Multiple Crises Facing the Crypto Primary Market

Recently, when traveling, I communicated with several builders in the industry, and they generally believe that the current Primary Market for cryptocurrencies is陷入一个难以突破的多重困境:

Narrative Failure, Gambling Culture Prevails

What is concerning is that the importance of the technological narrative is being marginalized, replaced by a purely speculative culture. In the past, even when technological progress was slow, there was at least the support of long-termism, early backing from venture capital, and the process of project teams advancing according to plan, all of which helped ordinary users assess the strength of projects.

However, the current situation is that the market has completely turned into a game of community operation and capital speculation, with trading opportunities occurring frequently in minutes. When the market no longer focuses on technological innovation, pure speculative risks are greatly amplified, making this market even more dangerous for most participants.

Developer Attrition, Innovation Stagnation

According to statistics, the number of active cryptocurrency developers on Github has dropped by nearly 30% from last year's peak. Meanwhile, the compensation for engineers in artificial intelligence and traditional tech companies is rapidly increasing.

Clearly, as mainstream tech giants compete for talent to build artificial intelligence ecosystems, the cryptocurrency industry's ideal of "disrupting the internet" struggles to retain enough developers.

What is even more concerning is that after multiple rounds of development cycles, developers in the cryptocurrency sector seem to have fallen into innovation fatigue. There are few real technological breakthroughs from zero to one. Although new concepts emerge endlessly, where are the applications that can be implemented? Where is the alignment between products and the market? Everyone seems to be repeating the wheel-making process, yet is unable to care about how far these wheels can go.

Decline in external attractiveness, industry marginalization

The appeal of cryptocurrencies to off-market funds and talent is clearly lacking. Currently, the truly active secondary market is in the U.S. stock market's artificial intelligence sector, while the real primary innovation market is in the Web2 artificial intelligence field. The attractiveness of cryptocurrencies to traditional venture capital and top talent is declining, and they may instead be labeled as "speculative," losing social recognition.

The reason is that, apart from the unique advantage of "issuing tokens", cryptocurrencies seem to lack other solid backing. Although the launch of ETFs has brought institutional funds, this is more of an acknowledgment at the financial instrument level and is not closely related to the altcoin market.

We can't help but ask: what scenarios are irreplaceable without cryptocurrencies? In the past, the value of cryptocurrencies lay in providing a relatively free experimental space for financial innovation. However, as traditional financial institutions begin to embrace this market through stablecoins, ETFs, and other means, aside from the technical feature of "decentralization", what other irreplaceable value can cryptocurrencies bring to users?

Despite the current confusing situation, we still want to believe that the real breakthrough may be just around the corner. Staying optimistic might be the best thing we can do. After all, what else can we do besides that?