While traveling in Lijiang and Dali, I chatted with several frontline builders, and they all shared the same sentiment: the current Crypto primary market seems trapped in a multi-layered crisis with "no way out":

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1) Narratives Have Become Meaningless; Has Casino Culture Taken Over Completely?

The real fear isn’t that technological narratives fail to deliver—it’s that people have ditched the narrative facade altogether and fully embraced a MEME-ified casino culture.

Slow delivery of technological narratives is at least a long-term game. There’s upfront VC funding to cover innovation costs, and projects go through phases of development, testing, and mainnet launches. Transparent progress updates help users gauge a project’s potential and make value judgments.

But now? Everything has devolved into pure community hype and behind-the-scenes capital games, with trading opportunities measured in days—even minutes. When the market stops building around long-term technological narratives, the risks of pure MEME trading multiply. For the vast majority, this market has become far more treacherous.

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2) Accelerating Developer Exodus; Is Technological Innovation Stagnating?

The data doesn’t lie. According to reports, the number of active Crypto developers on GitHub has dropped nearly 30% from last year’s peak, while compensation packages for AI and traditional tech engineers are skyrocketing.

The logic is simple: when OpenAI, Google, and Meta are all scrambling for talent in the AI arms race to build silicon-based civilization, how many developers will stay for Crypto’s "disrupt the internet" idealism?

The crux is, after two or three build cycles, Crypto developers are now stuck in a phase of rapidly diminishing innovation drive. Genuine 0-to-1 breakthroughs are rare. Narratives like Restaking, Intent, and AI Agents have cycled through hype waves—but where are the real-world applications? Where’s the product-market fit? It’s baffling: everyone’s reinventing the wheel, yet no one seems capable or willing to ask how far that wheel can roll.

Amid market noise and dead periods, many used to cling to the belief that holding on would eventually pay off. But now? Where are the holders?

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3) Lack of External Appeal; Is Crypto Drifting Toward Irrelevance?

Crypto’s ability to attract outside capital and talent is clearly waning. Look at the current landscape: the real altcoin season is in the U.S. stock AI market, and true primary innovation is happening in web2 AI. Traditional VCs and top-tier talent are increasingly disinterested in Crypto, which is now often dismissed as a "speculative gamble," stripped of its former prestige.

The root issue? Beyond "token launches," Crypto has no compelling value proposition. While ETFs have brought institutional money, that’s merely financial instrument validation—Wall Street’s inflows are just asset allocation, with little real connection to the altcoin market.

What scenarios absolutely require Crypto? Its past value lay in offering a relatively free space for financial experimentation. But now that traditional institutions are embracing the market via stablecoins and ETFs, what irreplaceable value does Crypto offer users beyond "decentralization"?

Note: This topic is posed for discussion. Despite the uncertainty, I still believe the real way out might not be too far off. Staying optimistic is the best fuel—what else can we do?