Author: Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital
Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
Deep Tide Introduction: While everyone is talking about AI pulling in $211 billion while crypto is left with only $20 billion, Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit sees the strongest lineup of founders in four cycles during this bear market. These professionals from Goldman Sachs, Citadel, and Stripe are not here to trade narratives—they are focused on the hard problem of institutional-grade financial infrastructure, which has finally become attractive.
The founder-market fit is the most enduring signal in venture capital. Products will change, markets will change, and regulatory frameworks will change. But the pairing of specific founders with specific markets is the only constant, and it is the only thing still compounding when prices are stagnant.
We have never seen such a high founder-market fit in the blockchain space. The interesting questions have converged on two directions: AI and fintech, and the most serious players are flowing in from Citadel, Stripe, Block, and Goldman Sachs because that hard problem—institutional-grade financial infrastructure—has finally become the most interesting one.
We value four traits: deep domain expertise, high proactivity, unfair network advantages, and obsession. Every category-defining project we have bet on during this bear market, from Offchain Labs to Ondo, possesses these four traits.
The founder-market fit is the only thing still compounding when prices stagnate. Products will change, markets will be repriced, and regulatory frameworks will evolve. The pairing of specific founders with specific markets is the constant, and bear markets are the best environment to discover this pairing.
If you are deciding what to do next, the market looks grim. Bitcoin has halved from its peak of $126,000 last October, market sentiment is fear, most capital and nearly all attention have turned to AI—last year, AI attracted about $211 billion, nearly half of all venture capital, while blockchain only drew around $20 billion. Data from Electric Capital shows that the number of blockchain code submissions has dropped by about 75% since the beginning of 2025, and a well-known group of players in the industry announced their shift to AI at the beginning of 2026.
But this picture misses something. The vast majority of departing developers joined during the last bull market. Builders who have been here for two years or more have recently reached all-time highs and are now writing approximately 70% of the code. This is just like what happened in 2022 when the core developer group continued to grow despite a 70% drawdown. A bear market does not empty the room; it only clears out those who came for the price.
So the question has never been whether the market will come back, but who will still be standing when it does. The answer each cycle boils down to the match between specific founders and specific markets. This is founder-market fit, and it is the most enduring signal.
What Really Compounds
The term "fit" comes from Andy Rachleff and Marc Andreessen. But blockchain has compressed this concept more thoroughly than any other market. The people who built this technology, the cypherpunks and early libertarians, were already obsessed with the market before there were any. They had nothing else to own. Fit is everything.
Product-market fit asks whether the product has found its audience. Founder-market fit asks the earlier and harder question: why is this specific person better suited than anyone else in the world to win this specific market?
This distinction is everything during a bear market. Other things on the founder's roadmap are temporary. In the blockchain space, the product you deliver three years from now will not be the one you are working on today; markets will be repriced, and regulatory frameworks will shift beneath you. When a founder has a true fit with the market, these do not prove fatal. Their understanding of the underlying dynamics is deep enough to maintain an edge during transitions. When they do not have a fit, they will blindly turn to a space they do not understand, and the bear market will consume them.
We made our best bets in the bear market rather than the bull market, supporting founders before categories existed, from early Ethereum scaling infrastructure to today's tokenization infrastructure. In this self-referential market, fit is the most enduring signal we have.
We Have Never Seen Such a High Degree of Fit
Here’s a part that should change how you interpret talent outflow. In previous cycles, talent was dispersed across hundreds of speculative narratives, with most chasing prices. This time is different. The interesting questions have converged into two verticals: AI and fintech, and the quality of founders choosing blockchain to solve these problems is the highest I have seen in four cycles.
The clearest evidence is who is showing up. The hard problem in blockchain is now institutional-grade financial infrastructure, and this has been the problem top professionals in traditional finance have been solving throughout their careers. Nathan Allman left Goldman Sachs' digital asset department to start Ondo, which now manages around $2.6 billion in product suites, bringing government bonds and other assets on-chain. Ed Felten came out of his position as a Princeton professor and the White House to co-found Offchain Labs, building Arbitrum. Even within our own company, my partner Franklin Bi came from JPMorgan's Onyx blockchain department. The founders walking into our conference room come from Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Stripe, and Block; they are not here to trade narratives. They are here because this hard problem has finally become the interesting one.
Market data supports them. Tokenized real-world assets on public chains have surpassed $30 billion, growing over 400% since early 2025, and there are approximately $300 billion in stablecoins. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of New York Mellon have all launched tokenization products. The GENIUS Act provided a federal framework for U.S. stablecoins last summer. BCG predicts tokenized assets could reach $16 trillion by 2030. When a serious version of a problem arrives, serious founders follow. This is scaled founders-market fit, and we have never seen such concentration in any previous bear market.
The Four Aspects We Evaluate
When I meet a founder in such a market, I look for four things.
Deep domain expertise. You have lived in the market, not just read its map. In a bear market, buyers only attend important meetings, and technical depth can always beat a pitch that sounds good. Ed Felten has spent a lifetime tackling the hardest problems in systems and security before co-founding Offchain Labs and building Arbitrum. We led the seed round. This depth is why the team can clearly see the scaling issues while most of the market is still arguing about them.
High proactivity. The ability to sell a vision by demonstrating your practical understanding of specific market trends to a dense, skeptical talent pool. Stani Kulechov did just that. With no financial background, he transformed ETHLend into Aave solely through belief and understanding while continuing to build the DeFi-defining money market protocol.
Unfair network advantages. When you have both background and connections that allow you to move faster than others, vision becomes more important. A warm introduction goes further than any cold start; in the categories being built right now, this advantage compounds. Nathan Allman emerged from Goldman Sachs' digital asset world, armed with a network and belief that it was the right time to launch Ondo. I led our seed round in 2021, and today Ondo controls a significant share of the tokenized equity market.
Obsession. People leave when things are bad. Those who are truly obsessed have been in the game for years, crossing cycles, starting long before there were returns. Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Adam Back researched digital cash for decades without a market or money, solely on belief. This is a trait that won't show up on a resume, but is more important than anything else.
To the Founders Already in the Arena
In a bear market, belief is the only fuel left.
In a bull market, momentum helps founders get their work done. Capital is cheap, hiring is easy, and every launch garners attention that is undeserved. The bear market strips away all of this; the only thing left to propel founders forward is belief.
Belief is not an emotion. It is the observable output of true founder-market fit. Founders who have a deep understanding of their market continue to build when tokens drop 50% and all headlines shift to AI because they can see the endpoint that the market cannot price. Those without belief look at the same charts, lose courage, and then leave. This is why a bear market is the best time to assess founders. Prices help us filter; what remains is the signal we want to buy into.
If you are one of those traders inside Goldman Sachs, Citadel, or Stripe wondering if now is the time, here is my message: yes. A bear market is not a risk; it is a proving ground, the cleanest environment to build compounded fit. Blockchain does not need more tourists. It needs more founders with real fit to drive the progress of financial infrastructure, and there has never been a better opportunity to start than at this moment when everyone else is leaving.
To the founders already in the arena: stay focused and keep building. Founder-market fit is what still compounds when prices stagnate, and prices will test that belief. Fit allows it to endure.
Our commitment has not changed. We launched the first Bitcoin fund in the U.S. in 2013 when the price was $65, and since then we have made category-defining bets in every bear market, including the seed round of Arbitrum in the last bear market. We will continue to do so in this bear market. If you are building at the intersection of market and belief, that is where we want to enter early.
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