Written by: rosie
Translated by: Tia, Techub News
Most of the crypto entrepreneurs I know are probably on their third transformation by now.
Those who were working on NFT platforms in 2021 shifted to DeFi yields in 2022, then moved to AI agents in 2023/24, and now, they are focusing on the hottest narrative of the season (perhaps prediction markets?).
They are not wrong. In a sense, they are "playing the game correctly."
The problem is—the game itself makes it structurally impossible to build anything long-term.
18-Month Product Cycle
Narrative emerges → Capital inflow → Everyone pivots → Build for 6-9 months → Narrative dies → Pivot again.
In the past, this cycle was 3-4 years (during the ICO era). Then it became 2 years. Now? If lucky, it’s 18 months.
Crypto venture capital dropped nearly 60% by Q2 2025, compressing the time and funds founders have to build before the next narrative arrives.
But you can't create something meaningful in 18 months. Real infrastructure takes at least 3-5 years. True product-market fit (PMF) requires years of iteration, not just a few quarters.
But if you are still working on last year's narrative? Then you are already "dead money." Investors no longer pay attention to you. Users churn. Some investors may even pressure you to chase the new narrative. Meanwhile, your team members start sending out resumes, hoping to join that new project that just secured funding on this quarter's hot narrative.
Turning the "Sunk Cost Fallacy" into a Survival Mechanism
Traditional business advice says: don’t fall into the sunk cost fallacy. If something isn’t working, pivot.
The crypto industry has amplified this to the extreme—"sunk cost maximization."
Now, no one stays on a project long enough to validate whether it can truly succeed. Encounter the first point of resistance: pivot. User growth slows: pivot. Funding becomes difficult: pivot.
Every founder makes this calculation:
Continue with the current product, which may succeed in two or three years. If lucky, perhaps they can raise another round.
Or pivot to a hot narrative: immediate funding, showcase paper gains, exit before problems arise.
Most of the time, Option B wins.
The Halting Problem
Almost no crypto project has truly completed what they set out to build.
Most projects are perpetually in a "nearly finished" state. They are always just "one feature" away from achieving product-market fit.
But they never reach that point. Because halfway through, the narrative changes again. So, your DeFi protocol is almost done? It’s useless now. Because everyone is talking about AI agents.
The market punishes completed products. A finished product has visible limitations; while a "nearly finished" product still holds infinite potential.
Capital Follows Attention, Not Completion
Projects that actually receive funding:
Have a functioning product but still belong to a hot narrative: funding is difficult, may secure $5 million;
Old narrative, have a product, have real users: can’t raise any money at all.
Venture capitalists don’t invest in "products"; they invest in "attention." And attention always flows to new narratives, not completed old products. Most teams are now just narrative maxxing: they are fully optimizing the story itself, not the product. Completing a product = limiting oneself. Not completing = retaining options.
Team Retention Issues
Your best developers have received double salaries to join "new projects in hot narratives." Your marketing head has been poached by a team that just raised $100 million.
You can’t compete. Because you pivoted away from that hot narrative six months ago, deciding to "honestly" finish the product. No one wants to work on a stable but boring project. They all want to join that chaotic, over-funded project that might explode but could also yield 10x returns.
User Attention Lifespan
Crypto users engage with your product because it’s "new," because everyone is talking about it, because there might be an airdrop.
Once the narrative changes, they leave immediately. It doesn’t matter if your product has improved, or if you’ve added the features they requested.
You cannot build sustainable products for unstable users.
We all know founders like this—they have pivoted so many times that they’ve forgotten what they originally wanted to do.
Decentralized social networks → NFT marketplaces → DeFi aggregators → Gaming infrastructure → AI agents → Prediction markets. Pivoting is no longer a strategy; it has become the entire business model.
The Infrastructure Paradox
The things that can truly endure in the crypto world are often those that were built before people even noticed crypto.
Bitcoin was born when no one was watching, without venture capital or token issuance. Ethereum emerged before the ICO frenzy, when no one knew what smart contracts would become.
The vast majority of things built during a hype cycle will perish with the hype. Things built between cycles have a greater chance of survival.
But no one wants to build between cycles because there’s no funding, no attention, and no exit liquidity.
Why This Situation Won't Change
Token incentive mechanisms have created "liquid exit opportunities." As long as founders and investors can exit before the product matures, they will do so.
The speed of information dissemination is faster than construction. By the time you finish, everyone already knows the outcome. The core value proposition of crypto is "fast." Asking crypto to build slowly is like asking it to stop being crypto.
If you spend three years on something, others can copy your idea and launch a worse version with better marketing in three months, and they will win.
So, what now?
Crypto struggles to build long-term projects because it structurally excludes long-term thinking.
You can be a principled founder: refuse to pivot, stick to the original vision, and spend years refining the product. But the result may be: you go bankrupt, you are forgotten, and by the time you release v1, those who pivoted three times have already replaced you.
The market does not reward completion. It rewards "constantly starting new things." Again and again. Perhaps the true innovation in crypto is not the technology itself; but learning how to extract the maximum value from minimal completion. Or perhaps—pivoting itself is the product.
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