2022 was a tough year.

Inflation wrought havoc across the world, tech stocks and crypto imploded, mass shootings in the U.S. happened almost every day, Queen Elizabeth died, and, of course, Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine–contributing to a global economic crisis, a massive humanitarian crisis, and the death of up to 100,000 Ukrainians.

As the year comes to a close, what do we even have to look forward to?

Are the doomers right about our future?

In this piece, I have curated 23 optimistic trends from 2022 that should get you excited for 2023. It turns out 2022 was full of tech breakthroughs and positive developments in American politics and culture.

These trends are not listed in any particular order. And each trend includes links to additional articles and reports if you want to dive deeper into the topics.

Enjoy!

23 of the most optimistic trends from 2022:

#1: False Idols of Crypto/Web3 are getting flushed out of the system

The collapse of Terra, followed by collapses at Celsius and hedge fund firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC), and FTX’s sudden bankruptcy harmed millions of people and decimated billions in crypto wealth. It will take years for the space to witness 2021-level enthusiasm again. But here’s the silver lining: investors are waking up to the power of self-custody, the untrustworthiness of centralized exchanges, and the peril of following crypto-era cult leaders.

#2: Carbon Removal Innovation is getting the corporate demand it deserves

There aren’t many people who would be opposed to removing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere if it were cost effective to do so. The problem is: there just isn’t enough supply of carbon removal tech. To address this Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, Stripe, and McKinsey launched an eight-year $925 million commitment to accelerate the development of permanent carbon removal technologies by guaranteeing future demand via “advanced market commitments (AMCs)”. The year before, Elon Musk launched a $100M carbon removal X-Prize, which is already yielding results. I’m super bullish on these initiatives, and the idea of AMCs in general.

#3: The Seeds of a Web3 Civic Renaissance are being planted

Many DAOs created in the last couple years are getting crushed by the bear market that began this year. And even before the bear started, most DAOs were not designed to sustain engagement for a long time. But failures are to be expected in a space flourishing with experimentation. There are now thousands of active DAOs across the world. And hundreds of new internet-native coordination tools are being built every day. Many seeds will sprout in 2023.

#4: The “Normie Center” is defeating political extremism

For all the talk about the end of American democracy, in the 2022 midterms, voters rejected the “wokest” candidates from the Democratic Party and most buffoonish candidates of the GOP. Donald Trump specifically is losing his appeal—capping off a year of fading relevance by meeting with far-right extremists and with a clownish NFT trading card cash grab.

#5: The U.S. Federal Government is spending big on climate tech

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 makes the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history. While it’s not clear to me this does much about inflation in the short term (per its name), it invests heavily in securing America’s position as a world leader in domestic clean energy manufacturing, and arguably puts the United States on a pathway to achieving a net-zero economy by 2050—a very good thing.

#6: Regenerative Finance proves it is here to stay

I believe regenerative finance aka ReFi is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity to do well by doing good, and ecosystems like Celo are helping lead the ReFi revolution. Celo is layer 1 blockchain and global payments infrastructure that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. Even in a bear market year, projects in the Celo ecosystem have raised $77.3 million in funding to further global adoption of Web3 by everyday users around the world across various use cases. As one of the most redeeming “genres” of web3, I couldn’t be more excited about its future.

#7: The Alternative Protein Revolution is picking up steam

Raising livestock for human consumption generates nearly 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, which is greater than all the transportation emissions combined. It also uses nearly 70% of agricultural land which leads to being the major contributor to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water pollution. This is why a lot of people, including myself, are excited about the prospect of alternative protein sources that use way less resources to produce. Even though alternative protein still makes up only a small percentage of the total addressable protein market, competition heated up for Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat this year. You can find dozens of alternative protein options in major supermarkets—with more than 60 plant-based meat brands with over $500,000 in retail sales. Microbe-based meat has gotten enough traction that a trade association of leading companies has been founded. And the FDA just greenlighted cell-based chicken.

#8: Zero-Knowledge Tech is getting the attention and funding it deserves

It was a huge year for zero-knowledge (ZK) tech. Several dozen talks during the largest Ethereum conference of the year, Devcon, were centered on it. ZK tech is considered revolutionary because it allows a party (the prover) to demonstrate to another party (the verifier) that they know a certain piece of information without actually revealing that information. Here’s a good articles on potential applications. Overall, I see ZK tech as one of the most exciting parts of crypto/web3.

#9: The Democracy Reform Movement marches “Forward”

The non-partisan democracy reform, which has been thanklessly toiling for decades, reached multiple milestones this year. One of these milestones include the creation of a new political party, named Forward, launched this summer, which is co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. Its policy platform is 1) voting reform, 2) nonpartisan primaries, and 3) independent redistricting commissions.

#10: The “American Dynamism” meme is catching on

This year, a leading venture capital firm a16z brought the term “American dynamism” to the forefront of American tech investor circles. American dynamism is the belief that the only way to reverse the course of stagnation and kickstart nationwide renewal post-Covid is through technologists building companies that support the national interest. It’s a belief that recognizes that startups have begun usurping the responsibilities of governments, and venture capitalists are better at taking on risk and allocating capital than agencies in Washington. I’m deeply sympathetic to this take, and see dynamism as one of the main desired outcomes of building foundational tech.

#11: Calling out Social Media Company x Government Collusion is no longer a fringe activity

In the past, it was generally assumed that social media companies operated independently from governments, and that their primary goal was to generate profits through advertising and other revenue streams. However, as social media has become increasingly influential and the role of technology in politics and society has grown, there has been more scrutiny of the potential for collusion between social media companies and governments. Elon Musk’s #TwitterFiles series—each installment seen by tens of millions of people—confirmed many conspiracy theories about what was going behind the scenes at Twitter.

#12: Decentralized Social Media is taking off

This was a huge year for decentralized social media—both in that there are now more social media platforms for people to choose from, and that many of these platforms are not centrally controlled like Facebook or Twitter. The growth of firms like Rumble, fediverse platform like Mastodon, and web3 protocols like Lens and Farcaster reflects a growing demand for alternative platforms that offer greater privacy, censorship resistance, and community ownership. More competition is good.

#13: TikTok is losing its stranglehold on the West

Over the past few years, TikTok exploded to 2 billion users by unleashing a tidal wave of creativity, enabled by its short-form video format, music library, and video-editing tools. This past year, however, TikTok-esque videos and tools have become a commodity—with Instagram and YouTube creating their own copycats of the Chinese-owned product that are gaining popularity. And at the same time, states across the country and the federal government has banned TikTok from government issued devices. This is a good thing, because of the privacy and national security concerns of the Chinese Community Party having access to sensitive information on Americans and citizens of other democracies around the world.

#14: Federalism is back on voters’ radars

However you feel about the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe in June 2022, the ruling woke many Americans up to the fact that their state-level activism has a very real effect on what happens in their state. Since June, there has been a wave of state-level activism across the political spectrum to change or protect laws in defense of respective activists’ beliefs. While the Roe ruling is obviously a big loss to abortion rights advocates, the silver lining is that federalism is a principle and tool people are rekindling an appreciation for. One of the reasons our politics has become more divisive is that the federal government has usurped too much control over policy matters that are best left to state and local governments, raising the stakes of national politics. By returning to more localized politics, voters have more power to shape the laws that affect them, and states and cities can live up to their potential to be “laboratories of democracy,” running experiments in governance that help Americans everywhere learn what ideas to keep or scrap. Successful experiments can inspire voters around the country to ask their elected representatives to adopt what’s working in other parts of the country. To highlight one experiment: I predict states adopting psilocybin en masse by the end of the decade once Colorado—which just partially legalized its medical use—shows it’s safe to legalize. Long live federalism. It’s one of the best tools we have in this crazy 300 million person democracy to level up America—gradually then suddenly.

#15: Independent Journalism crosses the chasm

It was huge year for independent journalists and content creators. Over a million people now pay for a monthly subscription to some independent publication on Substack, up from half the number a year ago—counting Bari Weiss as one of its breakout stars. Independent political news took off on other platforms as well. Anti-establishment duo Breaking Points doubled their subscriber growth since the start of the year, regularly beating outlets like CNN on a daily basis. Top thinkers and creators are realizing they can speak more freely and potentially even make more money going independent. Sounds like a good deal.

#16: Game B is breaking into the mainstream

Thinkers like Daniel Schmactenberger and Tristan Harris have been arguing for years that the current "Game A" system, which is based on competition and winner-takes-all dynamics, is not equipped to address these challenges and that a new "Game B" is needed—capable of addressing the world’s complex and interconnected challenges, including social and political polarization, environmental degradation, and technological disruption. This year, the Game B movement reached a new level, with Daniel and Tristan’s appearance on the wildly popular Joe Rogan’s podcast. As the world wakes up to the “meta-crisis” we’re facing, the challenge becomes mobilizing the aware to become active solutionaries.

#17: Nuclear fusion is looking ever more promising

In a year full of scientific breakthroughs, from a telescope that helps us understand the cosmos to AI that revolutionized our understanding of proteins, the one that steals the show for me is the breakthrough in fusion energy research. In December 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced that they had produced the first fusion reaction that created more energy than was used to start it. Fusion is "the holy grail for the future of nuclear power," and could help enable a civilization with near-limitless supply of energy.

#18: Creativity gets further democratized

The gap of turning your imagination into reality is RAPIDLY closing. From the blockbuster $20B sale of Figma to Adobe, to the explosion of user adoption of Notion, to the release of DALL-E 2 and Midjourney, this has been a ridiculously good year for creatives not afraid to adopt new tools to augment their creativity. Imagine a future where we can create whole movies in just hours, using our imagination. That future is coming faster than we think.

#19: Fully Autonomous Cars start getting the greenlight

Fully autonomous cars will enable significant improvements in safety, convenience, mobility, and efficiency. Industry leaders Waymo and Cruise recently launched their own paid driverless robotaxis in San Francisco after several months of testing rides with employees. Expect to see driverless transport take over the country in the coming years. As a borderline workaholic who loves Ubers because he hates driving and they give me more time to get work done, but hates how unaffordable they are, I can’t wait for relying on robotaxis to get around to be cheaper than owning my own car.

#20: Optimistic Media is making a heroic return

People are tired of just seeing media that fills us with dread about the future. Looking at the popularity of Packy McCormick’s "Weekly Dose of Optimism,” Derek Thompson’s “Abundance Agenda” series, and basically all of Peter Zeihan’s books and interviews, it’s become clear that there is pent up demand for content that communicates optimism about America’s future. A creator who sensed and capitalized on this demand is none other than Tom Cruise, whose "Top Gun: Maverick's" US box-office gross of $718 million is nearly as much as the total worldwide box office of all the best-picture nominees from the last two years combined (around $726 million). That has to signal the vibe shift we needed.

#21: Freedom and Democracy outcompete autocracy

There are several reasons why people's faith in democracy may have waivered in recent years, including political polarization, economic inequality, political corruption, media mistrust, and a lack of representation. But all things considered, democratic countries had a way better year than the world’s most powerful autocracies. Ukraine and the Western geopolitical order persisted against Russia—a big surprise to many after the post-withdrawal fallout of Afghanistan. And the less strict COVID policies and superior vaccines in the U.S. have clearly outperformed China’s strict “Zero COVID” policy—an embarrassment to the Chinese Communist Party who seeks to outpace American technological capabilities and has stated repeatedly that democracy’s days are numbered.

#22: Leaders are waking up to the urgency to win the Techno-Economic Race with China

Whether we realize it or not, the race is on between democracy and autocracy to define how technology will shape the world in the 21st century. China is ahead of the U.S. in several key technology areas, an idea that may catch many by surprise. Luckily, American leaders like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt are dedicating a lot of time to raising awareness about the techno-economic race with China. The thinktank he chairs, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), released a comprehensive report in September 2022 on what’s at stake if the U.S. loses this race. It explains how this is a “decisive decade” for the U.S.—we’re long overdue in taking Chinese tech leadership seriously.

#23: The U.S. Government is finally making meaningful moves to win this Techno-Economic Race

The Chinese Communist Party has been clear with their words and actions that their goals with investing in dominating strategic technology sectors are to dominate the future of the global economy and weaken the influence of democracies in the world. So, I’m happy to hear that after decades of U.S. efforts to engage China with the prospect of greater development through trade, the Biden administration is pivoting to something that I believe will be less naive and more effective: committing to using the government to promote American competitiveness, and with bi-partisan support. This strategy to win the race with China includes two agendas: “promote” and “protect.”

The “promote” agenda is essentially industrial policy—using the government to promote American competitiveness. That involves (but is not limited to) approving hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for domestic manufacturing in the CHIPS for America Act and Inflation Reduction Act last summer (focused on breaking U.S. reliance on China), and new rules against U.S. companies working with Chinese chipmakers.

The “protect” agenda involves issuing new rules aimed at cutting off Chinese firms’ ability to manufacture advanced computer chips, regulating U.S. investments in China (the first time the federal government will exert such power over American industry), and an executive order to limit the ability of Chinese apps like TikTok to collect data from Americans.

Taken altogether, this strategy represents a reversal of the American policymakers’ complacency with China beating the U.S. in technological development. No longer.

Judging by these trends from 2022, 2023 is giving us a lot to look forward to.

Politicians appealing to normie sensibilities are winning elections. Foundational tech innovation is racing forward. Our leaders are starting to get their shit together. And Americans are regaining conviction in liberal democracy.

A potential recession starting in 2023 will be challenging for all of us, but we’ll get through it.

Prolonged national stagnation (or worse, collapse) is not inevitable. A great leap in progress toward America 2.0 is possible. Let’s keep these trends going in 2023.

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Signing off for the year. Appreciate you all so much. So much quality long form content coming soon.

- Gary