When the world was still young, a shared belief ignited a global fire. At that time, Bitcoin was a poem, and decentralization was a revolution. Today, the brilliance of Web3 is gradually being consumed by institutional rationality, regulatory order, and cautious capital. The dreamers and meme creators of the past have successively exited, leaving behind a silence after the clamor. A question is becoming sharp: When the fun dies, what remains of Web3?
In the golden age of Web3, creativity was the currency of this world. From DeFi Summer to the NFT frenzy, from the Meme wars to the brief spring of GameFi, anyone could stir up a storm with inspiration, passion, and a bit of courage. The crypto space at that time resembled a 20th-century internet utopia—chaotic, wild, yet full of vitality. People were willing to stay up late writing code for a community consensus, to pump a cat meme to its peak. Every new concept—DAO, DePIN, SocialFi, Restaking—spread like sparks, igniting the fantasies of a group of dreamers.
However, in the autumn of 2025, the creativity of Web3 seems to have fallen into a collective standstill. The turmoil of the Solana conference, the rise of the CTO meme, the controversy over the Facaster acquisition—these events, which once could have exploded across the internet, now fail to even make Twitter's trending topics. The "fun energy" in the crypto space is depleting; people are weary, cautious, and even starting to feel "cold." Bitcoin has risen to new highs, yet the market still feels hollow. Narratives have aged, and consensus has been consumed. The ideal of decentralization has been packaged as a financial product, innovation has become an institutional KPI, and romance has given way to annualized returns.
This "creative collapse" is not accidental. As Messari pointed out in "Crypto Thesis 2025," the biggest risk in the industry is not regulation, but narrative fatigue. When all concepts can be pre-priced by capital and algorithms, the fun loses its meaning. An industry that only talks about valuation and not imagination has essentially detached from culture—and the death of Web3 may very well begin at this moment.
Just when everything seemed uninteresting, an unrelated "little thing" ignited the internet. In mid-October, a mini-game called "Escape from Duckkov" suddenly topped the Steam charts. This independent game, incubated by Bilibili and developed by a small team of five called "Carbonated Squad," is priced at 58 yuan (51 yuan after discount) and sold over a million copies in its first week. There are no tokens, no on-chain assets, no funding—just player word-of-mouth driving its self-propagation. Even more surprisingly, it spontaneously formed an economic system—players traded self-made mods within the community, creating a "Duck Market," and even a "double spending" phenomenon emerged. A purely gaming experience unexpectedly simulated a decentralized economic model.
The rise of "Duckkov" can be seen as a satire of Web3: it is not the Duck Market that needs to go on-chain, but rather the on-chain that needs the Duck Market. While countless GameFi projects secure tens of millions in funding and desperately design token economics, only to die from player attrition, a "no-coin game" has instead become the purest economic experiment. Players are not in it for profit, but for fun and sharing; they do not rely on incentive mechanisms but maintain order with enthusiasm. This precisely reveals the most precious part of Web3—collaborative impulse and creative desire.
From the perspective of the crypto space, the Duck Market is an underutilized "ideal carrier"; from an anthropological standpoint, it reminds us that games are humanity's most primitive consensus tool. Humanity evolved through cooperation, not through incentives. When a game can enable thousands of people to form real trading relationships in a virtual world, the "decentralization" it achieves is more natural and moving than most on-chain protocols. The Duck Market allows us to see again: blockchain should not pursue a "regulatable economic order," but should return to a "perceptible human experience."
Web3 was originally meant to break down centralized structures, but it has instead become a new hierarchy. Veblen wrote in "The Theory of the Leisure Class": "Conspicuous consumption is a proof of status." Today, this statement is once again validated in the blockchain world. Fat Penguins, Moon Birds, BAYC… each NFT project once claimed to embody "cultural consensus," but ultimately devolved into tools for speculation and identity. NFTs no longer symbolize creation but symbolize class. The display of on-chain assets has become a new form of "virtual luxury" consumption. Those who truly create memes, design art, and write code have been excluded from the rentier system, becoming the proletariat on the chain.
This is not an isolated case but a structural outcome. Early entrants gained immense wealth through institutional arbitrage, consolidating power through DAO voting, foundation allocations, and social influence; new users act as "liquidity providers" in layers of abstract financial design. Web3 replaced the old order but replicated the old structure. On a cultural level, the fun has become a new form of ostentation. Memes have shifted from humor to marketing; communities have transformed from consensus to private domains; DeFi has changed from innovation to yield farming. Every concept has been commercialized, quantified, and turned into KPIs. The romance of Web3 has become material for institutions. We thought we were creating the future, but in reality, we were merely accelerating a form of "high-frequency nihilism." As sociologist Byung-Chul Han said, "When everything is occupied by productivity, even leisure becomes competition." Web3 has given humanity unprecedented tools but has lost the space for spontaneous creation.
At the end of the clamor in the crypto world, perhaps we still need a remnant of romanticism. The Duck Market tells us that human creativity has not disappeared; it has merely been buried by an overly financialized system. True decentralization is not about the redistribution of power but about the de-monopolization of imagination. When words like regulation, national debt, Layer 2, and yield dominate the narrative, we need someone on the other end to guard the spark of "fun"—those useless, unprofitable ideas that can still make people smile. The next revival of Web3 may not come from an announcement by some foundation but from a group of anonymous creators, gamers, and community posters. They do not care about funding amounts; they only care about whether "fun" is still allowed.
Pearls buried in the earth hide their brilliance; once unearthed, they shine brightly. The true meaning of decentralization has never been about resisting authority but about the stubborn refusal to be governed by algorithms. When we hand blockchain back to those who are still willing to "have fun," perhaps the soul of Web3 can shine again. Because only when creation becomes more important than profit will faith not fall silent.
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