This year's TOKEN2049 is the most lively one in history. Not only has the number of participants doubled compared to last year, many peripheral activities have also reached new heights. Practitioners, developers and enthusiasts from all walks of life are actively looking for future application directions through exchanges and collisions of ideas.
Despite the continued expansion of the industry, this year's conference showed a mixture of excitement and anxiety amid the hustle and bustle, reflecting the huge changes facing the crypto market and providing a window into the industry's current and future trends.
1. Innovation and Dilemma: Focus Projects on TOKEN2049
This year's TOKEN2049 conference witnessed the new direction of industry development. Traditional leaders faced unprecedented challenges. At the same time, emerging forces emerged, demonstrating their unique application potential and broad market prospects, and are redefining the market competition landscape.
1. Ethereum: The public chain hegemon is gradually losing respect
As the king of public chains, Ethereum has always been one of the focal points of discussion at the TOKEN2049 conference. However, Ethereum's performance this year has been questioned by many. At the conference, Ethereum founder Vitalik discussed the popularity of cryptocurrency and unexpectedly attracted the attention of the community through a musical performance. The performance sparked polarized reviews in the crypto community, with some praising it as a pleasant leisure moment, but others criticizing the performance as inappropriate, believing that it would be better to focus on the technical development of Ethereum instead of entertainment.
In fact, Ethereum is currently experiencing unprecedented doubts. In this cycle, Ethereum and its ecosystem seem lackluster. The ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen to a three-year low, and the once highly anticipated L2 has failed to release vitality as expected. The dispersion of liquidity and user attention has exacerbated the fragmentation of the Ethereum ecosystem. In addition, the recent large-scale selling behavior of the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik has also been criticized by the community. The doubts and difficulties have even forced the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik to personally explain.
Ethereum is already a very large decentralized business entity in the entire crypto market and even in the traditional market. There has never been such a business entity in history. The test for the entire Ethereum community and Vitalik Buterin will continue to become more and more severe. The biggest problem of Ethereum at present is that its application has encountered a bottleneck period, which is also a problem faced by the industry.
2. Solana: High community cohesion
Compared to the FUD encountered by Ethereum, the performance of Solana ecosystem is obviously more stable and has become the hottest topic at this conference. Solana's peripheral event "Solana Breakpoint" has been highly praised, and many people believe that this event is even comparable to the main venue of TOKEN2049. Dozens of projects released new products at Breakpoint, attracting a large number of participants, and every venue was full, which made people think of the grand occasion of Apple's press conference or CES Consumer Electronics Show. The cohesion of the community and the focus on user growth were reflected at the conference.
Although Solana has been criticized for being overly centralized, its core infrastructure around mass user needs and user experience has begun to take shape. The term "Solana Killer" in the market not only reflects the rise of Solana, but also indicates that Ethereum is no longer the absolute overlord and the industry landscape is undergoing profound changes.
3. TON: A rising star
At this TOKEN2049 conference, the TON ecosystem also shined and became another hot topic of discussion. Every TON event was packed. It is obvious that in this difficult period, TON has brought new vitality to the crypto market. Telegram's Mini Apps have greatly reduced the development and user entry barriers. The close integration of this technology with social networks has brought about an explosive growth in game applications. Many games have achieved a scale of millions of users through Telegram's billion user base.
More importantly, some Web2 popular software began to choose TON as the platform for adopting Crypto. At the Token 2049 conference, the taxi-hailing service using TADA and TON encrypted payment became a highlight, using the high-frequency scenario of taxi-hailing to drive Crypto payment, and then introducing new users from Web2 to Web3, showing the potential and advantages of TON and real-life application landing. TON is becoming the next strong competitor in the L1 field and is expected to truly achieve large-scale popularization and application.
4. RWA and Depin: The bridge between tradition and encryption
RWA and Depin, as excellent portals connecting the traditional world and the crypto industry, have also attracted attention. During this TOKEN2049, some investors compared RWA and Depin, believing that although the progress of these two tracks will be relatively slow, they are expected to achieve large-scale product applications. For example, many people are discussing that the development of RWA may enable investors to directly purchase traditional financial products such as Japanese stocks, Hong Kong funds, US bonds and European real estate through cryptocurrencies, which will be a huge market. The rise of this trend indicates that the crypto industry is gradually moving towards a more mature and practical direction.
5. The rise of new ecosystems
During TOKEN 2049, Sui's surge also attracted a lot of attention. Sui Builder House was also one of the most popular activities before TOKEN 2049. Sui itself has been frequently favorable in the past year, and its ecology has been greatly developed. Recently, SUI's TVL has entered the 1 billion US dollar club. The only non-EVM public chains are Tron and Solana. As the leader of the Move twins, the outside world is full of expectations for its future ecological development and performance.
At the same time, the rise of BTCFi has also become a hot topic at TOKEN 2049. The rise of Layer 2, staking, and DeFi protocols, especially in the Asian market, has attracted a lot of attention. Despite the high profile, whether BTCFi can develop into a strong and scalable ecosystem remains a focus of debate in the industry.
2. The industry pays more attention to real applications
Many projects at the Token 2049 conference showed great prospects, but this year's Token 2049 was in sharp contrast to last year's atmosphere, and the essays on Token 2049 also showed pessimism. The past industry narrative is gradually becoming ineffective, and the new story has not yet been fully formed, causing practitioners and investors to feel generally confused.
Over the past decade, we have been promoting the dream that cryptocurrency will completely change the world, but the reality is far from that. New tracks that are said to represent the future of the crypto industry, such as NFT, full-chain games, and AI, have risen and then fallen rapidly. Too many tracks and projects have been hyped and then falsified in a short period of time. The poor performance of Altcoin has exacerbated the pessimism in the market, and the fact that Meme coins outperformed a number of so-called "value coins" has made the so-called value investment a joke, making practitioners even more confused.
The industry's predicament today is not only due to the general background, but also the phased death of the underlying logic. The previous industry logic and exit mechanism have all ended under rounds of shocks.
In the context of the failure of industry narratives, innovation and real application cases have become the focus of attention of industry participants. Everyone has begun to realize that only projects that truly solve user needs and realize the implementation of application scenarios can stand out in the fierce market competition. More and more projects have begun to focus on user experience and actual application effects, striving to gain a firm foothold in the market, pointing out the direction and bringing faith to everyone, and seeing the dawn.
3. The interest rate cut cycle has started, and the market has seen a turnaround
Just as there are pessimistic voices in every cycle, the development of the blockchain industry has never been smooth sailing. Every project will encounter FUD during its growth, but optimists are always the core driving force for the industry to move forward. Whether it is the financialization process of Bitcoin or the innovative attempts of Web3 applications, they have gradually grown amid countless doubts.
At the Token2049 event, the Federal Reserve announced that it was entering a rate cut cycle, which became a hot topic. The focus of the discussion was that the rate cut environment would help improve market liquidity, enhance confidence, and provide a good external environment for the price rebound and market expansion of crypto assets. The blessing of the rate cut cycle undoubtedly added a bit of "right time, right place, and right people" to this event.
However, the short-term stimulus brought by the interest rate cut is also accompanied by the intensification of potential market turbulence. Overall, investors need to flexibly adjust their investment portfolios, diversify risks, and ensure that they are invincible in an uncertain market environment. The rise of the new platform 4E has undoubtedly provided investors with more choices.
As the official partner of the Argentine national team, 4E provides more than 600 trading pairs including cryptocurrencies, foreign exchange, commodities, stocks, indices, etc., covering assets of different risk levels, supporting long and short transactions with up to 1,000 times leverage, and you can enter the market at any time by holding USDT, and flexibly respond to market changes. At the same time, 4E has also launched a number of financial products, among which the annualized yield of the current product is 2.5%, which can be deposited and withdrawn at any time, and the annualized yield of the regular 30-day deposit is as high as 5.5%.
In the current market environment, the importance of asset allocation has become increasingly prominent. 4E has quickly gained widespread attention from the market through its diversified trading products and financial services. At the Token2049 conference, 4E appeared as a platinum sponsor, fully demonstrating its technical strength and product charm, attracting many participants and achieving a double harvest of brand popularity and product downloads. Today, 4E has more than 1.2 million users, and its business covers more than 20 countries and regions around the world, showing a strong growth momentum.
The 2024 TOKEN2049 conference is over, but the thinking left for the crypto industry has just begun. From the plight of Ethereum, to the rise of Solana and TON, to the exploration of BTCFi, the industry is undergoing profound changes. Although the current narrative failure makes the market confused, every dilemma is an opportunity for the next breakthrough, and new directions are quietly growing in silence. In this industry change, 4E will continue to use its strong platform strength to help investors seize every opportunity in the market and witness the arrival of the next industry peak together.
