Multiple Challenges Facing the Crypto Primary Market

Recently, during discussions with several seasoned professionals in a well-known tourist city, everyone unanimously mentioned the challenges currently faced by the Crypto Primary Market. These challenges are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Narrative and Cultural Transformation

The market environment is undergoing profound changes. What is concerning is not only that the technological narrative cannot be fulfilled, but even more worrying is that market participants seem to be gradually abandoning serious technical discussions in favor of fully embracing a culture of short-term speculation.

In the past, even though technological development was slow, there was at least the support of long-termism's value. Early-stage venture capital could cover the costs of innovation, and project teams had clear roadmaps, including stages such as construction, testing, and mainnet launch. This transparency helps users assess the project's strength and make value judgments.

However, today's market seems to have evolved into a purely community-operated and capital gaming game. Trading opportunities have become extremely brief, even measured in minutes. When the market no longer focuses on technological development and long-term construction, the speculative risks are greatly amplified, making this field more dangerous for most participants.

Developer Attrition and Innovation Stagnation

Data shows that the number of developers active in the Crypto field has decreased by nearly 30% compared to last year's peak. Meanwhile, AI and traditional tech companies are significantly increasing engineer salaries and actively recruiting talent.

The logic behind this trend is not complicated. As large tech companies compete to attract talent for building the next generation of technological infrastructure, the crypto industry's once-proud narrative of "disrupting the internet" has become less effective at attracting and retaining high-quality developers.

More seriously, after several development cycles, developers in the Crypto field seem to have fallen into a dilemma where the motivation for innovation has sharply declined. Truly groundbreaking technological innovations have become rare. Although new concepts emerge endlessly, there are very few applications that can be implemented and find product-market fit. Developers seem to be trapped in a cycle of reinventing the wheel, yet they are unable or unwilling to pay attention to how far these "wheels" can go.

Decline in External Attraction

The attraction of Crypto to external funds and talent is clearly insufficient. Currently, the real hotspots in the secondary market are concentrated in the US stock AI sector, while the innovation focus in the primary market has shifted to the Web2 AI field. Crypto not only increasingly lacks appeal to traditional venture capital and top talent but is also often labeled as "speculative," losing its recognition in mainstream society.

One of the reasons for this situation is that, apart from the feature of "issuing tokens", Crypto seems to have difficulty providing other competitive advantages. Although the launch of ETFs has brought institutional funds to the industry, this is more about recognition at the level of financial instruments, and is not closely related to the actual development of the cryptocurrency market.

The key question is: in which scenarios is non-Crypto indispensable? In the past, the value of Crypto lay in providing a relatively free experimental space for financial innovation. However, as traditional financial institutions begin to embrace this market in various ways, aside from the technical feature of "decentralization", what other irreplaceable value can Crypto bring to users?

Despite the current challenging situation, it is still crucial to maintain an optimistic attitude. The real breakthrough may be just around the corner, and we need to continue exploring and innovating to find new directions for industry development.