Author: Haotian Source: X, @Haotian
After a three-day trip to the Hong Kong Web3 Conference, I have a lot of feelings, and I can't express them in a thousand words. I will use the fragmented time to simply share my feelings:
1) From the liveliness of the conference, it can be confirmed that the market is in the early stage of the bull market. I can feel the strong enthusiasm for participation, but it is not too Fomo yet. Although the secondary market has continued to fluctuate and wear people out during this period, the expectation of the Fed's interest rate cut has also been delayed, and the uncertainties in the bull market have increased, the enthusiasm of the primary market builders to participate is very certain, which is also the basis for this round of bull market to be firm, lasting and magnificent enough;
2) The theme sharing and panels at the main venue and sub-venues, as well as the surrounding community-led activities, etc., are decentralized, thematic, and community-oriented, so it is difficult to say which one is the mainstream. Some people believe that Solana can flip Ethereum, some people think that CKB can drive the prosperity of BTC layer2, and some people go to AI+DePin to find Alpha. Of course, more people are fighting hard in the field of Ethereum layer2, etc. It seems that everyone has their own "mainstream" in their minds, but there is no consensus among the whole people and the "main uptrend" of Fomo for all people has not yet appeared. The whole northwest of Shanxi has become a mess, and it has not yet been decided who is the leader. This just proves that it is still in the early stage of the bull market, and there is no track and leader with absolute voice.
3) After the whole venue and socializing outside the meeting, it feels that the weight of CEX exchanges is not so "prominent". Maybe they are forced to hide in the dark for some reason. But without the rows of Western beautiful models and the wide range of Shill visual sense, you can absorb more nutritious spiritual food. Although there are still many kinds of technical, community and industry narratives that dazzle people, it is obvious that the story is also being told seriously, and the market aesthetics have been raised. After the Bitcoin ETF was passed, it is not only BTC itself that has been mainstreamed, but also the Build mentality of Crypto practitioners? In fact, the market is not afraid of telling stories, but is afraid that the market will treat leeks as fools.
4) The narrative around "chain" is still the top priority. Whether it is ETH layer2, BTC layer2, high-performance layer1, parallel EVM, modular chain issuance, chain abstract interoperability, AI+Crypto, ZK, DePIN, etc., each narrative direction seems to be centered around "chain" infra. On the surface, all parties in the industry have focused their development efforts on the narrative of "issuing chains", and the direction of application landing seems to have stagnated? But in fact, the direction of application landing is actually very lively, but the narrative of the application can only have a sense of existence when it reaches the same phenomenal level as Stepn. Once the application is locked, it has to go through the Internet-style internal volume of attracting new users, retaining users, and growing users, and the current market's mass adoption level is far from being able to roll applications. On the contrary, the B-side service can be integrated and nested with modular resources, and the chain abstraction can be used to combine liquidity across the ecosystem. The scalability is really rich. Rather than saying that the market prefers to tell B-side stories, it is better to say that this is all we can tell at this stage; 5) It can be clearly felt that the new love of BTC layer2 and the old love of Ethereum layer2 are competing with each other. The layer2-centric story vision proposed by Vitalik is very beautiful, but it is still unsatisfactory in terms of currency price and actual delivery expectations. It is precisely because of this that BTC layer2 has taken on sufficiently large new market expectations. Therefore, there is no doubt that BTC layer2 is eating the dividends of Ethereum layer2 landing that is not as expected. Such internal volume will certainly be suspected of reinventing the wheel, but don’t ignore that the user groups playing the BTC ecosystem and the Ethereum ecosystem are not 100% overlapping. Under the strong consensus of BTC, it is likely to be the core driving force for attracting new users in this round of bull market. In the long run, BTC layer2 can derive a unique new UTXO architecture route, and can also be combined with the mature Ethereum layer2 ecosystem. If we take Layer2 as the basis, BTC layer2 and Ethereum layer2 are not in a life-and-death competition. It can be clearly felt that both camps are embracing each other;
6) I really didn't see any excellent Alpha projects that are very innovative and inspiring. Some people say that this is the stage for Eastern forces to show their muscles, and Western forces are all focused on Dubai Token2049 a few days later. In terms of narrative direction, AI, DePIN, ZK, and parallel EVM, if you don't consider landing, Western forces are indeed more attractive. After all, many Western projects are so highly valued when they are passed on to the Chinese-speaking world; in terms of innovation vitality, the inscription market, BTC layer2, and DePIN hardware mining, if you don't care about Rug friction, the wealth effect of Eastern forces is indeed driving the entire industry forward. Rather than saying that Eastern and Western forces are competing secretly, it is better to say that each has missed each other's growth. The current Eastern inscriptions and Western MEME forces will always form a combined force after a certain main rising wave force is generated.
7) It is obvious that the voice of high-quality KOLs has become stronger, and to some extent, their influence has exceeded that of some VCs. This is fundamentally due to the change in VC's playing style. VCs work with project parties to incubate projects and attract exchanges to accumulate projects. This round of VCs has obviously become an "old leek" mentality. The VC story of holding a bottom and building dreams that has been locked for a long time in the past no longer works. To a certain extent, the money that wants to escape at any time has become a hot potato. Most excellent projects cannot get the quota with money, and KOLs who have both primary investment capabilities and secondary product-carrying capabilities have become popular. Therefore, the KOL Round is not out of thin air, and it is a good supplement to the weakness of VC's voice in the primary market.
8) Under the guidance of narrative directions such as Restaking and modularization, the project's resource integration (La Bang Jie Pai) capabilities have become increasingly prominent, which is tantamount to the manifestation of soft power beyond the mainstream technology and development narrative of the project party. It should be said that the ability to accumulate resources behind the project will become a strong support for its development expectations. Once a project has extremely strong resources and relationships, it has already won at the starting line from a business perspective. When it comes to telling the same story of being difficult to implement, which type of project will users prefer? The answer is obvious; 9) There are too many stories of old trees sprouting new buds in this round, and I personally like to hear and see them. Although the new chain also has the conditions and environment for one-click launch, the Great Again of the old chain hides the earnest expectations of each community, which is also the expectation that should have been delivered. If the old chain can tell a new story, revitalize the community, consensus and keep pace with the new chain, I personally hope that more old chains will rise. 10) There will be all kinds of FUD voices at every meeting, just listen to it as gossip. TVL false prosperity, DeFi mining income dilemma, potential exchange explosion, etc. If you agree that resource integration is the main theme of the current market, FUD TVL fraud, which is tearing off the industry's bottom line, is meaningless. As for black swan events under uncertainty, it is difficult to avoid, but any project party and team that has the ability to cross the bull and bear markets will definitely be more stable and mature in this round. Fud cannot kill a project, it can only add some market noise.
Note: The above thoughts and ideas only represent the feelings from the perspective of personal experience and observation of the conference, and cannot reflect the full picture of the Hong Kong Web3 Conference. However, I hope that the industry can tear off the labels of niche and scam, and gradually develop in the direction of being popular and mature. I really hope that one day I will not understand this industry, but I can always feel its growth.
JinseFinance
Aaron
Future