What should a good project's "ecological niche" look like? Recently, after deep conversations with some bosses, I found that most projects have not found their ecological niche:

1. High technical barriers, but there must be deep application scenarios. For example, ZK zero-knowledge proofs can be used for zkVM, cross-chain bridges, and verifiable computation, but considering the overall cost and efficiency, only zk-Rollup layer 2 expansion has been successfully implemented. Other directions lack deep application scenarios; no matter how advanced the technology is, it remains a castle in the air.

The FHE technology of Mind Network seems to have high barriers, but it has always struggled to find application scenarios. Most projects working on ZK co-processors also face this issue;

2. Market demands must be grounded, not driven by assumptions. Some projects often hypothesize that if 1% of users use our product, the commercial imagination space would be vast, but in reality, even this 1% demand could be fabricated.

Huma’s PayFi cuts into accounts receivable and cross-border payments, which is relatively reliable based on its compliance background. But projects claiming to be "decentralized Stripe"—what's wrong with traditional payments?;

3. The business model should be able to bridge B2B and B2C. Pure B2C enjoys the FOMO bonus but cannot survive the cold winter; pure B2B leaves retail investors feeling excluded, with high marketing costs. The smartest approach is to cater to both sides, with institutions paying and retail investors engaging, to navigate through cycles.

Backpack wallet + exchange + NFT community considers both institutions and retail. Particle’s chain abstraction + application products also balance B2B and B2C. In contrast, those purely doing infrastructure projects, which aim to create a complete chain DA layer, can only rely on institutional blood transfusions;

4. The business vision only needs to be "unfalsifiable," don’t be greedy for completeness. What does unfalsifiable mean? In the short term, you cannot prove that I am wrong. Some layer 2 projects always say, "We just need a wave of mass adoption to explode," but such grand visions without short-term verifiability equate to having no prospects.

KaitoAI may not even be an AI company, but it has tapped into the attention economy gap of KOLs and project parties, thus possessing unfalsifiability. Don’t just say you want to “redefine XXX”;

5. Timing is crucial. The intersection of three variables: technology maturity, market education, and competitive landscape, defines the time window. Why is AI Agent popular now? LLMs are sufficient, TEE is mature, and user acceptance has increased. Three years ago, discussing AI as a game-changer was pure hype.

Amidst the Solana MEME craze, there are still projects focusing on GameFi, hoping that sector rotation will favor them. Consider the operational logic behind MEME, and you’ll understand why projects like games, which have slow implementation and long cycles, struggle to get into the spotlight;

6. The ecosystem must have self-growth attributes and cannot rely on operations forever. Airdrops to attract users, grants to subsidize developers—these are just starting methods. The real network effect is that the more users there are, the greater the value, and the more developers there are, the stronger the ecosystem.

Those layer 2 projects that rely on point wars to maintain heat, from zkSync, Scroll to Linea, where are the real users after losing the opportunists?