Speaking of altcoins, everyone should also feel that the narrative of the altcoin market has completely changed after experiencing three bull markets in 2015, 2017, and 2021. At first, there were various imitation coins, which modified parameters, algorithms, and consensus types based on Bitcoin, and then launched a public chain. Projects in this stage were the most legitimate altcoins, imitating the authentic Bitcoin. The term 'altcoin' is quite fitting. Later came the ICO era, which can be considered centered around Ethereum, where various so-called smart contract platforms emerged. Everyone began to compete on performance, security, and privacy. Of course, there were also various applications during this stage, such as CDN platforms, storage, and domains, but the market back then was dominated by protocols, specifically fat protocols, where upper-layer applications almost all failed. By the 2021 bull market, various DeFi, lending, and stablecoins emerged, greatly increasing the market's playability. This wave attracted many external institutions and introduced visible evaluation metrics like TVL. This phase was characterized by both protocols and applications thriving simultaneously, with many middleware solutions also standing out, like $link, which could capitalize on almost every trend. It can be said that 2021 was a flourishing bull market for altcoins, making it the easiest bull market for everyone to make money.

However, this year, there has been almost no innovation in protocols; the landscape of public chains has basically been set. Any new project wanting to raise a valuation of a hundred million is very difficult to establish because you are already late to the game. Others have already started their master's and doctoral studies, and you want to nurture talent from kindergarten, making it hard to succeed. Currently, this round of altcoin market requires two extremes: one is extreme uselessness, like top memes $fartcoin and $trump, and the other is extreme products, which are mature products built on mature public chains. Whoever masters the killer applications will capture the most funds. For instance, several projects that once reached a hundred billion FDV, such as $hype, $jup, $jto, $ena, and $ondo. Additionally, there are meme platforms like $pump, $bonk, and $launchcoin. These are the most important applications of this round. Currently, market funds only recognize these two extremes, and many old coins on CEXes are stuck in the middle, as the market does not have enough funds to pay attention to them.