Author: Haotian

Recently, I have noticed a pervasive sense of anxiety on Twitter, where people are complaining about various issues: the mass zeroing of altcoins, the inaction of major exchanges, and how AI and the US stock market are cleanly siphoning away talent and capital. But what are the deeper reasons behind this? I would like to discuss three points:

1) The technical concepts of this cycle are severely bloated, with a structural imbalance between infra and application layers. Too many developers and project teams are creating new chains, working on layer 2 solutions, cross-chain bridges, as well as working on DA, ZK, and parallel EVMs. The technology stack is getting increasingly piled up, and financing valuations are becoming more and more absurd, yet at the real application end, it is almost a blank slate.

Looking back at the previous crypto cycle, there were alternating rotations of infra, community, and application layers with DeFi, NFT, GameFI, etc. However, this cycle is solely focused on chains, faster chains, and the truly incremental communities and applications have nearly disappeared. Or we could say that MEME may have briefly carried this type of utility, but the inherent lack of fundamentals, speculative nature, and high harvesting properties of MEME determine that it cannot fill the void at the application layer; rather, it leads to temporary emotional fluctuations and long-term liquidity extraction.

2) The shortsightedness of vested interests has collapsed the value transmission mechanism within the industry. Instead of saying that major exchanges have no responsibility and accountability, it is better to recognize the “brokerage” nature of exchanges. Logically, in the face of a lack of quality projects and the dilemma of dumping coins right after they are listed, exchanges should choose to dig, filter, and guide genuinely valuable projects. However, the opposite has happened; they have embraced dark token-issuing groups and completely opened the gate to MEME. Consequently, a large number of tokens that have no fundamentals and rely purely on emotions and harvesting designs have been mass-produced, ruthlessly draining the market liquidity. The filtering mechanism that originally relied on the layered value and liquidity transmission from on-chain to small and medium exchanges has completely vanished.

In the short term, exchanges have indeed gained trading volume and transaction fees, and they have received support from short-term FOMO communities, but in the long term, this has led to valuable projects being marginalized, ultimately resulting in a situation with no coins to list. Relying on the survival provided by the US stock market has long been pointed out; this is actually a concession of discourse power and pricing power, which represents a form of self-castration for the original crypto industry.

3) The cohesion of the Crypto community is no longer present, and the vitality of industry innovation is facing exhaustion. Looking back at the most captivating aspects of the previous cycle, there was always active creativity and sector rotation on-chain, with funds flowing from technical infra to applications, and then to community-driven games, social sectors, etc. Engaging in yield farming, making open-source contributions, exploring niche tracks, and DeGen trading—essentially, deep engagement in a certain area could always lead to unexpected returns one day.

In contrast, this cycle has seen a high degree of homogenization and inward competition in technical narratives, primary market VCs can’t find exit paths, no longer invest, while many developers and communities are not receiving positive feedback on their on-chain investments. Over time, the crypto innovations and vitality that were once a source of pride are no longer nourished, and ultimately, a large number of outstanding developers can only be gradually drawn away by the field of AI. While it is said that everyone complains that AI has weakened the appeal of crypto, the real reason is the depletion of the internal innovation capacity of the crypto industry.

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