Author: Liu Honglin
After watching Dr. Xiao Feng's speech "Starting from the Origin" at Wanwu Island, my first reaction was: This is a sharing with extremely high information density and a vast content span. It covered topics from RWA to PayFi, from stablecoin settlement to AI and blockchain collaboration, without relying on "predicting hot spots" or "stacking concepts" to create excitement, but instead trying to explain the industry's current dilemma and opportunities with a language structure close to reality.
Stories are no longer sexy, applications are what matter
A representative change mentioned in the speech is that at the recent Web3 summit in Hong Kong, the voices about Layer1, cross-chain bridges, and modular blockchains on the main forum have obviously decreased, replaced by themes from the "application side" such as RWA, USDT payment, and PayFi.
This doesn't mean technical routes are useless, but the industry's narrative structure has indeed changed: In the past decade, financing and valuation were driven by protocol frameworks, now investors are more concerned about whether a practical scenario can be run through in this framework, and whether there are stable user behaviors and revenue models.
We have seen too many projects that "have nothing to do after completing the protocol". Now, if you cannot provide a solution that connects with the real world, merely talking about "decentralization" is no longer enough to impress the market. Talking about "returning to the origin" is meaningful at this point - because if you have forgotten the mechanism that the system initially wanted to replace, you can't even talk about "replacement".
The industry has indeed reached a stage where it needs to go back and reconfirm its starting point - not the "starting point" in a slogan sense, but what problem are you truly trying to solve when you want to continue doing blockchain products or business today? For whom are you creating definite value?
Payment is still the best application of blockchain currently
When it comes to the real application of blockchain, the most convincing example is still the Yiwu scenario: A T-shirt merchant with a USDT payment QR code, where overseas customers scan and instantly receive payment, enabling immediate shipping. This scenario might not seem high-end and lacks complex protocols, but it reflects a logic that has already been worked out - not "technology-driven", but a "business choice".
This involves no currency price fluctuations, no KYC thresholds, and no need to explain wallet usage. For merchants, it's simply "fast settlement, definite exchange rate, cheap handling fees"; for consumers, it's "can buy, can pay, no errors". In other words, stablecoins in such transactions are not playing an innovative role, but providing minimal trust substitution and the most efficient value delivery. It's not reforming the payment system, but filling structural blanks that traditional systems cannot cover.
In the past, when we talked about Web3, we always liked to say "reconstruct everything" and "break trust boundaries", but the reality is that most on-chain transactions do not need to reconstruct social systems, they just aim to reduce friction and improve efficiency in specific processes. Small and scattered business activities like cross-border retail, remote outsourcing, and content creation profit sharing, which were originally expensive and slow to process through banking systems, can perfectly become a "low-dependency, high-reliability" settlement foundation for blockchain. This "structural clearing gap" is the real opportunity window for on-chain systems.
Therefore, blockchain may not capture all scenarios in the future, but it can "replace the segment that no one was willing to handle" in certain transaction structures. It may not disrupt SWIFT, but can definitely run a high-frequency, stable channel system in local edge systems. And the real existence of such channels relies not on public chain concepts or DAO organizations, but on a basic judgment: Can your product and service truly solve my real-world problems and needs?
This is the true meaning of "blockchain landing".
Five Token Classifications, Clarify to Determine Compliance Path
In Dr. Xiao's sharing, what I found most valuable was the classification of mainstream Tokens into five categories, each with completely different value logic, usage scenarios, and regulatory requirements, and unable to replace each other.
Most Web3 project parties claim their projects are functional tokens when issuing tokens, which to some extent has been misled by Ethereum's fundraising direction. Ethereum is indeed a functional token, but Ethereum's narrative and compliance logic may not necessarily be suitable for you.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and precise approach]
The market does not care about your on-chain logic, but whether you can transplant the "financial asset trust factors" from the real world onto the chain. Taking gold tokenization as an example: If a mine owner or gold smelting plant says, "I produce this much gold daily, and I'll issue Tokens to you," this can certainly be written as a logic on the chain. But the question is, why should the market trust the Token you issued?
This is not questioning technical capabilities, but the model lacks three critical elements:
Ownership Mechanism: Who can prove that the gold is real and belongs to you? Do you have a property certificate? Is there third-party custody?
Custody Arrangement: Where is the gold stored? Who keeps it? Is there a legal disposal mechanism? Can it be seized?
Legal Structure: If payment, liquidation, or default issues arise, can Token holders claim their rights? Under which judicial system? According to which contract?
We now see many so-called "RWA projects" that ultimately fail either in ownership verification, liquidation pathways, or regulatory compliance. Future successful RWAs must have access points to traditional financial structures, legal closed loops, and on-chain structural efficiency optimization. None of these can be missing.
Therefore, you'll find that the projects advancing furthest in the RWA direction almost all have licensed financial institutions behind them. For example, BlackRock's short-term debt fund tokenization has a custodian bank, fund disclosures, and regulatory reports; the companies piloting RWA in Hong Kong are essentially starting from traditional financial products, not directly "tokenizing assets". The entry point for RWA is actually traditional financial institutions. Either you collaborate directly with them or create a more standardized legal structure.
The only way for entrepreneurs to break in is by designing a more efficient structure, not by outsourcing trust more crudely. If a project only emphasizes "asset on-chain" without addressing ownership, compliance, and circulation, it's not an RWA, but a "renamed crowdfunding platform".
Ethereum "Lost China", But That's Not the Whole Story
Xiao Feng mentioned in his speech: "Ethereum has fallen to this state because you lost China." This statement carries weight, reflecting his observations as an early participant. However, from a more structural perspective, this might only be half true—Ethereum indeed lost China, but its problems extend beyond that, and "China" itself is no longer a single variable.
Looking back over the past few years, the earliest Ethereum developers, node operators, and DApp experimenters indeed included many Chinese developers. From 2015, local institutions including the Wanxiang Group continuously supported Ethereum's technical evangelism, fundraising, and ecosystem building. The early Ethereum China community's activity was once among the world's highest. But after 2017, with stricter domestic regulations, limited ICOs, platform rectifications, and contracted developer activities, Ethereum's public space in China was rapidly compressed. You can't say this had no impact, but you also can't say its path challenges are entirely due to this.
More critically, the issue lies in Ethereum's own system choices and evolution path. Over the past years, Ethereum has undergone PoS transformation, L2 ecosystem explosion, MEV gaming, governance decentralization, and other changes. Simultaneously, the network's usability and threshold have been rising. Gas costs, development complexity, and protocol fragmentation are not unique to the Chinese market but shared anxieties among global developers.
Regarding "returning to China". Today, we cannot view this issue only through an emotional lens or policy atmosphere. Having Vitalik return to China to give technical talks, workshops, or invest in projects is not impossible, but the premise is that this system must truly serve the practical needs of Chinese entrepreneurs. In other words, if Ethereum at this stage is left with only "Staking supremacy" and "narrative arbitrage", rather than a low-cost, compliant, income-generating development platform, then no matter how you discuss "Chinese developer return", it remains symbolic. You can say China once missed the window of co-evolving with Ethereum, but Ethereum has also lost a originally crucial feedback loop in some dimensions.
Ultimately, it's not about "who left whom", but whether this system still has "practical value" and "business entry points". Developers will choose chains they can use, frameworks they can issue tokens on, and models they can profit from—this is the realistic logic. The vitality of a technological ecosystem is not maintained by sentiment or past achievements, but by whether it can currently run businesses, connect scenarios, and meet expectations.
Mankun Lawyer's Summary
This speech is worth documenting not because it revealed the "latest" technological trends, but because it helped everyone organize the industry's logical path.
When narratives recede and arbitrage windows narrow, what remains is often not the most bustling part, but those closest to reality and certainty. What truly transcends cycles is not abstract idealism, but projects that can fit into institutional gaps, complete transaction closed loops, and continuously improve system efficiency. In this sense, blockchain technology is not about creating a parallel world, but repairing, connecting, and replacing corners that the original system cannot bear.
