The Big Dump of TIA Token: The Disillusionment of the Encryption Industry Narrative and New Challenges

The once glorious TIA Token has now fallen below its launch price, with the current quote at only $1.62, a drop of over 90% from its peak of around $20. As a former leading project in modular blockchain, TIA is now caught in a vortex of negative news, including founder sell-offs and internal management disputes.

The decline of this once-star project is not only a symbol of the downturn in the modular blockchain sector but also reflects that the once-popular narratives in the cryptocurrency space are being tested by the market one by one. In stark contrast, the Nasdaq index has reached new highs, and the stock market is in a state of jubilation. This contrast highlights that traditional encryption narratives are becoming unsustainable, and the industry is entering a crucial moment that requires real-world applications.

From Glory to Decline: The Rise and Fall of TIA

TIA, as a highly anticipated modular blockchain project from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, saw its Token price soar from single digits after the airdrop to a peak of 20 dollars during the bull market in early 2024. The project's vision is to combine the sovereign interoperability of Cosmos with the shared security centered around Ethereum.

However, as the market heat fades in the second half of 2024 and ecological advancement slows down, issues regarding TIA's governance and team gradually come to light. The most controversial point is the suspicion of collective cashing out by senior management. Reports indicate that in early October 2024, all executives of TIA completed their unlocks and began large-scale sales of Tokens, with one co-founder allegedly selling over $25 million worth of Tokens on the OTC market before quietly relocating overseas.

Meanwhile, TIA's marketing strategy has also come under scrutiny. Some well-known internet influencers have been reported to charge high promotion fees, while the co-founder of a media platform has contradicted himself regarding whether he holds TIA tokens, raising community doubts about the authenticity of the project.

Internal contradictions further exacerbated TIA's predicament. A former executive was dismissed for misconduct, triggering a public relations crisis. The project was also reported to have acquired competitors at high prices and forced them to withdraw from collaborations with other platforms, a practice that sparked much controversy and exposed the team's anxiety regarding their expansion strategy.

In the face of the big dump in coin prices and a crisis of community trust, at the beginning of 2025, a co-founder proposed a radical governance model called "governance as proof," attempting to replace the traditional proof-of-stake mechanism with off-chain governance voting. However, before this proposal could be implemented, the fact that the team's executives were cashing out was gradually exposed, leading the community to generally believe that this was merely a guise to stabilize prices and cover up problems.

Currently, the price of TIA has fallen by more than 90% from its peak, and on-chain activity has also significantly decreased. Data shows that in the past 24 hours, its on-chain transaction fee revenue was only $231, reflecting a substantial shrinkage in project usage.

The Decline of TIA: The Collapse of the Narrative in the Encryption Industry

The decline of TIA is not just a failure of a single project, but a microcosm of the disillusionment of the new narrative in the entire encryption industry.

In recent years, concepts such as modularization, artificial intelligence agents, decentralized physical infrastructure, game finance, and non-fungible tokens have all generated huge waves, attracting a frenzy of capital and retail investors. However, by 2025, these once-popular narratives have all collapsed, and many small crypto projects have faced a Waterloo.

Similar to TIA's experience, many once-popular projects, such as a certain biometric project and a certain decentralized wireless network project, quickly gained a lot of attention and achieved a big dump in coin prices by leveraging popular concepts. However, these projects often turn out to be fleeting, quickly cooling off after the initial hype.

The fall of these star projects reflects a deeper crisis facing the encryption industry: a lack of genuine technological innovation and user adoption, with industry narratives and investor trust continually being eroded. After modularization, it is also difficult to find new compelling concepts at the public chain level. Other areas that still have some voices, such as the combination of artificial intelligence and blockchain, mostly remain at the conceptual level, while the tokenization of real assets not only faces regulatory challenges but also needs to prove its necessity.

The once booming trends are being debunked one by one and quickly forgotten by the market. Meanwhile, the traditional financial market continues to bring positive news, whether it is in the US stock market or the Hong Kong stock market, stocks related to compliance with encryption, such as stablecoin issuers and compliant trading platforms, have all seen continuous increases.

On one hand, there is a lack of native innovation in encryption and a big dump in coin prices, while on the other hand, compliant encryption projects in the traditional market are favored by capital. This contrast does not mean the end of the industry, but rather warns project teams: only true technological innovation and application landing can create lasting value. The traditional encryption circle's model of hyping concepts, driving up coin prices, and then selling off has become unsustainable. Like Web2 projects, current Web3 projects need to focus more on the actual application landing and value creation.