Written in a moment of market declining: Don't stagnate

Original title:Death to Stagnation

Original author: Joel John and Siddharth

Original translation: TechFlow

Hello!

A few days ago, I noticed a problem with the way we write. Most of the time, our articles are technical topics written for founders and investors. This is very good. We skip drama, politics, and fraud, be willing to be nerds, and spend weeks researching topics that can be read in minutes. But we are not in academia, but in the free market, investing and building with our founders. Therefore, it is very important to keep up with what is happening around you.

If I talk to a psychologist about my experience in the crypto industry over the past six months, I would summarize it like this:

A 13-year-old introduced a Meme coin and then sold it. After a dream about Satoshi Nakamoto , the Chicago Bulls's Scotty Pippen somehow predicted the price of Bitcoin. Speaking of this, Jack Dorsey may be Satoshi Nakamoto. A Frenchman made $28 million by betting on Trump's election. By the way, Trump launched one a few days before taking office __Meme coins . Two weeks ago, the Argentine president tried something similar , and the value of $4 billion was evaporated. Now his opposition is trying to oust him. People lost money on Su Zhu's exchange . By the way, Hawk Tuah Girl also launched a token, and the result was a rug . Dave Portnoy also launched a token, also "rugged". Cz talks about his dog Broccoli , and it looks like that token hasn't been "rugged" yet - at least not yet.

Meme coins now have the power to oust the president, which is truly a far-reaching social effect.

It doesn 't mean that no good things happen in our industry. In October, the UAE clarified that no tax on cryptocurrencies was imposed. In the United States, banks can now host Bitcoin. Someone made $25,000 by cheating his agent to transfer money. Oh, and, Marc Andreessen transferred $50,000 to an agent, prompting a token's market value to $1 billion. There are rumors that the U.S. government is developing strategic cryptocurrency reserves. OpenSea may eventually issue tokens to save NFT traders who have suffered heavy losses in 2022. FalconX acquires Arbelos. Coinbase clarifies that the SEC has dropped all lawsuits against it. Last week, Bybit survived the biggest hack in human history.

The point is, we are a tough group of people. But most of our collective psychology is entangled in bad news - the kind of news driven by prices, mixed with fraud and a lot of embarrassing. You can't help but think, "Am I really with these clowns? Am I in a circus? Am I the monkey in this game?" It's all too tiring. Especially considering that the human brain can only process 10 bytes of information per second when thinking.

How do I deal with everything in 4K ultra-high definition fraud craze live streaming?

If you unconsciously set boundaries, working in the crypto industry is like throwing your brain cells into a vortex of headlines, spinning at the speed of light until the heat of the sun evaporates all your cherished memories.

A process of gradually falling into madness marked by liquidation and endless but often meaningless news flow. It's like circling around Dante's hell, jumping from sin to sin.

That 's why we, as a current affairs media, tend to distance ourselves from everyday dramatic events.

But given the current market situation and the feedback we heard when we communicate with the founders, I think it's time to do a "vibe check" (atmosphere check) for the current cultural atmosphere. It can be said that it is to deal with the brief " vibecession " we are experiencing.

"Memesis" (Memesis) era

David Perell's article on Peter Thiel 's Philosophy of Investment was one of the important enlightenments in my career.

One of the themes is “mimesis”. Rene Gerard defines the concept of “mimesis” around human tendencies to imitate and compete with others.

Think about the career choices you made at 17: You’ll see what the smartest peers are doing, or some adult who has your lifestyle you yearn for, and then choose their career path. As humans, we are born to imitate and compete with our peers because it takes extremely high cognitive load to open up new paths. We like the sense of security of "large people and powerful people".

This also applies to startups .

Keep enough smart people in a room and you'll see them imitating and competing with each other. Label an accelerator or investment fund (such as Sequoia Capital or YCombinator) as a "highest person" and we will see a group of smart people joining - not just for the financial resources that are unlocked, but for the status it brings.

YC knows this well and claims that its acceptance rate is lower than Harvard. Status is not a product with clear price, but it is definitely implicit in people's hearts. That's why young, motivated and ambitioned 20s will pack their bags and head to San Francisco to pay high rent, hoping to go further on the status ladder.

" Mimesis" drives us to pursue the best in the field we are engaged in to satisfy our desire for status

Image from Luke Burgis 's blog

At 15, I often wonder why so many Indian venture capitalists formed their own worldview based on tweets from A16z partners on Twitter.

After working in venture capital for a decade, I realized that they were just imitating the practice of “big money.” If you can "plagiarize" the best, why do you need to innovate? Is this an advantage? uncertain. But it makes money. This is why there are a bunch of "following the trend" products on the market. Many people imitate and iterate over a concept.

Just like Facebook isn't the first social media platform. Instagram is not the first media sharing platform, and Spotify is by no means the first service to allow users to stream media.

Repeated iterations benefit consumers. At first, the market will become crowded, but over time, the market will determine who can survive. Therefore, you need multiple founders and multiple venture capitalists to solve a problem together, and you usually use similar solutions.

Keith Gill is Soros of Meme 's stock industry. Murad is the Soros of the Meme currency world. I'm trying to be Soros in the newsletter world.

This is not uncommon in liquidity markets. George Soros became famous for shorting pounds and defeating the Bank of England. Keith Gill – known as “ Roaring Kitty ” – is known for igniting the GameStop frenzy. Both are good at pulling most participants in the market into the deals they have entered. Soros convinced traders to short the pound, putting pressure on the Bank of England . GameStop investors pushed the stock higher until Robinhood stepped in to restrict short selling.

Roaring Kitty’s actions are nothing more than a modern version of Soros’s “reflexive theory”—both designers of self-reinforcement cycles. A big deal attracted attention, people followed, prices rose, more people poured in, and assets suddenly hit a new high.

In Soros' day, there was no Twitter that made people talk endlessly. In fact, he left the market to study philosophy and write books. But today, you only need to publish a Meme coin rating list to pull people into the transaction. What Soros calls reflexivity is what we now call Meme coin fanaticism.

People often argue that financial nihilism is the reason why ordinary people invest in Meme coins. Thinking that this generation found themselves at 30 without a stable career, partner or house, they bet on random codes on Twitter, hoping to crack the financial system that broke them (and made them bankrupt). But I think this is an untenable argument.

The real reason is "mimesis", that is, imitation.

That's right, the thing that determines your career choice, which startup YC invests in, and how Keith Gill makes money is also the reason why you lose a lot of money on a bunch of messy tokens called TrumpShibuInuWallDoesnotExistcoin.

Source: Murad 's tweet

Let me explain what happens when the Internet breaks the threshold and information barriers to entry into the financial market.

Things usually develop like this:

You see a 17-year-old telling you about the “way to wealth” on TikTok or Instagram, while sharing the Meme coins he traded the day before. The office’s social media marketing manager showed off a $150,000 NFT on LinkedIn. You see that the bills accumulate more and more, and you feel that you have found another way out. A friend shared a ticker in the WhatsApp group. A new coin was launched on the exchange, and the icon was a dog wearing a hat. You thought to yourself, this is an opportunity. You invested $100 first and saw it rise to $117. What if you invest $1,000? Or $10,000? Before you know it, you will lose your credit card and you will be deeply trapped in it.

Note: It should be noted that the mention of Murad here is out of respect for his huge influence on the Meme currency market, not sarcasm. He defined the Meme currency category today, just as Keith Gill once defined Meme stocks.

Pump It

The emergence of Bitcoin in 2009 completely subverted the way capital operation on the Internet.

You can provide "labor" through "Proof of Work" (PoW, something that guarantees network security) and get Bitcoin as a reward. As asset value will further increase due to demand and deflationary pressure in the future, the future value of current labor is higher.

People are therefore motivated to provide computing power to the network and hold Bitcoin. But with the advent of ICOs, asset issuance is decoupled from labor proof, and you can mint tokens without labor.

Between March 2017 and 2018, ICO raised approximately US$28 billion.

Venture capital claims this is the future of "financial" and allows individuals to coordinate capital and resources to launch new networks. This sounds reasonable until you find that venture capital often invests at a low valuation (like $10 million) and then raises funds in a few months at a much higher valuation (like $100 million).

In the traditional venture capital world, this madness happened during the Internet bubble 18 years ago, and cryptocurrencies reappeared.

Between 2018 and 2023, the token issuance market has gradually matured. We no longer have an ICO boom, but venture capital is still keen to invest at low valuations and try to go public at high valuations. This is arbitrage.

Picture: This video from Meltdem Demirors explains how capital allocation in cryptocurrencies starts to fall freely at the moment the token goes public

There is nothing wrong with financing at low valuations itself, but reselling to retail investors at high premium without substantial progress is extremely predatory. Chamath also adopted a similar strategy during the SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) during the COVID market in 2020. Currently, the SPAC he launched has dropped by an average of 42%.

Now, everyone can become their own Chamath or venture capital fund with one click through PumpFun. PumpFun is either the most innovative financial product of the last century or the most predatory platform. The truth may be somewhere in between. Meme coins are to the market, just as pornographic content is to the media. Just as pornography doesn’t disappear, as long as greed and speculative desire exist, Meme assets will exist. And many Memes will drive meaningful innovation, just as pornography drives technological advancement.

Although discussing its morality is beyond the scope of this newsletter, I would like to share two interesting numbers.

1. PumpFun Cumulative Income Chart. Their total revenue last year was $500 million.

2. Another chart shows the number of new assets issued on Pump over the past few months.

The second chart is surprisingly similar to the previous hype cycle.

I could overlap it with a chart of ICO or NFT releases, and they look exactly the same. I'm dealing with (or adapting) two parallel realities: one is that PumpFun is probably one of the most profitable startups in history; the other is that it nakedly demonstrates the most primitive way cryptocurrencies work. Dave Portnoy questioned with interest what "rug" is.

When we say that blockchain can coordinate capital, we do not say who the capital coordinates. It can be used in cancer research or urban planning, but marginal people on the internet tend to be indifferent to these. Everyone cares about profits and avoids losses. We are adults, we have bills to pay, and we have dreams to chase. So, everyone in the market is betting on the most speculative investment, but capital and attention are lost from what is really important. This is the current situation of the market.

The real impact of PumpFun is that it transforms cryptocurrency from a niche field to a mass tool. When influencers, presidents and states issue tokens and watch prices plummet, we are not creating wealth through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin did in 2009, but destroying it. But just as personal expression on the Internet cannot be defined by creators, the results of the market cannot be determined by tools. The creator of TCP/IP can’t decide what I write in this newsletter today.

This kind of fanaticism is the price to release the "Elf in the Bottle".

Figure: This chart is a joke inspired by a conversation with ThirdPrime 's CK. I promise you that I have 0.0042 ETH in my cold wallet. I am "Ethereum Pie".

Without being prepared to be offended, there is no real freedom of speech. Without providing tools for free markets , most tools cannot be avoided to promote greed and speculation. Especially in the era when regulators are "don't off", the consequences of launching "rug pull" assets are slim. Freedom of speech is effective because there are consequences for saying the wrong words. How does a free market with no consequences work? This is a big question that cryptocurrencies are trying to find answers. But like most things, the market will eventually find its own solution.

The Meme market has many similarities with blogs and personal expressions on the web.

In the early days, blogging was a niche activity. You can open one, but not everyone can read it. I love seeing old WordPress blogs online because they remind me of an era when people write for expression, not for influence. The same was true for Meme assets a few years ago. Doge is special because the founder didn’t launch it to make it “Meme.” With the development of Meme asset tools, everyone can launch a Meme coin, just like everyone can open a Facebook page.

In social networks, attention is ultimately focused on a few creators.

In Meme assets, capital will eventually be concentrated on a few key names. The challenge is that people lose money as they mature.

Image: This tweet by Wassielawyer captures the inner thoughts of many of us

So, where should we go?

Are we "finished" as Zoomers said? Will there be dawn at the end of dawn? Do I need to look for other industries to grow my career? What should we do! ?

If I don't admit that I've thought about these issues many times in the past two quarters, I'm lying. It's not because I've lost confidence in the potential and future of cryptocurrencies, but because of the way I'm paying attention. The only antidote I found was to root my reality in human interactions, not the noisy comments on Twitter.

Every time I see my stream of information filled with the latest scams, I talk to one of the founders in our portfolio to come for a spiritual massage to restore confidence . This is perhaps the greatest privilege of working at Decentralised.co – we can get a perspective beyond information flow from our founders.

So if I were to pull the lens out and see what was exciting and what would define the next decade, I would lay it out like this: Think of it as a blueprint.

Respect Pump

You just heard my ten minutes of complaints about fraud and lack of substance in cryptocurrencies. If you're still here, fasten your seat belt and prepare for a shot of optimism and the logic behind it.

First, let 's look at the apps that do make money, because this will give us a direction to tell if these are worth the time. TokenTerminal doesn't track all the applications we want to see, it slightly tilts towards EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), but has the best data in terms of price, revenue and profitability. So, I started my survey by observing the top ten categories of income.

The income data you see below is the monthly income for each year over the past decade. The data is very detailed because we want to play skeptics. We want to see growth because – hey, what’s the point of staying in a stagnant industry? We want "hockey stick"-like growth.

When considering revenue, you will find that there are three stages of growth in the industry.

1. The first phase, I call it the "Dark Age".

Before the rise of Ethereum smart contracts. Before 2018, blockchain transaction fees were the industry's main economic output. Of course, you can consider miner income and related businesses (such as Coindesk), but this doesn't work for marginal people. The developers did not benefit directly from it.

2. Then between 2018 and 2022, applications and use cases exploded.

Revenue is no longer limited to transaction fees, but is expanded to on-chain business. You can see the gradual decline in the "blockchain Layer-1" fees, making way for businesses such as exchanges and lending. I think this is the "Enlightenment Age" of cryptocurrencies—a magical period in which people question the limitations of blockchain, violate the dogma of "savior" Satoshi Nakamoto, and create alternative business models.

It was in this "Enlightenment Age" that modes such as Play-to-Earn (Axie Infinity) and yield farming took off. Of course, some chapters ended in failure, like the political alliances in medieval Europe. But it paves the way for people to question possibilities and explore new paths.

3. After 2022, a new category is rising at an astonishing pace.

Guess what I call it? This is the "industrial age" of cryptocurrencies. Just as humans have discovered the ease of machine manufacturing and transportation, crypto practitioners have also discovered the possibility of revenue that can be expanded without human intervention.

The "alchemy" of this era is a stablecoin.

Everyone wants profits and rapid capital flows. Fintech companies still rely on banks, and banks rely on governments to decide on rules for capital flows. Stablecoins abstract the rules facing financial technology companies in history and gave birth to a new generation of business. Tether and Circle made more than $5 billion in a year.

According to the Economist, the value transfer of stablecoins reached US$2.76 trillion last year, accounting for about 2/5 of all transactions on the blockchain, and only 1/5 in 2020. The same article pointed out that in March 2024, stablecoin transactions accounted for 4% of Türkiye's GDP. This article does not specifically discuss stablecoins, so I won’t say much.

Now that we have established that this industry can make money and reach billions of dollars in size, it is worth exploring how "stick" these revenues are. Cryptocurrency income may be seasonal, but on scale, it can change lives. Think of the OpenSea, PumpFun, or Play-to-Earn craze. Of course, some people would say that NFTs and Meme assets have caused a huge "bubble" and ruined the lives of many people.

Discussing whether the market is zero-sum game is beyond the scope of this article (I don’t want to put you in a deeper existential crisis either). But one way of thinking is that the income in these cycles is high enough to make the company money that it wouldn't have made in its entire life.

A mental model suitable for blockchain native applications is that product maturity varies.

Depending on the market cycle, the speculative premium of the product will increase. Take stablecoins for example, it has grown to the point where large enterprises can use them to remit money. That's why Stripe made a $1 billion acquisition in the field last year.

On-chain analytics tools sold to the government (such as Chainalysis) and smart contract auditing companies (such as Quantstamp) have also reached mature revenue scale. These businesses have considerable cash flow and sufficient profit margins, attracting the attention of traditional capital.

Picture: For reference only, not as an absolute basis. Many of the positionings here are subjective

If you superimpose these problems, you will get a matrix. One end is centralization and decentralization, the other end is seasonal. Extremely seasonal applications like FriendTech may be centralized, but it is difficult to bring value to the ecosystem because they rarely pass on value to edge users. Although mostly decentralized, Uniswap is difficult to give back value to shareholders. That's why last year they started adding fee switches to the front end. Since then, Uniswap labs has incurred nearly $103 million in fees.

The business needs of entities – income, profit margins and capital allocation controls often conflict with our desire to decentralize and deliver value to users.

A few companies have found a balance point - both innovative and decentralized, while delivering value to users and having enough room for growth.

My personal favorite is Layer3.

If you first heard of Layer3, think of it as an advertising network that aggregates one of the largest user bases in the cryptocurrency space. They help new users discover native crypto products and reward users with early attempts with USD or cryptocurrency. So, if you are a new app or a newsletter like us, you don’t place ads on Google to attract targeted attention, but go to Layer3 to get a carefully selected group of crypto native users. Unlike Google, Layer3 gives most of the value generated back to users in an incentive form.

In the past, I have written articles about how they aggregate users . On average, about 60,000 users trade on their products every day. Last quarter alone, they gave back about $1.4 million to users. The total annual total reached US$5.8 million.

In the advertising world, $5.8 million may be trivial. Kanye West spends more money on Super Bowl ads than that. But the point is, this $5.8 million is interesting because it is an early example of the product giving value back to users. It is an open advertising network where consumers (i.e., early adopters) receive tangible dollar compensation through a global pipeline of funds.

Working Theorys Anu has a subtle framework for zero-sum and positive-sum products. She noted that some products will reduce the use of others. For example, you either use Google Docs or Notion. Companies rarely switch between the two, because each product suite has a locking effect and you need to manually migrate the entire team. But some products are positive – you can handle different use cases on the same day with Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT. These products do not erode each other's market share until users' preferences are as clear as Google and Bing.

Predatory products tend to be zero-sum because they make the (ordinary) user worse. If there is a potential economic reason, the market is not a zero-sum game. Those who bought Tesla stocks in 2018 made profits from subsequent rises and did not need others to lose money. You can say that the stock trend is related to Tesla's output. But in the Meme market, games are becoming more and more like negative sum.

The reason is very simple:

Users need others to invest capital in order to make asset prices rise. This is fair in itself – all capital markets operate in this way. But users still need this "atmosphere" to last for a long time. From the beginning, you expect the fanaticism to last. This is OK, because "greater fool theory" will make people buy assets. But as prices rise, people reevaluate their "net worth" based on weak liquidity pools. For example, there is a Congo-related token with FDV (full dilution valuation) of $1 billion, but the trading pool is less than $5 million. People “revaluate” net worth based on this illusory capital, and when the game inevitably ends, they are usually in a worse situation.

Products like Layer3 are positive because they do not directly extract value from users. If you use their tools and stick to them long enough, you can make thousands of dollars just as an early adopter. As cryptocurrencies cross the user divide, we will see more and more product optimizations as positive, as this is how to build a user critical mass. The more users Layer3 users, the more capable the team will be to negotiate better deals for users.

Marketers also prefer Zhenghe games because they know that Layer3 brings more skilled and experienced users - they have used multiple related products.

One way to think about the current state of cryptocurrencies is through what I call a "marginal adjacent user" perspective. In emerging fields, founders are often more suitable for solving niche problems. In the 1970s, Jobs and Wozniak created products for enthusiasts who were familiar with computer technology but needed portable and affordable home computers—niche, technical, expensive, and targeted. By contrast, Jobs of the 1990s was obsessed with bringing technology to the masses—less technical, more versatile, price-sensitive and extremely user-friendly.

If you build in the crypto field by 2021, it is feasible to create products for active users on the chain because each customer’s revenue is high enough. In a market full of curiosity, selling novelties is effective. But as users lose money and lose interest in the following years, expanding the market becomes important. A few chains and applications (mainly on Solana) did a great job of capturing the next wave of on-chain users. The risk is that these products may repeat the mistakes of DeFi in 2019 – just slightly faster, slightly cheaper, slightly better experience, but essentially doing the same thing.

According to the latest report from Mary Meeker, there are about 3 billion people on the internet today. By the most optimistic estimate, cryptocurrencies have monthly transaction users ranging from 30 million to 60 million. This is already very generous. But think about it, there are multiple products that have been competing for these users. Essentially, this is “industry consumption” – market growth is not enough to accommodate multiple participants.

Therefore, teams either compete on (i) pricing (ii) incentives or on (iii) functions until they die out due to insufficient profit margins—a veritable "bottom-to-bottom competition."

What is the alternative? It is to build things that can go mainstream, because the mainstream market has both a "moat" and a profit margin. Our "popularity contest" in the crypto space about who has the highest TPS (trading volume per second) and who is more "aligned" (consistent) is useful for information flow, but cannot pay the bill. Layer3 attracts me because they are not chasing existing users, they expand the market and capture part of the value from it.

The theme of "expanding the market" is not limited to Layer3. OpenRank is a product built on Farcaster. Since user activity on Farcaster is often relayed on an open network (blockchain), it is easy to evaluate which users are valuable and which communities are natural. OpenRank helps identify the right users and inspire them directly with tokens, NFTs, or early access. This means that any developer can target any user on the social network.

Figure: Karmalabs maps Farcaster users in their filters

Layer3 and OpenRank are two different approaches to advertising in the blockchain era.

One is planning protocols, users and incentives, and the other is allowing the market to identify users and directly locate them on an open network. While it remains to be seen how Farcaster evolves and which advertising model will last, it is certain that blockchain is changing the way content value is transferred on the web. Of course, this market is still niche at the moment, but they have the potential to achieve exponential growth.

An example I have witnessed is stablecoins. In 2019, the total market value of stablecoins was about $1 billion, and it was hard to imagine that they would reach $204 billion in five years. But today, the total market value of stablecoins is so much.

So, the key question is, can the market for cryptocurrency-related users be equally large? Can they grow to hundreds of millions of users in the next five years? What is needed to build such a world?

In the industry segment that interacts directly with hardware networks, we have seen some early clues.

For example, Frodobots __ and Proto __ Use points or tokens (such as USDC) to incentivize users to plot geospatial data. Frodobots delivers physical robots to users, riding them through towns, and products upload data to create the world's largest city navigation dataset. Proto motivates users to use their mobile phones to help draw dense urban networks. What attracts me about these models is that they capture data from third parties without trust (via device sensors) while motivating users with global capital networks.

UpRock is using crowds to provide data for website monitoring, a variant.

UpRock's SaaS platform Prism provides an alternative uptime monitoring system with an accuracy comparable to DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Their network consists of nearly 2.7 million devices worldwide, forming the backbone of UpRock—the core consumer product that powers Prism. When developers need insight, they can leverage UpRock’s user base—many users earn rewards by running mobile and desktop apps to collect data. Can this be achieved on the legal currency track? sure.

But try making millions of micropayments in over 190 countries every day and see what happens. UpRock uses blockchain to speed up payments and maintains a verifiable, public past payment history. They connect all this with core tokens (UPT). As of writing, the team destroyed UPT when it comes to earning external revenue through Prism.

This is not to say that we are in a wave of radical innovation that is about to make the tokens "defying the sky" like Iron Man.

No, we are not at that point. The best example is agent tokens, which demonstrates the gap between innovation and token performance. Let me start with a set of charts.

After the hype cycle, we can ask ourselves with confidence: Is there anything valuable hidden in this field?

The most compelling intersection between cryptocurrencies and AI lies not in the agent itself, but in the decentralized training and computing network—training and serving AI models on globally distributed computer and GPU networks through token incentives.

You can see early iterations of this pattern through Pond's model factory . They are inspiring to create a machine learning-capable model that simulates how judges rank open source contributions.

So, you can collect data (like UpRrock) and you can find people to build models (like Pond). But where do you run these models in a world where energy and computing power are scarce? Shlok explained this in a previous post and I will share his original words:

Who are these new AI native markets? io.net is one of the early leaders in the aggregation of enterprise-class GPU supply, with over 300,000 proven GPUs on its network. They claim to save 90% of costs compared to centralized incumbents and earn more than $25,000 per day ($9 million in annual revenue). Similarly, Aethir aggregates over 40,000 GPUs ( including over 4,000 H100s) to serve AI and cloud computing use cases. Previously, we discussed how Prime Intellect creates a large-scale decentralized training framework. In addition to these efforts, they also offer a GPU marketplace where users can rent H100 on demand. Gensyn is another project that has been placing a big bet on decentralized training, which adopts a similar training framework and GPU market approach.

In other words, cryptocurrencies have evolved to the point where we can get data, models, fine-tune models and assemble the physical infrastructure needed to run AI models. At the same time, ordinary people in the crypto field are still asking "When will it rise?" - completely unaware that they are sitting on a bunch of "uranium" that can take us further. Some developers realize this. Gud.Tech and Nomy __ Teams such as this are working to create a transaction agent that can accept user input, understand the context and execute transactions.

what does that mean?

Chatbots have been around since at least 2015. Getting information from a robot is not new. What attracted me to Gud and Nomy was how they abstract the complexity of buying assets across chains. Nomy provides a simple chat box where you type "Buy 50 po on base with my eth", and the agent will automatically complete the transaction without the user's multiple signatures. Similarly, Gud is developing a trading product that almost always provides the best price for users by optimizing the source of liquidity. These products blur the line between our consumption information (Twitter, communications, etc.) and executing transactions, and it is all based on advancements in AI.

Why do I specifically mention these two teams? Because they are the essence of everything we have discussed so far.

1. They are targeting cryptocurrency-related users, rather than competing for existing small user groups.

2. They are not zero-sum because their growth depends on the ongoing participation of users.

3. They package critical infrastructure (such as gas-free transactions) into a single product that users can use.

4. They are built in the cutting-edge areas of cryptocurrency and AI in a way that is relevant to the average Internet user.

I particularly emphasize Gud and Nomy because they are built by teams who have been deeply involved in the infrastructure field before turning to the application layer. This reveals the simple fact: the era of application has arrived. If cash flow, revenue, moats and user retention are really important, the application will take on this mission. The infrastructure is so mature that it doesn't make much sense to argue about TPS (trading volume per second). We are unwilling to give up these rules of thumb, just another sign of stagnation.

To evolve, we need to change the way we talk. Perhaps, even develop a shared optimistic language.

Cathedral, not trenches

1940 年代中期，随着二战威胁的减弱，航空界迎来了一个新挑战——建造模仿鸟类的飞机，确切地说是模仿鸽子（顺便说一句，这来自 《我的飞行汽车在哪里》 ，一本很棒的书）。挑战是建造一架能在后院降落、无需长跑道的飞机。尽管飞机的效率在载客量和燃油效率方面有了巨大提升，我们至今仍没有零售拥有的飞行飞机。

这是否意味着航空业失败了？ No. 1961 年， 约翰·F·肯尼迪说：

我们选择登月。我们选择在这个十年内登月并做其他事情，不是因为它们容易，而是因为它们困难，因为这个目标将组织和衡量我们最好的精力和技能，因为这个挑战是我们愿意接受的、我们不愿推迟的、我们决心赢得的挑战，还有其他挑战。

在这种乐观主义的推动下，数十年后，美国在冷战期间的投资和精力为今天的硅谷奠定了基础。更有趣的是，1903 年，媒体公开辩称我们再过一百万年也不会有飞行器。一百万年！ ?听起来他们指望进化来帮我们。但我们没有盲目等待。

我们让它成真。 1969 年，我们登上了月球。

但在1903 年到1969 年间，飞行尝试多次失败。加密货币的感觉很像那样——我们太专注于完善“引擎”，而非让它真正服务于“运送乘客”。肯尼迪的政治意愿为航空注入了新的能量和方向——动员人民、资源和政策，朝着一个使命前进。这不是一次性事件，而是一种模式。

在David Perell 关于Peter Thiel 的文章中，他强调了中世纪欧洲在毁灭和危险时期如何团结起来建造大教堂。这些建筑是希望的象征，建造耗时数百年，耗费大量资源。它们需要协调财务、安全、人才和劳动力——远超日常的努力。

建造大教堂的普通工人可能只能希望在有生之年看到它的完工。今天，类似的行为是花4-5 年时间扩展一个消费者应用，而行业的大部分人却在痴迷于技术细节。

如今，通过 Meme 币，我们可以看到，当资产发行和交易的速度快如发短信时，人类正在努力解决如何利用货币的问题。 我们以前也经历过类似的情况。1400 年代，我们适应了利率对资本的影响。1700 年代，我们发现了交易公司股票的力量和混乱。南海泡沫如此严重，以至于1720 年的《泡沫法案》禁止未经皇家特许创建股份公司。

泡沫是一个特征，甚至是必需品。 经济学家对它们持负面看法，但泡沫是资本市场识别和演变成新结构的方式。大多数泡沫始于对新兴领域的能量、注意力和痴迷的激增。这种兴奋将资本推向任何可投资的东西，推高价格。最近，我在代理项目上看到了这种痴迷。如果没有金融激励（代币价格）和炒作的结合，我们不会有这么多开发者探索这个领域。

我们称之为“泡沫”是因为它们破裂了。但价格下跌不是唯一的结果。泡沫推动了激进的创新。亚马逊在2004 年并没有变得“无用”，而是奠定了今天AWS 的基础，AWS 驱动了现代网络。1998 年的投资者能预知Jeff Bezos 会成功吗？可能不能。这就是泡沫的第二个方面——它们创造了足够多的实验变体，最终产生一个赢家。

但我们如何进行足够的实验以见证赢家？

这就是为什么我们需要专注于建造“大教堂”而非在“战壕”里跳舞。我的论点是，Meme 资产本身并不坏。它们是金融创新的绝佳试验场。但它们不是我们应该玩的长期、创收、寻找PMF（产品市场契合度）的游戏。 它们是试管，不是实验室。要建造我们的“大教堂”，我们需要一种新语言。

我们已经在Kaito 和Hype 等项目中看到了这种新语言的雏形。我没有持有它们的代币，但它们以自己的方式成为类别领导者。它们的代币价格也找到了稳定的基础，不像许多风投支持的“明星项目”，36 个月的座谈会后一无所获。随着人们意识到加密货币的核心元游戏已经演变，更多人将聚集在这种新语言周围。

图：要终结停滞，一个人必须直面内心的“怪物”

2023 年，我在写下 《加密货币失败了吗？》 时，我认为 我们将走向一个创始人与风投都认识到收入和PMF 重要性的市场。那是我在FTX 事件后的创伤后应激障碍，希望行业趋向理性参与者。2025 年，我完全意识到这不再是现实，希望不再是一种策略。

接下来，高能动性的人将创造一个平行游戏，建造他们自己的“大教堂”。他们不会在加密Twitter 上追逐名气，而是倾听并为互联网上的边缘人建设。他们将通过实际产品收入赚钱，而不是依赖交易所的“祝福”。推动这一点的动力，来自我在文章开头提到的信仰危机。

人们会开始问：“我为什么在这里？”，然后转换他们玩的游戏。

创收工具与非创收工具之间的分歧将是加密货币的巨大分水岭。最终，我们将不再谈论“在加密领域工作”，就像今天没人说“我在互联网上工作”或“在移动应用上工作”一样。他们谈论的是产品做什么。这是我们应该更频繁使用的语言。

当我开始写这篇文章时，我试图找出真正困扰我的是什么。是欺诈？是Meme 资产？不完全是。我认为真正的痛苦来自认识到加密领域的努力与影响之间的差距——尤其是与AI 相比。当然，我们有稳定币，但还有很多其他创新，人们几乎不知道或不谈论。这让我感到停滞。

In an evolving market, stagnation is death.

如果你停滞，你就死去。但如果你终结停滞，你就生存。这就是“终结停滞”背后的讽刺——为了保护生命，你必须愿意终结内在的核心部分。这就是进化的代价，也是保持相关性的代价。加密货币正处于那个十字路口。它必须选择终结自己的某些部分，让那些能进化和主导的部分有机会成长，超越初级阶段。

敬仰大教堂，

Joel John

这篇文章很大程度上受到了 泡沫和停滞结束的启发。 如果你还没有读过，我绝对恳请你读一读。