$ETH Will the crypto world always exist? My personal answer after five years on-chain.
When I saw this question on Zhihu, I was looking at on-chain data on Dune Analytics, and countless faces floated through my mind.
Some became overnight millionaires in a bull market, while others lost everything in a bear market.
Some people criticize the crypto world as a 'Ponzi paradise', while others think it's 'a new era in the financial world'.
So, will the crypto world really always exist?
As someone who entered the circle in 2019, mixed in the chain for five years, experienced the DeFi summer, the LUNA crash, the FTX collapse, the ETH merge, the AI narrative, and recently the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs, I want to use my personal experience to try to give you a more realistic answer.
Entering the crypto world: the beginning of a clueless novice.
I didn't enter the circle early; Bitcoin had just warmed up from $3000 to around $8000 at that time. That year, DeFi hadn't exploded yet, and the biggest narrative was 'blockchain'.
When I first entered the circle, I was a total novice, confused by various K-line charts, and the only action I took was to 'buy what others buy'.
I still remember the first time I transferred USDT, I felt pain at a gas fee of $2.
To this end, I specifically found a small tool that could 'customize addresses' and generated an address ending in TZ0088xxxx, looking like a 'professional player'. Looking back, that string of numbers didn't mean much to others, but for me at that time, it was a small step into this world.
First round bull market: from 'technical ideal' to 'FOMO panic'.
Starting in 2020, DeFi began to explode. I followed a friend to grab some Uniswap airdrop (I remember at that time, a UNI token was worth dozens of dollars), then invested in projects like Sushi, YFI, and COMP.
At that time, it felt like the whole world was 'migrating on-chain'.
It's not an exaggeration to say that any new Github project, any Medium article, or even a project tweet can spark a market rally. Many people transitioned from programmers to 'chain farmers', and I once fantasized about 'financial freedom'.
Unfortunately, I couldn't run away.
In 2021, I heavily invested in LUNA. At that time, various KOLs were shouting every day about 'the future of algorithmic stablecoins', and I believed it.
You also know what happened later: the LUNA crash, UST de-pegging, zero in 24 hours.
I lost nearly a year's savings in this incident.
At that moment, I realized that the crypto world is indeed free, but the flip side of freedom is a world without a safety net.
On-chain life: no one knows who you are.
There was a time I left the crypto world. But after a few months, I returned.
Why?
It's not greed, but the concept of 'on-chain identity' started to attract me.
You are on-chain, making transactions, interacting, buying NFTs, investing in DAOs, no one knows who you are, and no one discriminates against where you come from. Your value is your on-chain address, assets, and operation history.
I started to seriously manage my on-chain identity.
I re-registered a main wallet and chose a more pleasing address this time—ending with 'TZ8888****', still using that previously customized tool.
This is not vanity, but I truly believe that an address that looks organized, pleasing, and memorable is like an ID card in the web3 world for someone like me who engages a lot in 'on-chain activities'.
Data doesn't lie: blockchain itself will not die.
From 2022 until now, I have been doing more and more on-chain analysis work.
For example:
Tracking the capital flow of a certain wallet;
Analyzing the on-chain deployment path before a certain project launch;
Even predicting some 'potential airdrop lists';
More importantly, understanding the operating rules of this system.
And I found an interesting phenomenon:
Although the crypto world is 'collapsing', the number of on-chain addresses, contract deployments, node counts, and stablecoin circulation—these hard data points have never stopped growing.
The crypto world can have bear markets, but the chain will not die. Because:
The blockchain itself does not rely on any institution to survive;
More and more traditional finance is testing on-chain payments;
The number of developers and ecosystem participants is still growing.
To say something that might not sound too 'vulgar': the crypto world is not dead; it is 'constantly evolving'.
Conclusion: the crypto world will not disappear; it has just changed its 'appearance'.
You ask me, 'Will the crypto world always exist?'
I want to ask you: if the money we use every day becomes on-chain USDT, does that count as the crypto world?
If future game assets, tickets, and music copyrights exist on-chain, does that count as the crypto world?
What we call the 'crypto world' today is just a label for this group of early crypto explorers. In the future, it may become 'chain world', 'digital asset world', or 'on-chain application world'.
So the 'surface' of the crypto world may change, but the 'on-chain paradigm' will not disappear.
It will become increasingly embedded in reality.
Those who still remain in the crypto world are all doing one thing.
Let me say something sentimental in the end.
I have seen many people come and go in these years. Some made quick money and left, some went bankrupt, and some, like me, stayed low-profile and continued 'on-chain living'.
I observe that those 'still persisting people' have a common point: they are no longer obsessed with ups and downs, but are thinking about 'the right way to participate in this world'.
Some are developing contracts;
Some do data analysis;
Some are studying ZK and Rollup;
Some, like me, manage several wallets and nodes, living a 'low-desire' on-chain life.
You ask me, will the crypto world always exist?
I think the crypto world is no longer a 'circle'; it is becoming a part of our world.
Just like the internet back in the day—who would think the internet is a circle? Isn't it just our life itself?
Final note
Maybe three years from now, this answer will be 'slapped in the face' by some new narrative.
Maybe five years from now, we will no longer use the term 'crypto world'.
But I believe:
The value of decentralized exchanges, on-chain identity systems, and censorship-resistant financial freedom will not be discarded by the times.
Whether you choose to participate now is your personal freedom.
Just remember to get yourself a pleasing main wallet address when you truly 'go on-chain' one day, like my TZ8888 starting address, for good luck and a sense of ritual.
You can go and take a look, choose a memorable one, at least you won't have to spend half a day flipping through addresses to copy them.
On-chain life is still long; may we both go further.
