When encryption becomes a supporting role: Venture capital points out that the next unicorn will be born from "encryption-related rather than native companies"

The main stage of cryptocurrency is shifting. Dragonfly Capital partner Richard Chen pointed out that in the coming years, companies valued at billions that will change the world are likely no longer to be crypto-native enterprises, but rather "crypto-adjacent industries" that view crypto as a function rather than a product. In the past decade, crypto technology itself was the product, with public chains, protocols, and token economics being the market focus. However, true innovation is now happening at the boundaries: - Fintech companies use stablecoins as intermediate exchange tools for cross-border payments - AI startups utilize decentralized infrastructure (DePIN) to incentivize data collection and computation - Consumer tech companies open up new insights into user behavior data through privacy technologies like zkTLS These "crypto-adjacent companies" do not have crypto as their core, but create competitive advantages by flexibly introducing crypto technologies. With the rise of this "crypto-adjacent" entrepreneurial wave, investors must also readjust their evaluation frameworks. Unlike past reliance on token price speculation and project narrative appeal, the new rules emphasize real capabilities. Specific indicators include: - Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) - Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) - Total Addressable Market (TAM) These indicators are no longer just tools for traditional VCs but will become fundamental metrics that crypto investors cannot ignore. In this trend, crypto investors who cannot quickly grasp knowledge of non-crypto industries will be forced to exit. "Future successful crypto applications will not occur in on-chain asset creation and trading, but will be embedded in physical industries." The crypto-adjacent industry's appeal lies not only in application-level innovation but also in the massive market potential behind these services. Compared to traditional L1, these new services connect with already mature and enormous industry domains. For investors, this is not just an asset allocation choice but a strategic shift from a closed community to the mainstream market. Market structure also reveals this transformation: - Most altcoins' market value has stagnated this year - Fully diluted valuation (FDV) of newly issued tokens has significantly contracted - Price trends between Bitcoin and other coins have clearly diverged These phenomena remind investors that the era of reaching sky-high valuations through a whitepaper and speculative narrative is long over. Future capital will only flow to projects with real users, clear markets, and solid business models.

At the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev outlined an AI-driven future landscape: "Enterprises will become smaller and more personalized," a transformation that could disrupt the world as Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin. He even predicted that "single-person companies" would combine tokenization, becoming new investment targets on the blockchain. Tenev believes that artificial intelligence will drive the rise of "single-person companies" and change the fundamental form of enterprises. He pointed out that AI is lowering the entrepreneurial threshold unprecedented, allowing individual entrepreneurs to create high value with minimal resources, similar to how Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin alone. You will see more and more single-person companies, and they are likely to be tokenized and traded on the blockchain, just like other assets. Tenev likened this "individual as enterprise" phenomenon to the "Satoshi Nakamoto model" - a startup model driven by a single individual that can create a massive economic system. Bitcoin is an example of this, a crystallization of an individual brand and underlying technology, both indispensable. Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper in 2008 and mined the Genesis Block in 2009, launching the blockchain revolution. To this day, this mysterious figure remains unidentified yet has created a crypto industry worth trillions of dollars. Tenev further predicted that these single-person companies will not only be a business innovation but also transform into entirely new investment targets: In the future, you will be able to directly invest in a person or the economic activities of a project operated by a single person, just like investing in Bitcoin today. This structure allows independent entrepreneurs to establish their own economic ecosystem through blockchain and token issuance, enabling the public to directly participate, support, and share future outcomes. Facing AI's impact on the job market, Tenev remains optimistic, noting that AI is not just a tool to replace human labor but an empowerment tool for entrepreneurs: AI is enabling us to create more value with fewer resources, which is a huge advantage for entrepreneurs. In this future, enterprises may no longer need large-scale teams or rely on traditional funding sources. AI and blockchain will work together to create a new, highly efficient, disintermediated business model.

ICM and NNA: Fundamental Concepts of Crypto Value

Additionally, the Network Capital Market (ICM) and Native Network Assets (NNA) tracks are gaining attention with the development of the crypto market. With characteristics of "low entry barriers, high business model profit margins, and high capital flow efficiency" that do not rely on traditional financial structures, they are expected to become the foundation for future entrepreneurial models.

(Why are NNA more important than RWA? Only "Native Network Assets" can give crypto its value)

Echo: Decentralized Reconstruction of Private Placement and ICO

Finally, Echo and its ICO platform Sonar demonstrate structural innovation in token issuance. No longer dependent on large VCs, entrepreneurs can directly engage with communities, assessing market consensus through liquidity curves, cumulative pricing, and dynamic inflows. This may become a funding source for AI-driven entrepreneurship in the future.

(Echo launches new ICO platform Sonar, with first project Plasma valued at $500 million, raising $50 million)

Under the dual waves of AI reshaping corporate structures and crypto rewriting capital frameworks, global "entrepreneurship" is being rapidly redefined. Future entrepreneurs may no longer rely on massive teams, complex organizations, and high-volume fundraising, but instead leverage AI agents' execution capabilities and blockchain's transparent trust mechanisms to move global markets with individual effort.

Meta AI Chief Scientist Yann LeCun stated at the Paris AI Summit on 5/26 that current chatbots merely "imitate" and are far from being "intelligent". He revealed that Meta's AI approach will fully shift towards "world model" technology, hoping to teach AI to understand the world like humans. However, as he presented this new vision, core members of Meta's Llama model team have been consecutively leaving, raising concerns about Meta AI's development strategy.

[Rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach]