Original title: The Evolution of Crypto: A Look at the Future of the Industry
Original author: Route 2 FI
Compiled by: Asher ( @Asher_0210 )
Editors note: As the bubble fades and faith wavers, the crypto industry gradually exposes deep structural problems and begins to show a more realistic self-adjustment trend. Whether it is the shift in capital strategy after the ebb of speculation, or the product reconstruction from community governance to user experience, this round of transformation is not only the result of technological evolution, but also a confrontation between market choice and the concept of long-termism. This article attempts to outline the true outline of this industrys self-reshaping amidst the mixed signals.
Speculation and the future of stablecoins
Cryptocurrency is essentially a revolutionary financial infrastructure, just as the Internet once reshaped the way information is disseminated. However, although decentralization is widely praised, the core driving the development of the industry is still speculation.
Whether it is spot trading, lending, or the derivatives market, speculation is always the part with the largest output and the highest return. Although the intensity of speculation may weaken temporarily, this attribute will not disappear in the short term and may even continue to strengthen in the future. This means that even if the use scenarios of encryption continue to expand in the future, its financial casino nature will still be the main theme of the industry in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, the stablecoin sector is entering a critical tipping point. As Circles IPO approaches, stablecoins are seen as one of the important entrances to the popularization of cryptocurrencies, but their growth potential is being suppressed by regulatory restrictions and weakening competitive advantages. If interest rates fall further, the attractiveness of stablecoins to funds will also decline.
The next breakthrough may no longer be the global dollar-pegging model, but financial technology applications that use encrypted payment infrastructure and are oriented to localized scenarios. For entrepreneurs who lack Silicon Valley background and huge early financing, deepening regional demand is more likely to lead to a sustainable path.
The decline of token premium and changes in VC
Tokens were once considered high-growth assets and enjoyed extremely high valuation premiums. But now, market sentiment has shifted significantly, with investors paying more attention to actual revenue rather than narrative packaging. There are two major trends behind this:
Valuation repair after the bull market ebbs, after the unlocking period starts, the high valuation of tokens is difficult to maintain;
Marginal buying disappears, and funds tend to flow into traditional assets with similar volatility but clearer direction.
Under this change, only those tokens linked to real income can hope to break out in the new landscape.
In addition, crypto venture capital is experiencing a liquidation moment. The traditional VC model is highly dependent on the monetization logic after the token is launched. Now more and more founders choose not to issue tokens, but to build small teams and pursue real revenue. This trend reflects the industrys reflection and correction of the bubble after the collapse of FTX.
In the future, only investment institutions that truly understand the new generation of entrepreneurial models will be able to continue to retain a place in this structural adjustment.
Consumer-facing applications meet AI
The crypto space has always lacked C-end hit products like Uber or Instagram. People often attribute this to poor user experience or lack of market education, but the deeper reason is that the crypto capital structure prefers short-term monetization rather than long-term polishing.
A true hundred-million-user application can only be created after entrepreneurs extend the time dimension and abandon the idea of quickly issuing coins. This is a difficult but necessary transformation path.
At the intersection of cutting-edge technologies, the integration of encryption and artificial intelligence is still in the making. Although data traceability and distributed computing are promising, the training cost and performance bottleneck of AI in reality still pose huge challenges.
An early direction worth paying attention to is the crowd-sourcing IP addresses mechanism, which can mobilize idle resources through decentralized networks and perhaps explore new paths for AI and on-chain collaboration.
The financial service gap of the “on-chain middle class”
Among current crypto users, there is a high-potential group that is being neglected: the on-chain middle class with a monthly income of $ 5,000 to $ 20,000 . They usually have a certain level of crypto knowledge and asset size, but lack an integrated solution for daily financial management.
The needs of this type of users include: payroll management, fiat currency and crypto asset allocation, tax support and other services. Although the initial user scale of this market is small (about 5,000 to 10,000 people), its extremely high single user revenue (ARPU) means huge product opportunities .
DAO and GameFis relaunch
In the past two years, participation in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) has dropped sharply, and voting governance has become a formality. At the same time, blockchain games have also been silent due to the Axie bubble, but neither of these two sectors has completely lost its potential.
Social infrastructure like Farcaster may become a catalyst for a new form of DAO, evolving it from a governance protocol to a community coordination mechanism driven by resources and culture. This transformation may also give rise to sustainable meme coins that are free from pure emotional hype.
As for GameFi, 2025 to 2026 may be the time for the explosion of the true integration of content and economic model. Teams that have been deeply engaged in experience and gameplay for a long time are expected to build a virtual world with millions of users and a prosperous market.
Talent Flow and Cultural Construction
Since 2022, a large number of crypto talents have turned to fields such as AI and traditional finance, and many have experienced the psychological shock of disillusionment. This structural loss of talent has a more far-reaching impact on the long-term development of the industry, even exceeding the pressure brought by price corrections.
In this environment, companies with strong cultural driving forces will become talent beacons, continuously attracting builders willing to adhere to long-termism and becoming the key core in the next cycle.
Media integration and new forces in capital structure
On the one hand, the crypto content ecosystem is de-bubbling, and traditional research institutions and media that rely on fund subsidies are facing elimination. In the future, truly viable teams must have both creativity, business understanding and distribution capabilities.
On the other hand, as more projects choose not to issue tokens and take the real revenue path of non-coin reform, private equity funds (PE) are expected to become the new capital force in the crypto industry. In the next 18 months, PE may lead the rise of a group of pragmatic projects that do not rely on token issuance.
Possibilities of on-chain connection in the content industry
The integration of creative industries such as music, art, and writing with blockchain is still in its early stages. The current industry is facing not only technical challenges, but also a lack of a bridge team that can deeply understand creator behavior and distribution mechanisms.
In the future, whoever can become the connector between creators and blockchain will be able to define the next generation of decentralized content ecology.
summary
Encryption is still evolving at a rapid pace. It is both idealistic and realistically complex. It is reshaping the global system while struggling with its own problems. Only builders who focus on data, respect long-term strategies, and stay sober can go further in this two-sided transformation and write a new chapter for the next decade.
