It has been 10 years since the birth of Ethereum. From the perspective of the financial market, this is undoubtedly a magnificent "class leap". After all, Ethereum has moved from the wilderness to the ETF track recognized by mainstream Wall Street institutions, but this is the end of Ethereum. , or the ownership of Crypto assets? This may not be the case.
At the recently concluded EthCC event, Blockworks member Mippo interviewed Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin in a podcast. Vitalik said that the focus in the future will gradually shift from Layer 1 issues to issues closer to the application layer.
He also believes that what ultimately determines the success of Crypto assets is the actual application of the technology rather than the constant hype, as he sarcastically stated "If the Crypto asset field is remembered as a dwindling group of idealists constantly shouting, or... A group of people trading digital monkeys and celebrity photos with each other would be a disappointing outcome."
Perhaps some Web3 practitioners have awakened. This industry no longer needs just a target for "nonsensical hype", but also needs a wider range of applications to enter the public eye . This is why an ecosystem like Ton will suddenly become a target for various institutions. and the focus of investors' attention, because behind it is the Web3 product available to billions of users. Although it is still very early, it already has a prototype.
Although the market is still flooded with various Layer 2 narratives, after experiencing various "ghost towns" and high market capitalization, neither institutions nor ordinary participants are convinced that this story can be successful. After all, when Layer 1 is more than enough, who can? Will care about Layer2.
From the crazy emergence of ETH L2 in the first half of the year to the sudden mushrooming of BTC L2 now, the same story is still unfolding, but behind these Layer 2 is the repeated obstacles to ecological development, as well as the explosion of users who can only use airdrops, and then they fell into Stagnation.
Real users are the king
Now when we think about the reasons why "high market value, low circulation" projects are not accepted, in addition to the abandonment of funds, more importantly, people can't find a reason to "hold". After all, why do projects with no actual value need to be With such a high valuation, there seems to be no explanation other than capital pursuit . We can also find reference from the popular "running shoes" and "Axie" back then. When a large number of users are lost, the cycle of death will begin. Of course, the last round of new public chains also ended like this.
Behind all these stories, they ultimately point to one place: infrastructure alone is not enough, a large number of users of high-quality applications are also needed to consolidate the development of L1/L2. This is why Vitalik satirizes NFT so openly. reason.
Each project lacks actual products
People always say that the fundamental analysis of this "bull market" is no longer reliable, but in the author's opinion, so far, except for ETFs, the industry has not ushered in any real changes in fundamentals (this is why BTC outperformed most gains), since there are no changes in fundamentals, how can there be any effectiveness analysis of fundamentals?
Therefore, if the above conclusion is true, then the fundamentals we are looking for in the industry should be tracks that bring more liquidity, or interesting products that bring more users. Perhaps this is the key to this bull market. It is a true "flywheel", but so far there are very few such products or tracks (or they are still in their infancy). Most of them are various "ghost town projects" that exploit liquidity. In this way, how can there be an explosive bull market?
As Graham, the master of fundamental analysis, said, in the long run, the market is a weighing machine, and in the short run, it is a voting machine . If the Web3 industry wants to reach a higher level, financial tools alone will not be enough to leverage 10 After all, the "Seven Golden Flowers" with a market capitalization of US$15 trillion in the US stock market do not rely on airdrops to acquire users and gain market position, unless the industry only needs BTC as "digital gold", but at least Vitalik does not willingly.
From "proving it" to "witnessing it", we still need the next 5 or even 10 years.
