The threat of regulation forced so many teams to be creative in ways they wouldn’t normally be to survive. Stablecoins disrupted crypto and has crowded out the decentralization ethos near entirely. 

I think the next wave of rebellion comes from privacy preserving FHE compute, zk, and selective disclosure..

Unfortunately, the level of privacy that existed a few years ago is gone and is unlikely to ever return. 
More and more regulations await us. Governments and countries are investing significant money into this, which means they want to control and monitor all user actions. 
Exchanges will be adding increasingly stringent KYC methods and various AML checks. 
Upon withdrawal, data will be transferred to tax authorities.
I think everything will only get worse and worse.

I created a voluntary channel to fight scammers on Farcaster. Co-founder:
/rug-control

https://app.interface.social/0x591c33299a98472a91f2dc2877d91a1bc2b1f9a5

For some reason it seems to me that such initiatives and implementations will be strictly blocked, now VPN services and social networks are required to provide data upon request of the authorities. 
I think that complete anonymity in the near future will become a privilege for very rich people.

I don’t think privacy was ever the leading feature?

Some folks kept really good opsec and could compartmentalize their identity.

But we’re close to a time in tech where you could be entirely anonymous on day 0. Just got to build it.