I. Bowing to Compliance

How did Crypto transition from niche to mainstream? Over the past decade, decentralized blockchain provided a regulatory wilderness, and Satoshi Nakamoto's peer-to-peer electronic payment system did not succeed, but opened the door to a parallel world. Law, government, and even society and religion could not constrain this internet existing across countless nodes.

Existing outside regulation was almost the only factor driving the industry's success, from asset issuance starting with ICO and subsequent variants, UNI-ignited DeFi, and today's so-called super application stablecoins, all built upon this factor, and removing TradFi's trivialities created today's industry.

Interestingly, after failing to explore new continents in the Age of Exploration, people began abandoning sailboats and returning to the past. Perhaps from the moment BTC ETF passed, or from Trump's election, native crypto has entered its末法 era. The industry began seeking compliance, seeking to supplement TradFi's needs, with stablecoins, RWA, and payment becoming mainstream development. Beyond this, we are left with pure asset issuance, where a picture, a story, and a CA are the only daily conversation. On-chain meme chains are no longer a derogatory term.

How we reached this point, I've analyzed in many past articles, but fundamentally, blockchain currently lacks effective means to constrain various entities behind addresses from wrongdoing. We can only ensure nodes are honest and DeFi is intermediary-free. Beyond this, we cannot prevent anything happening in this dark forest, and many things' decline is inevitable. NFT, GameFi, and SocialFi extremely depend on entities behind projects. Blockchain has excellent fundraising capabilities, but who constrains project parties to reasonably use these funds and turn a story into a genuine project?

Non-financialization's vision cannot be solved by infrastructure performance improvements. If these things cannot be done well on a centralized server, how can we expect to do them on-chain? We cannot implement proof of work on project parties. Bowing to compliance now might be the beginning of non-financialization, which is ironically unavoidable.

Crypto is indeed becoming a subset of tradition, with this ledger's discourse rights being stripped by upper layers. Bottom-up things are becoming fewer, opportunities are being compressed, and we are welcoming the era of on-chain hegemony.

II. Stablecoins

CZ and Vitalik were puzzled by MEME, which led to the concept of DeSci, allowing speculators to speculate and researchers to innovate. It seemed they found a common ground, but how could studying lab mice and classical mechanics be more interesting than internet memes and weird AI? This narrative only gained temporary popularity. After AI and DeSci cooled down, celebrity tokens took the stage, from the North American Trump to the South American Milei, essentially squeezing out all liquidity.

When the market began to cool and narratives failed to connect, Ponzi schemes became necessary for asset issuance. Virtuals combined Binance Launchpool and Alpha's approach, staking for new token allocation, with the ability to restake, which indeed led to a skyrocketing token price. Emmm, so naked and direct, yet no longer capturing my interest. What's next? Believe (internet capital market concept)?

I can't be certain, but in the previous cycle, amid various flywheels, Ponzi schemes, and narratives, DeFi remained a treasure that truly sparked numerous innovative ideas. What can this speculative phase create? I only see continuous simplification of issuance thresholds, accompanied by an equal number of malicious events. Do we need a new set of rules?

IV. Attention

Previously, a project's rise depended on narrative and technology, converging consensus. Now we're buying attention, like Blur using points, or exchanges investing real money to create MCN companies for Key Opinion Leaders. The PDD + Douyin marketing approach permeates the industry, seemingly more directly effective than founders attending conferences and discussing technology.

Attention is undoubtedly one of the most valuable assets of this era, yet difficult to measure. Kaito is now quantifying it, though Yap-to-Earn isn't particularly innovative, having existed in early SocialFi. Kaito's greatest innovation is AI-driven, claiming to identify information "value" and measure marketing capabilities. However, this model clearly cannot truly capture long-term value, with Tokens becoming a "fast-moving consumer good".

I believe everyone is deeply familiar with the drawbacks of the point system, and I've previously reviewed Blur's impact on this circle. If future projects rely on purchasing attention, I find it hard to judge whether this is wrong. I can only say that project marketing efforts aren't criminal, but the current circle has a trend of universal pumping. The old crypto era has indeed reached its end. Selling influence has become a mature business, from the US President to Binance to current KOLs, with no project truly flourishing - everyone is simply pursuing their own interests.

Conclusion

Stablecoins will go global, and blockchain payment is inevitable. However, the native inhabitants here may not need these. We need on-chain native stablecoins, we need de-financialization, we need the next wave, and we don't want to live in a Web3 that sells traffic.

Time is indeed proving some BTC OGs right, but I still hope they are wrong.