Author: Haotian
Original Title: MEME Casino, Developer Exodus, Wall Street Instrumentalization: Does Crypto Have a Future?
During my trip to Lijiang and Dali, while chatting with several first-line Builders, we unanimously mentioned a feeling: the current Crypto primary market seems to be trapped in a "roadless" multiple crisis:
1) Narrative Completely Meaningless, Casino Culture Fully Dominating?
In fact, what's truly terrifying is not the inability to deliver technical narratives, but everyone directly abandoning narrative packaging and fully embracing the MEME-ified casino culture.
Slow technical narrative delivery is at least still a long-term approach, with initial VC round innovation costs covered, and project teams' early construction, testing, mainnet launch, and other Roadmap implementation processes, where transparent display can help ordinary users understand the project's capabilities and form value judgments.
But now? Everything has become a pure community operation and behind-the-scenes capital game, with trading opportunities exaggerated to daily or even minute-by-minute scales. When the market no longer focuses on long-term construction around technical narratives, pure MEME trading risks are exponentially amplified, and for most people, this market will become more dangerous.
2) Developers Accelerating Exodus, Technical Innovation Stagnating?
Data doesn't lie. According to relevant data, the number of active Crypto developers on Github has dropped nearly 30% from last year's peak, while engineering recruitment packages for AI and traditional tech companies have been skyrocketing during the same period.
The logic is simple: when OpenAI, Google, and Meta are competing in the AI arms race to build silicon-based civilization, how many developers can Crypto's "disrupting the internet" narrative retain?
The key is that after two or three build cycles, Crypto developers are now trapped in a stage of rapidly declining innovation enthusiasm, with truly breakthrough technologies from 0 to 1 being extremely rare. Restaking, Intent, AI Agent, and other narrative concepts have been hyped round after round, but where are the landing applications? Where's the PMF? For some reason, everyone is reinventing the wheel but powerless, helpless to care about how far the wheel can go?
Originally immersed in market noise and garbage time, most people could still hold a belief that things would eventually improve, but now? Where are the holders?
3) External Incremental Attraction Lacking, Crypto Trending Towards Marginalization?
Crypto's attraction to external funds and talent is clearly insufficient. Look at the current situation: the real secondary Altcoin season is in the US stock AI market, the real primary innovation market is in web2 AI, and Crypto's appeal to traditional VC and top talent is increasingly diminishing, instead earning a "speculation" label, losing its dignity.
The root cause is that besides "issuing coins", Crypto has no other solid trump card. While ETFs have brought institutional funds, it's more of a financial instrument-level recognition, and Wall Street's capital inflow is merely an asset allocation, with a very tenuous connection to the Altcoin market.
What scenario is absolutely impossible without Crypto? In the past, Crypto's value was providing a relatively free experimental space for financial innovation. But when traditional financial institutions begin to embrace this market through stablecoins, ETFs, etc., what irreplaceable value can Crypto bring to users besides the "decentralization" technical characteristic?
Note: This topic is raised for discussion only. Despite the confusion, I'm still willing to believe that the real way out might be somewhere not far away. Staying optimistic is the best support, what else can we do!
