Opinion: MEME’s breaking out of the circle is just a warm-up, and value narratives will return to the mainstream

Haotian

24-03-19 18:00

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Original author: Haotian, encryption researcher

Editor's note: In recent days, the crazy surge of BOME and SLERF has set off a round of MEME carnival, and at the same time driven Solana The ecology is thriving. Yesterday, SOL briefly exceeded US$210, surpassing Porsche in market value and ranking 192nd in the global asset market value rankings. BOME was listed on Binance in just three days, which may have exceeded everyone’s expectations. Reference reading: "BOME, which created a market value of US$1.5 billion in three days, made The Crypto Industry Is Broken”. Some netizens even shouted the slogan "Value investment is a bust, stud MEME lives in the palace". Value investing seems a bit powerless in the face of the MEME craze. Crypto researcher Haotian analyzed the recent market FOMO situation. BlockBeats reproduced the full text as follows:

The continued carnival of MEME coins and the relative downturn of mainstream narrative coins make people always have the illusion that this bull market is driven by AltCoin, which can’t help but make people full of mainstream coins. People who are still building on the front line are confused and confused. Is value investing about to lose to pure emotional FOMO? Obviously not

In my opinion, MEME currency’s frequent breakthroughs are just for the belated Layer2 Summer, AI+DePIN, chain abstraction, etc. The mainstream narrative is warming up, and the big one may be in the making:

First of all, BOME’s listing on Binance for three days created a miracle day for the MEME market. MEME Although the narrative of pure asset issuance is very risky, from the initial DOGE to the last round of SHIB PEPE, MEME currency has become the "mainstream narrative" during the long period of no progress in the mainstream narrative relay period.

But you need to understand that the fundamentals of the pure asset issuance narrative are emotions. Some funds that prefer high risks and tend to be highly volatile will speculate on emotions, and some new OTC funds will And users are prone to emotional FOMO,but emotions are emotions after all. The low issuance and operating costs of MEME currency are destined to have a short life cycle, so don’t be greedy.

In fact, through contact with VC friends during this period, and also watching a large number of early projects in the vertical narrative direction, I firmly believe thatMEME is rampant Just because it takes time for the mainstream narrative to ferment, value investment will not fail. A more majestic and lasting bull market needs these mainstream narratives to relay. Next, share my trend observations:

1) AI+web3

AI+DePIN will definitely be the main narrative of this bull market. The reason is very simple: New stories are highly malleable and slow to implement.

The AI concept takes all the attention of web2+web3 and will attract a large number of developers, VC funds and large-scale users to enter the market. This round Whether the bull market can break the vicious cycle of existing funds depends on the power of AI's cycle-breaking effect;

At the same time, the possibility of AI scenarios being extended is great, and computing power is gathering, Model training, interoperable model communication, intelligent automated transaction execution, AI distributed data verification, data IP ownership, etc. There is so much room for development in this narrative scenario.

AI+DePIN, which is currently the focus of the craze, is essentially using blockchain Tokenomics to empower AI. When the AI basic infra matures, AI will use intent transactions. Paths, experience upgrades and other AI agents then empower blockchain DeFi. The narrative imagination space of AI+Web3 will be beyond imagination.

With narrative space, development can be carried out in various vertical directions, and various infra projects can be relayed and combined to expand industries, attract VC investment, play with hair, develop applications, etc. , the key is that the prosperity of infra is not directly proportional to the market’s expectations for the application. Everyone knows that AI applications are difficult to implement. Isn’t this an opportunity for the infra market to take off?

Imagine, If the mainstream narrative in the market can shift from DeFi’s infra to AI+web3’s infra, even if we don’t talk about the implementation of the application, the big narrative of AI There is no problem that the framework traverses both bull and bear cycles.

2) ETH layer2

Although a modular The benefits of the Keychain and Cancun upgrades have reduced the development and maintenance costs of Layer 2, but as a result, Layer 2 has been burdened with the market expectations of a comprehensive chain.

Which Layer 2 technology is more unique and differentiated, which Layer 2 user and traffic growth rate is fast, which Layer 2 B-side Stack strategic resource coverage is large, which Layer 2 ecological implementation is progressing quickly, and which Layer 2 can have a killer Level applications running out and so on will become indicators of the Layer 2 value evaluation system.

This means that the Layer 2 track will become more and more complicated, and more cutting-edge Layer 2 projects such as Metis will frequently cause surprises and disrupt the situation. Those who stand at the forefront of Layer 2 The Four Heavenly Kings will be under a lot of pressure. Huge market expectations + slow ecological implementation will make it extremely difficult for these Layer 2 projects to reach a new height.

To a certain extent, those who choose Layer 2 are doomed to endure suffering and loneliness. Fortunately, the Layer 2 track is also very malleable and has new modular combinations. Chain, Rollup As A Service, Stack strategy, Layer3 application chain, Paymaster subsidy war, Tokenomics catalyst, Primitive component commercialization output, etc., are all areas where efforts can be made.

I have always believed that the current Layer 2 is essentially a "soft fork" of the Layer 1 main network, standing on the shoulders of giants, Carrying out Crypto-Native chain changes in a more flexible and autonomous way will give Ethereum a second life to a certain extent.

Thinking about it this way, do you have new expectations for Layer 2, which has always been less than expected? Without him, the battle for Ethereum Layer 2 is difficult but achievable.

3) BTC Layer2 If we look at the BTC ecosystem along the modular lines, BTC seems to be more suitable for promoting a series of BTC Layer2 derivative ecosystems, because It has a stronger consensus, while its technical flaws are obvious, and its sense of technical boundaries and principles are not strong. It is uniquely blessed to use the BTC mainnet as the settlement layer and then build a BTC derivatives market that can release huge liquidity.

However, the BTC ecology sprouted from the ordinal theory of Ordinals and broke out from the inscription asset issuance paradigm after BRC20. It currently revolves around RGB, Lightning Network, and CKB A series of technical narratives such as the Pingdai chain and the BTC-EVM chain are being explored and implemented.

The third wave of Inscription that many people are anxiously waiting for is likely to be driven by the upcoming BTC Layer2 narrative, or BTC Layer2 infra itself will take over the third wave , after all, the BTC ecosystem has accumulated a large number of users and funds through asset issuance. Only Layer 2 that can be directly implemented can continue the story.

Pessimistically, one can think that the BTC Layer2 market is actually putting new wine in old bottles, but optimistically, the development of the Ethereum ecosystem requires too high a threshold for resources, manpower, and capital. BTC Layer2 is a completely new strategic highland that has been opened up. More developers can join the ranks of Builders at a relatively low threshold.

Besides, the consensus of BTC is even stronger, and the road to the sky of BTC Layer 2 is wide and wide. Why not let the developers go wild and take advantage of it?

4) Alt-Layer1 high-performance chain

The last bull market Everyone is discussing who is the killer of Ethereum, and this round of Alt Layer1 competition is about who can become an effective supplement to Ethereum.

The expansion of Layer 1 of EVM-Compatible is more about developers who want to use subtle differences to divert the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone is just repeating what Ethereum has done. This round of high-concurrency transaction chains, parallel EVM chains, MOVE language underlying chains, etc. are more intended to take a path that Ethereum cannot take and attract more innovative developers to "start all over again".

My confidence in this high-performance Layer1 chain comes from this. Including, the potential of Solana's high-concurrency transactions in the DePIN narrative, the reshaping of the SUI Move language in DeFi security, the development of a series of parallel EVM chains such as Sei, Artela, Monad, etc.

In my opinion, these emerging chains have essentially transcended the technical limitations that existed when Ethereum launched the chain and tried to use larger Underlying innovation to activate a new round of Lego narrativeAs for whether Solana can revitalize DePIN and whether SUI can revive the new DeFI, it is not yet known, but it is worth looking forward to.

5) Chain Abstraction Chain Abstraction

With the development of modular thinking so far, I don’t think it is just The narrative is so simple, and it has become the lowest level of blockchain thinking. The account abstraction that has been proposed for many years around the Ethereum EVM environment has become outdated in the environment of more complex UTXO chains and non-EVM multi-chains. As a result, another more abstract concept came onto the stage - "chain abstraction".

It should be said that chain abstraction is the perfect combination of "account abstraction" + "modularization". It is really too important. The slogan of Mass Adoption has not been implemented for so many years. In the final analysis, the market is still in the stage of speculation on basic infra such as chains, wallets, exchanges, and DeFi. This gives a new Onboard Web3 Users have brought extremely high thresholds and challenges.

Chain abstraction is based on user experience. It uses intermediate chains or chain-in-chain services to lower the threshold and allow a wider group of Web2 users to enter Web3. The smooth and silky user experience changes the fundamentals of Crypto, which has always been a niche and existing market game.

The above

In addition, there are Restaking, Fully-onchain full-chain games, intent -centric transactions, privacy transactions and other subdivided tracks, they all more or less carry part of the mainstream narrative development direction.

I know that there will definitely be some people who regard these mainstream narratives as MEME, or even worse than MEME. If the market FOMO is impetuous to a certain extent, it will inevitably lead to confusion of values. Anyway, let’s just say this is a bloody article written for people who stick to the direction of value investing. I hope it can reflect the true voice of a large number of persistent Builders. That’s enough.

The long road to Xiongguan is really like iron, but now we are crossing it from the beginning. Stay firmly on the right path that is in line with your own knowledge and continue to build!