Author: Jocy, Founder of IOSG Source: X, @jocyln003

I believe you have read many records of Consensus HK in the previous two weeks. I will not repeat them anymore. I can summarize most of them as disappointed in the industry and cannot see the prospect of breaking the situation, and think that it has reached a bear market. That week was also a feast for young players and KOL masters. The impact of my trip to Hong Kong was reasonable. Those young players and masters who worked harder than funds and entrepreneurs deserved so much, and they are surreal investors. They can always put a perfect end to every transaction. The trading principle of many young players is 90% or BTC, and 10% active sol positions maintain PVP and sprint at any time. No matter how much profit they make, they will implement such position allocation. Because of the meme wave and attention economy, this became the most lively discussion in HK.

Kaito's victory gave KOLs their golden age, with attention being priced and able to be cashed out quickly. In sharp contrast, the entire Ethereum ecosystem has no vitality and no one follows the clarion call of hollowing out idealism. This is a heavy blow to reality. The so-called value investors are deeply trapped, and long-term holders have begun to bearish Ethereum and turn to Solana. Many people cannot see the degree of Hungry of Ethereum entrepreneurs (in contrast, solana, when a dev goes to L2/Ethereum to find L2/Ethereum, it takes an average of two weeks to establish a connection, and it generally does not take two days to complete docking and grouping and start communication with the sol foundation). This seems to be the master of the crypto industry deliberately doing it. In this small cycle of bull market, long-term holders are not encouraged, but to give good returns to short-term traders, but in my opinion, this is to serve industry leaders such as Ethereum inaction or lack of crisis awareness, and the market is sounding the alarm for it.

Short-termism prevails: the rituals and music of industry values ​​are broken

At the same time, when everyone loses their disguise and wants to make a big fortune when the bull market is over, many people begin to have no ideals/convictions and become ruthless arbitrage tools. No one cares about the future of the industry, and everyone wants to make the last money in this cycle. In order to support their own project currency price and chain, the exchange can give up the listing standard and list some projects they invested in; the king-level projects regard tge as the last ATM, and market makers have become the ever-winning generals in this cycle. With BD and brands, they can always get chips for free and downward in the overall VC currency market, the average medianA size of mm can get a net income of nearly 40m; it seems that everything is moving from long-termism to short-term bubbles and speculativeism, and the practices of these people are more profoundly affecting some entrepreneurs who insist on building them.

Shits like this are very similar to those in 2018/2022, very deserted, and practitioners leave because they do not see hope and recognition in the industry. Everyone is trying their best to survive in a bear market. Teams who are still starting businesses and doing things will be painful for them, and they need firmness and values ​​all the time. Trump has influenced the core values ​​of the entire United States, and the crypto industry has inspired huge nihilistic investmentism after Trump token. Practitioners and speculators think this is a fast and short-term game, and everyone also aims at how much cash can be taken before the money game button is pressed.

Summary of the trip to Hong Kong is a major ritual collapse in the industry, and it is also a formal written trial of Ethereum. As the most successful entrepreneur in the industry, did he grasp the bow of the industry? Was he the one who led the industry towards nihilism?

Challenges and transformations of the Ethereum ecosystem

I don't look at the version: Denver infra's founder is very bearish, but the applications and AI founder are very bullish.

Denver's trip still saw many shocking scenes. Founders and developers who have been building steadily for many years, some people were suddenly told that the Qing Dynasty was about to perish. They chose not to believe this. It seems that the Ethereum ecosystem has always had a culture of organizing the company. They have been financing smoothly all the way, and they have also seen many projects that are not as good as theirs have performed well in the speculative market of tokens. They may never have thought that one day, they would not be able to raise money and the coins they issued would be zeroed like other air coins. When the runway had only last 6 to 9 months left, I slowly realized that I wanted to truly build a product with revenue and user base, and began to seriously think about what the problem of Ethereum is. Of course, it has never been too late. It just needs to make drastic layoffs and a complete denial of their past self. This is a huge challenge for the founder, because he is just betting on an uncertain direction, but he has to pay all his wealth for it. According to incomplete statistics, the current projects that have been deeply cultivated and built on the Ethereum and EVM ecosystems have raised more than tens of billions of dollars, and their overall primary and secondary market valuations have totaled more than one trillion dollars. Therefore, the question facing these projects is, whether to continue to stay in Ethereum or leave? Strong asLido founder Konstantin, when he posted on Twitter that he wanted to establish the Second Ethereum Foundation, he instantly received hundreds of DMs (including Uniswap) from founders such as Ethereum Eco Defi. Of course, this is still very challenging to the consensus.

In addition, I saw a wave of Ethereum ecological entrepreneurs. In the past, they have been the backbone of the industry's technology school. The technical products and solutions they have made have been widely adopted. Whether it is TEE/zkTLS/rollup, they are the dominant ones, but these people are also tired of it. No matter how good the solution is to provide technical agreements without end users and needs, it will not help him bring real entrepreneurial fun. What excites him now are the exciting new papers that have emerged in the field of AI research. To be honest, there are many founders of this type, and they are one of the few founders who can really deepen their efforts in the industry and make feasible solutions. If a large number of such founders choose to leave and leave, I think the impact on the infrastructure of the entire Ethereum will be backwards for at least three to five years.

The wonderful energy of the fusion of AI and Web3

At the beginning, everyone said that Denver infra had no hot topics or livelihoods, but as we talked about 3 to 4 new AI*Web3 projects every day on average, we saw the Ethereum community’s active embrace of emerging technologies such as AI, and innovative attempts in fields such as DeTraning/Inference/DePIN. Ethereum is actively adapting to new technological trends and exploring new application scenarios. Capital and entrepreneurs have become prophets of the industry. Paradigm led the Web3 LLM company Nous research with a valuation of $1 billion. Groq has generated more than $1 billion in revenue as Inference in the past year. Openmind and Yushu Technology have created RobotAI. DePAI's open source products are unveiled at denver. Hyperbolic has also become one of the most supported inference networks in web3 developers. There are also open source Intelligence platforms such as Open Gradient and Pluralis. At Ethereum conferences like Denver, smart developers and founders have begun to fully help Web3 embrace AI. Everyone is in Brainstorm how to make AI agents and more applications appear in Web3 scenarios. There is never a point in time for the industry to end and stop, and research and curiosity will keep those builders going further and further.

Openmind has jointly made RobotAI, DePAI's open source products unveiled in denver

Macau positive news, Crypto keeps pace with the times

But after dealing with most American institutions, it is completely different from Asia. Everyone is very optimistic about the loose environment of the crypto bull market. Bank of America has passed the acceptance of crypto asset custody, and soon the banks will gradually allow BTC/ETH to be collateralized, and even expand to mining equipment. Here we can see a clear trend that the crypto rate cut environment is about to form, from 10% in the original industry. The lending rate can be adjusted to around 3-4% or even Japan can reach negative interest rates, which will bring liquidity to the industry again. In addition, we have recently seen crypto benefits in the United States. Uniswap and Coinbase are considering designing tokenized securities models so that investors in traditional industries can better evaluate and purchase tokens. The benefits of regulatory release will be far beyond our imagination in this cycle, so I am very optimistic that the market will usher in a very good macro environment in the next two years. Many people say that this bull market has ended, but I don’t think so. Each bull market not only has the cooperation of the macro market, but also the self-innovation and new applications of the crypto-endogenic market. We have not seen real innovation in this cycle. If it has not been seen, it will be a fake bull market. In the next two years, we can expect more traditional companies/even regimes to settle in the L2 network and issue their own decentralized networks, and the prosperity of L2 business once again drives the growth and value capture of Ethereum L1.

Reconstructing Ethereum governance: moving towards mainstream and commercialization

At the third day of Denver, attending Pragma held by ETHGlobal, I met several core EF developers who revealed the upcoming new organizational structure adjustments of Ethereum. What’s more interesting here is @dannyryan. His reputation and voice in the core Ethereum developer circle in the past is obvious to all. Then the newly established @Etherealize will also shoulder the mission of Consensys in the new era, helping Ethereum move towards the mainstream world and commercialization; in addition, the two Co-EDs Hsiao-Wei @hwwonx of the foundation have also been deeply engaged in Ethereum for many years. Since 2016, they have followed Vitalik to fight in the north (with photos. Ethereum’s Hackers Day in Beijing in 2019, sitting on vitalThe one next to ik is), and Tomasz @tkstanczak, as the founder of Nethermind, is very familiar with the entire Ethereum ecosystem project. As a third-party dev shops, they are well versed in the survival business logic of more sustainable, which can help Ethereum find a balance between infra and commercialization.

Attached picture The 2019 Ethereum Hackers Choice Day in Beijing, the person sitting next to vitalik is Co-EDs Hsiao-Wei @hwwonx

In fact, the problems Vitalik encountered are the same as all entrepreneurs. The team is too big and it is difficult to lead. Friends who know how to study personal personality traits can try to analyze the journey of V God, from the Twitter avatar of Milady's emoticon to the disappointment with encrypted OG, and replaced it with the half-human and half-bird image of World of Warcraft, Druid, which also represents his inner reconciliation of the community voice, and officially announced the new team structure of Ethereum the next day. Ethereum may be the first truly decentralized organization and economy in history. We should be more tolerant of this man who has just reached his thirty years. He does not have particularly outstanding performance in organizational structure management and Ethereum application commercialization, but who can lead this organization to create more glory and results? Perhaps Ethereum can also learn from Elon Musk to create a DOGE Discipline Inspection Commission, which is specifically responsible for abolition of some irresponsible devs and virtual positions. How to measure the value of contribution and KPI is an important issue before the V God. In addition, give internal core developers clearer value propositions and development needs, give management teams a more specific roadmap and management time limit requirements, and better allow Ethereum to return to community and elected governance. As the cornerstone of Web3, Ethereum is also actively exploring Layer2 solutions and technology upgrades to meet the growing application needs.

There has never been a savior, and God V needs to encourage more application entrepreneurs

Is technology research and development that important for Ethereum at present? Perhaps it is important in 2017, 2020, and 2022, but it should be more important to apply now than technology. The next most important milestone to test Ethereum and the greatest confidence that ecological builders will be whether Ethereum, as a world computer, can produce super application products across the ages.

Many people regard Vitalik asBecome the savior of Ethereum. Ethereum is the savior of the industry, but there has never been any savior. Everyone should be the savior. My previous push called for all organizations that have received generous capital accumulation and stable commercial income in this industry, in fact, they should contribute to the future of this industry. They can donate to some open source organizations on Ethereum, and create better opportunities for young people in the industry. In addition to using Grants support, many entrepreneurs still need financing support. In this wave of industry altcoins, it also hit the already shaky Asian funds. Many funds have begun to suspend operations or transform into second-level. The entrepreneurial environment in Asia is difficult. If Asian institutional investment VC is lost, the industry will be even thinner. Here I still call on Ethereum's ecological organizations that early-stage risk capital must not be missing. It is recommended that all exchanges can take out 1 to 2% of their revenue every year to support the development and innovation of the Ethereum open source ecosystem.

Will Ethereum die in the next bull and bear cycle? I don't think this is the most successful decentralized organization in the Web3 industry. We should not let it fail. Its failure means that the hundreds of billions to trillions of talent and project assets built on the Ethereum business empire need to be started over, and the entire industry will fall into a 5-10-year regression, which means that many OGs will leave.

Please be reluctant to sell your Ethereum. If you look back at what happened between 2020 and 2030 in 2030, you may see that the doubts and noise in 2025 are actually insignificant. How to judge value and innovation from a 10-year dimension is even more a priority worth thinking about.

Optimists are often right. The more difficult and ups and downs the stages, they should maintain confidence and optimism.