Many readers have expressed their helplessness and sighs about the recent market trend in the comments at the end of the article.

To describe it in one word, it is "difficult". I can really empathize with that.

Why is the trend of this round so difficult? I have shared some views on this in my previous articles. I believe the fundamental reason is that there is almost no truly original on-chain application in this round.

Compared to the DeFi, Non-Fungible Token (NFT), and blockchain games that exploded in the previous bull market, the difference is very obvious.

In the previous bull market, DeFi can be considered the most authentic on-chain innovation in the crypto ecosystem, where innovation can only occur in smart contracts and can only produce effects on blockchain platforms.

Among the many DeFi applications, the ones that left a deep impression on me are the flourishing Automated Market Maker (AMM) of Uniswap and the invention of flash loans by Aave.

These two inventions did not exist on any information platform or application in human society before the birth of blockchain technology. Their emergence has created a completely new market maker model and lending model. The latter has even become one of the common tools used by hackers to attack DeFi applications.

I believe these two inventions are milestones in the history of blockchain development.

Although NFT does not have much technical innovation, the paradigm shift it has created in human cognition is something that has never been seen before in human society. We have never imagined that a purely virtual item would become a luxury item and be invited into museums.

Although blockchain games have limited innovation in smart contracts and still rely heavily on centralized technology, their approach of incorporating economic incentive mechanisms into games has opened another window for the gaming industry, giving us at least a different exploration path in the gaming field.

Especially in the fields of DeFi and NFT, the core innovations and creations come from blockchain technology, come from on-chain, or in other words, without blockchain technology, we would not have seen DeFi or imagined the existence of NFT.

It is precisely because of this kind of on-chain innovation that we witnessed the raging bull market in the previous round, in which the rapid advancement of the crypto ecosystem was almost completely immune to external interference, even attracting widespread external attention.

However, in the current market trend, so far, the emerging tracks we have seen are either still wandering or still in exploration.

Among these potential emerging tracks, the one I once thought most likely to trigger on-chain innovation is the Bitcoin ordinal ecosystem.

If this ecosystem can solve the technical obstacles and troubles, its imagination space will be limitless. Unfortunately, so far this track is still in a state of hesitation.

Perhaps these technical obstacles and troubles can never be solved?

Apart from the ordinal ecosystem, the only other track I think has the potential to rise is the AI agent track.

But the AI agent track and the ordinal track have a big difference: its core innovation is not on-chain, but off-chain, in the centralized AI track.

An event that happened last month can clearly illustrate this point:

Before the Chinese New Year, when DeepSeek made a dazzling debut, AI16Z quickly announced that their framework had been integrated with DeepSeek. Other AI agents also quickly announced their integration.

This eager and high-profile announcement shows that whoever doesn't use the latest tools, their AI agents may be technologically behind.

So in this track, the real arms race, the real nuclear weapons are AI tools, not blockchain technology.

Since the core innovation of this track is not on-chain, why am I still so optimistic about it and think it may be an emerging track?

Because once the AI agent becomes an ecosystem and forms a "country", I believe the most suitable financial infrastructure for this ecosystem and "country" is the permissionless and censorship-resistant blockchain, and the most suitable medium of value exchange is the globally circulating and barrier-free cryptocurrency.

The AI agent ecosystem will be the real ecosystem that achieves large-scale deployment and large-scale popularization of cryptocurrencies and crypto technologies.

However, to realize this scenario, the prerequisite is that the AI agent needs to thrive.

And this prosperity requires the AI agent to cross a critical point in both quantity and quality.

Obviously, this critical point has not yet arrived. Before this critical point arrives, we may have to endure, wait, and observe.

Without on-chain innovation and large-scale deployment and popularization of application scenarios, this ecosystem has become the player's game and emotional fluctuations that we are seeing now. Even a slight external or internal news stimulus and emotional fluctuation can attract the attention of the ecosystem and trigger market fluctuations.

This violent fluctuation and uncertainty is the "difficulty" that we all feel.

However, I still believe in the future of the ecosystem, and I believe that the bright day will surely come.

During this period of patience, waiting, and observation, we might as well pay less attention to the market and read and learn more.