Hong Kong Web3 Conference Small Essay: The market has not yet formed a joint force of the main rising wave?

Original author: Hao Tian

Original source: On-chain view

At the end of the 3-day trip to the Hong Kong Web3 Conference, I felt a lot of feelings, and I can't say enough words, so I will use the small time to briefly share my feelings:

1) From the excitement of the conference, it is very certain that the market is in the early stage of a bull market, and you can feel the strong enthusiasm for participation, but it is not too fomo. Although the secondary market continued to fluctuate during this period, the expectation of the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates was delayed, and the uncertainty of the bull market increased, the enthusiasm of the builders in the primary market was very certain, which is also the basis for this round of bull market to go firm enough, lasting and majestic;

2) The theme sharing and panel of the main venue and branch venues, as well as the surrounding community-led activities, etc., are decentralized, thematic, and community-oriented, so it is difficult to say which part is the mainstream. Some people believe that Solana can flip Ethereum, some people think that CKB can drive the prosperity of BTC layer2, some people drill into the direction of AI+DePin to find Alpha, and of course, more people stick to the Ethereum layer2 field and so on. It seems that everyone has their own "mainstream" in their minds, but there has not yet been a "main wave" that has gained national consensus and the national Fomo has emerged. The entire northwest of Shanxi has become a pot of porridge, and who is the leader has not yet decided on the superior, which just proves that it is still in the early stage of the bull market, and there is no track and leader with absolute right to speak.

3) After the whole venue was social, I felt that the weight of the CEX exchange was not so "prominent", and perhaps they were forced to hide in the shadows for some reason. But without the rows of Western beauty models and a wide range of Shill's visual sense, you can absorb more nutritious spiritual food as far as the eye can see. While there are still a lot of technological, community, and industry narratives that are confusing, it clearly feels like the story is being told in earnest, and the market aesthetic has been elevated. After the passage of the Bitcoin ETF, it is not only BTC itself that has been mainstreamed, but also the Build mentality of Crypto practitioners.

4) The narrative around the "chain" is still the top priority, whether it is ETH layer2, BTC layer2, high-performance layer1, parallel EVM, modular chain, chain abstraction interoperability, AI+Crypto, ZK, DePIN, etc., each narrative direction seems to be making a fuss around the "chain" infra. On the surface, all parties in the industry have focused their development efforts on the narrative of "hair chain", and the application landing direction seems to have come to a standstill? But in fact, the application landing direction is actually very lively, but the application narrative can only have a sense of existence when it reaches the same phenomenal level as Stepn. As soon as the application is locked, it has to go through Internet-style involution such as attracting new users, retention, and growth, and the degree of mass adoption in the current market is far from the point where it can be rolled up. On the contrary, the B-end service of the volume can be integrated and nested with modular resources, and the liquidity of cross-ecological combination can be abstracted by the chain, and the scalability is too rich. It is not so much that the market prefers to tell B-side stories, but that these can only be told at this stage;

5) It can be clearly felt that the new love of BTC layer 2 and the old love of Ethereum layer 2 are engaged in a contest, and the layer2-centric story vision proposed by Vitalik is very good, but it is still unsatisfactory in terms of currency price and actual delivery expectations, and it is precisely because of this that BTC layer2 has undertaken a large enough new market expectation. Therefore, there is no doubt that BTC layer2 eats the dividends of Ethereum layer2 landing less than expected. Of course, there will be a suspicion of reinventing the wheel in this way, but don't ignore that the user groups that play the BTC ecosystem and the Ethereum ecosystem do not overlap 100%, and it is likely that the core driving force of this round of bull market will be under the strong consensus of BTC. In the long run, BTC layer2 can derive a unique new route of UTXO architecture, and it can also be combined with the mature Ethereum layer2 ecosystem.

6) It is true that we do not see excellent Alpha projects that are very innovative and inspiring, some people say that this is the stage for the eastern power to show its muscles, and the western power is concentrated in Dubai Token2049 a few days later. In terms of narrative direction, AI, DePIN, ZK, and parallel EVM, if you don't consider the landing, Western power is indeed more attractive, after all, many Western projects are frighteningly high in the Chinese-speaking circle; It is not so much that the forces of the East and the West are competing in secret, but that each has missed out on each other's growth. The current Eastern inscription and the Western MEME power will always form a combined force after the generation of a certain main rising wave force.

7) I obviously feel that the voice of high-quality KOLs has become stronger, and to some extent, their influence exceeds that of some VCs. This is fundamentally due to the change in the way VC plays, VC joint project parties incubate projects, and win over exchanges to save projects, this round of VC has obviously become an "old leek" mentality, and the VC that has locked up for a long time in the past has no longer worked. To a certain extent, the money that wants to flee at any time has become a hot potato, and most excellent projects can not get the quota with money, and KOLs with both first-level investment ability and second-level ability to bring goods have become fragrant and sweet, so KOL Round does not come out of thin air, which is a good supplement to the lack of VC's weakening voice in the primary market.

8) Under the traction of narrative directions such as restaking and modularization, the project's resource integration ability (La Bang Jie Pai) has become more and more prominent, which is tantamount to becoming a soft power outside the mainstream technology and development narrative of the project team. It should be said that the resource accumulation ability behind the project party will become a strong support for its development expectations. Once a project has strong resources and relationships, judged from a business perspective, it has already won at the starting line. In the same way that they are telling stories that are difficult to land, what kind of projects will users prefer?

9) There are too many stories of old trees sprouting new sprouts in this round, and I personally like to hear about it. Although the new chain also has the conditions and environment for one-click delivery, behind the Great Again of the old chain lies the ardent expectations of each community, and it is also the expectation that it should be delivered. If the old chain can tell a new story, revitalize the community, reach consensus, and keep pace with the new chain, I personally hope that more old chains will rise.

10) Every time there is a meeting, there will be a variety of FUD sounds, just listen to it as gossip. TVL false prosperity, DeFi mining income dilemma, exchange potential thunderstorm, etc., if you all agree that resource integration is the main theme of the current market, FUD TVL fraud is not meaningful. As for the black swan event under uncertainty, it is difficult to avoid, but the project party and team that have the ability to cross the bull and bear will definitely be able to go more stable and mature in this round. Fud can't do a dead project, it can only add some market noise.

Note: The above thoughts and thoughts only represent personal experience and observation perspectives, and do not reflect the full picture of Web3 Conference Hong Kong. However, I hope that the industry can tear off the label of niche and scam, and gradually develop in the direction of becoming popular and mature, I hope that one day I can't understand this industry, but I can always feel its growth.