTs in the future?
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It’s helpful to consider cryptocurrencies and NFTs in light of what we’re seeing with the increasing number of citizen developers. The risk here is that as it becomes easier to create some of these products, you have higher dependency and more frequent distribution of the same source code. Around six or seven years ago, there was a cryptocurrency that emerged and nobody said anything until it was running for a year, when it was proof of work (PoW). Then they realized that the developer had locked in one block that only they could mine, which effectively tripled the total coin distribution. The developer mined that and then dumped the markets, which was a fascinating way to do it.
With code validation, verification, code dependencies, SBOM, etc., it becomes important to establish how this was generated and what code was used to create it. Where is this being stored, maintained and authenticated? When you take away the centralized nature of having one trusted entity, which could be a bank or central government, you just have to trust in how it was built. Someone could tell you, “John built that using a bunch of code libraries,” but how can you verify that? If you don’t check that, then 10 years down the road, somebody could say, “I built this in and now I have the one ring to control all the NFTs. They're all mine now and I'm going to resell them on the market.” Because you would have agreed to that in your terms and conditions, which nobody ever reads.
That's the issue plaguing everybody that implemented an ERP. They look at it now and say, “Why do we have all this code in here? This doesn't make sense anymore.” But I agree with you, it's the evolution of the product cycle.
The biggest challenge is the perverse incentives for VCs to keep funding and promoting new coins and then dump their heavily discounted stash on users.