How to contribute to blockchain innovation

I have been a very early adopter of crypto. I created my first Dogecoin faucet in 2016 and since then I have been surfing the crypto wave in its ups and downs. There are so many things that have evolved together with crypto. First it was possible to transact peer-to-peer. Something that was hardly possible to do without an intermediary before. Then blockchains evolved to contain much more in their ledgers. This again opened the space for NFT's, tokens, liquidity pools, DAO's, any many more. When I look at all what crypto has made possible, I believe that the level of innovation has been pretty amazing. However, not everything survived and I have the feeling that the boom is a bit behind us when it comes to technological development.

What is missing for more technological advances?

The first problem I see with the crypto world is that it has become simply too big. There are so many tokens, so many blockchains and so many projects that a lot of energy is used to build the same stuff in several places at the same time. This is a waste of energy and efficiency.
The second problem I see with crypto is that a lot of energy and resources are used to create bubbles. Unfortunately, it's not the projects that brought a lot of innovation that are successful but the ones that allow people to become rich over night. So we see a lot of meme coins and speculation that push prices to the roof, just to collapse some time later. This might make some people rich but it's not different from what we see on the share markets. It's pure speculation simply with less regulation and more manipulation potential.
The third problem is that not enough energy is used to built stuff with what has been created so far. There are such great tools that were built. Why are there so few projects that use these tools for new business models?

Creative solutions with blockchain tools

The blockchain technology has huge advantages that are hardly used by any company so far. A reason for that is probably the lack of a regulation framework. Blockchains allow to transact on a worldwide level without third party. You can use blockchains as secure data storage. It's possible to create your own token and maybe link it to a real life business. The possibilities are limitless but very few are implemented. When it comes to blockchain, we should maybe also rethink the way we work together. Thanks to this technology, people from all over the world can build something together, linked by a paiment system and also a communication system. Why not use this more?

Another thing that blockchain technology makes possible, is the fact that you have new ways to monetize your business. You can create a token and sell it. You can create NFT's and sell them. You can profit from the natural inflation linked to a blockchain. In some places you can even get delegations of stake. You often have an internal wallet and ways to transact within the blockchain. Why not try to incorporate all that in new ways to do business?

If we all wait for others to create new tools but then we don't use them, aren't we part of why blockchain technology doesn't really take off? It's up to all of us involved in blockchain to think a bit further and to come up with new ideas and new solutions.