As a former VC investor, what is your opinion on the current "VC is dead" rhetoric on CT? Regarding the issue of payment, I will give a serious answer. I also have quite a few thoughts on this argument. Let me state my conclusion first. 1. It is an undeniable fact that some venture capital firms are dead. 2. Overall, VCs won't die; they will continue to exist and drive the industry forward. 3. VCs, like projects and talent, are entering a phase of "clearing out" and "survival of the fittest," somewhat similar to the dot-com bubble of 2000. This is the "debt" from the previous bull market; after a few years of repayment, a new, healthy growth phase will begin, but the entry barriers will be much higher. I will elaborate on each point below. 1. Some VCs are dead – Asian VCs have probably suffered the most in this round. Since the beginning of this year, most of the top firms have either shut down or dissolved. The remaining firms may not make a single investment for several months, focusing on exiting their current portfolios. Raising new funds is also quite difficult. Second- and third-tier European and American VCs were relatively okay in the first half of the year, which is related to their LP structure and fund size. However, in the second half of the year, especially in the last month or two, Asian VCs have clearly shown some signs of slowing down their investment frequency. Some have simply stopped investing altogether or transformed into pure liquid funds. Investment managers/partners have started telling me on Telegram, "It's too difficult, exits are hard." The 1011 debacle had a devastating impact on altcoin liquidity, and its effects are now beginning to affect VC confidence. While the top-tier European and American firms seem relatively unaffected, at least superficially, this current VC "bear market" is actually a "delayed effect" following the Luna debacle in 2022. At that time, the secondary market was bearish, but the primary market, in terms of both project valuations and the amount of capital raised by VCs, wasn't significantly affected. Many new VCs were even established after the Luna debacle (such as ABCDE). Their thinking at the time wasn't flawed; several star DeFi projects during the 2018-2019 bear market, like MakerDAO and Uniswap, were built during that period. VCs from that 2018-2019 wave made a fortune in the 2021 bull market. The strategy was to invest in good projects during a bear market, and then reap the rewards when the bull market arrived! However, the ideal was far from reality, for three reasons. First, the narrative and massive monetary easing in 2021 were too insane. In 2018-2019, the difference between investing in good and bad projects was minimal; everything skyrocketed, with any project seeing returns of tens or even hundreds of times. This meant that even during a bear market, the valuations and funding amounts of new projects in the primary market in 2022-2023 remained relatively high due to the anchoring effect, unaffected by the secondary market. This is the "delayed effect" of the primary market bear market I mentioned above. Secondly, the four-year cycle has been broken. There was no so-called "altshell season" in 2025. This is due to macroeconomic factors, an overabundance of fakes and insufficient liquidity, a growing disillusionment with narratives and a reluctance to buy into PowerPoint presentations and VC endorsements, the AI ​​boom, and the siphon effect of "true value investing" in US stocks on crypto funds… Anyway, the previous pattern will not repeat itself. The dream of investing in good projects in 2019 and achieving a 100x return in 2021 is impossible. Thirdly, even if the four-year cycle repeats, the terms of this round of VC funding are completely different from the previous round. Some portfolios we invested in in early 2023 still haven't issued tokens after two or three years. Even with TGE, they still have to be locked for another year, and then released for another two or three years. A project invested in in 2023 might not receive its final batch of tokens until 2028-2029, directly traversing one and a half cycles. In the crypto, how many projects can survive and thrive through cycles? Very few. 2. VCs as a whole won't die – There's really nothing to worry about. As long as the industry survives, VCs won't die either. Otherwise, who will provide the resources to realize new ideas, new technologies, and new directions? We can't rely entirely on ICOs or KOL funding rounds, can we? ICOs are more about getting some retail investors and the community onboard and generating buzz. KOL rounds mainly handle promotion; these happen in the later stages of a project. In the very early stages, with only one or two founders and a PowerPoint presentation, only VCs can truly understand the project and actually invest. I've talked to over 1000 projects in over two years across ABCDE, and ultimately only invested in 40. Of those 40 carefully selected, I estimate another 20 or 30 will fail. Many of the projects you see on the market that you consider "garbage" have already been screened many times and are considered relatively "high-quality." Otherwise, with over 1000 projects launching ICOs and KOL rounds, how could retail investors, and even KOLs, possibly distinguish and differentiate them? Think about all the phenomenal projects from the last funding round to this one. Aside from a very few exceptions like Hyperliquid, which one didn't have VC backing? Whether it's Uniswap, AAVE, Solana, Opensea, PolyMarket, Ethena… no matter how much you might be anti-VC, the industry still needs the combined efforts of founders and VCs to move forward. A few days ago, I talked about a prediction market project that's completely different from most copycats like Polymarket/Kalshi; it's extremely differentiated. I've shared it with some VCs and KOLs these past few days, and the feedback has been very interesting; they all want to schedule a chat. You see, good projects don't die, and neither do good VCs. 3. The entry barriers for VCs, projects, and talent will increase, trending towards Web2. VCs – in terms of reputation, funding, and professionalism, have clearly entered a phase where the strong get stronger. The most important aspect of a VC's reputation and brand isn't how famous you are among retail investors, but rather whether the developers, or founders, are willing to take your money, and why they choose your money over another VC's. This is the true moat of a VC. This round of funding for VCs is clearly similar to that of CEXs, shifting from a pyramid structure to a pin-like structure. We've moved from looking at narratives and white papers in the previous round (or even ignoring them altogether, like Li Xiaolai's idea that raised hundreds of millions in 2017), to looking at TVL, VC endorsements, narratives, transactions… to looking at real user numbers and protocol revenue in this round… It feels like we're finally getting closer to the direction of US stocks. Jeff from Hyperliquid once said in an interview that the only business model for most projects in the crypto is selling tokens. This is because during TGE (Trust of Tokens), they have nothing—just a mainnet, no ecosystem, no users, no revenue… so they can only sell tokens. Imagine a company going public on the US stock market with just a corporate entity and a bunch of employees, maybe some factories and workshops, but no customers and no revenue. No wonder they can't get listed on Nasdaq! Why can we Web3 projects directly TGE or list?! Polymarket and Hyperliquid set a good example in this round. One spent several years building a large number of real users and revenue, even creating a new sector, before considering issuing a token. The other initially attracted early users with the expectation of a token airdrop, but their product was unbeatable. Even after issuing the token, people continued to use it, making the project itself a cash cow, with 99% of its revenue used to buy back tokens. When a project has real users and real revenue beyond the farmer level, then we can talk about TGE and listings. Only then will our industry be truly on the right track. Talent - A major reason I've always been confident in Web3 is because this industry gathers some of the smartest people in the world. I've written before that of the more than 1,000 projects I've talked to, nearly half have founders and core teams who are Ivy League graduates. Domestic founders are almost exclusively from Tsinghua and Peking Universities, with the occasional few from Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, or Xiamen University (all 985 universities). Of course, this isn't about academic qualifications alone; I myself am not from a prestigious university. But it's undeniable that from a statistical perspective, with so many highly intelligent people clustered here, even if it's just for the wealth effect, they're bound to create something useful/fun. That's why I said before that although the market is bearish, the direction of this round of startups is actually quite clear: stablecoins, PERP, everything on-chain, prediction markets, and the Agent Economy all have definite product-market fit (PMF). A good founder + a good VC can definitely create something truly good. Polymarket and Hyperliquid have set the best examples, and I believe we'll see more star products emerge in the next year or two. For ordinary people, Web3 is still the most promising place to go from nobody to somebody—of course, this most promising is compared to the hellish difficulty of Web2, which is already incredibly competitive. Compared to the previous two cycles, the difficulty has gone from Easy to Hard. I remember seeing a tweet from a Web3 VC partner the other day, saying that he was recruiting a junior intern and received over 500 resumes in a few days, many from graduates of prestigious universities, which scared him so much that he immediately shut down the job posting. So ultimately, it comes down to this: pessimists are always right, optimists always move forward.