Is there no ideal in blockchain?
It is now 2025; does blockchain still have ideals? What we see is that fewer people mention 'Blockchain', while more people mention 'Web3'.
The (ideals) compiled in 2019 are a collection of Vitalik's papers from that year, and he is now 31 years old, while Ethereum is also 10 years old. Whether it was the shout of 'let Ethereum return to cryptopunk' or his various reflections on scalability, decentralized governance over the past five years, all deserve us to ask at this moment: Where are the ideals?
The ETF is here, and the market is getting bigger; but looking back at the projects from 2017 to 2019, almost none can continue to adhere to their original intentions, and even fewer survive to this day.
People chase new narratives, create new wheels, pursue various memes with added meanings: one pump after another, 7×24 hours of chasing gains and losses, and exhibitions and side events all over the world. In this increasingly mature market, joys and sorrows are shared, yet few hold on to their original intentions.
After countless battles among CEXs, market share and rankings have begun to stabilize, with bright product innovations continuously emerging. DEXs no longer need to educate users on how to use on-chain trading and wallets through trading ranking competitions.
RWA has once again donned the skin of US Treasuries. Non-coin blockchains have nearly disappeared.
Is this market left with only trade fees?
From Trade bots to various pumps, various fun and points.
The Fall of Ideal Projects
Grin's miners turn to dust
MimbleWimble's privacy dream once made Grin a refreshing stream in the blockchain circle. But by 2025, the miners' group has fallen silent, the official website and forum are no longer updated, and those once adamant idealists have all turned away.Vite's 'Letting Go of Oneself'
Vite initially touted zero fees and high-speed trading, but after its delisting from Binance, it transformed into a meme coin incubator. The official Twitter is filled with daily posts: 'Viters, find the next 100× meme!'—no longer can we hear the grand claims of 'efficient decentralization' from back then.
Commercial survival of infrastructure
Cobo: From Beginner Wallet to Institutional Giant
In its early years, Cobo focused on PoS node assistance, allowing novice users to easily stake; now, it has become a leader in institutional-grade custody and DeFi-as-a-service, serving hundreds of hedge funds and asset management teams, with monthly trading volumes reaching hundreds of millions. Ideals exist, but they must be worthy of the pursuit of real money.MakerDAO: Ideals and Compromises
DAI once claimed 'anyone can participate', but for stable operation, it had to accept a large amount of USDC collateral. When the community voted down the proposal to ban USDC, it seemed more like a default of 'reality first'—when ideals collide with compliance, ideals are often forced to yield.
The Dilemmas and Lessons of DAOs
Yescoin and 3WW3: Ideals Hard to Land
A Telegram P2E project with 13 million users, point and check-in incentives have skyrocketed its popularity.
3WW3 attempts to incubate and support grassroots projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but after the emergence of YESCOIN, it has fallen into internal strife due to uneven resource distribution. After DAO incubates projects, how can it balance the drive and fair distribution?Aragon: From Star to Fall from Grace
Once a tool for building DAOs, it is now more of a negative example of 'low voter turnout and sluggish proposals'. The multi-chain expansion plan has quietly stalled, and the team has ultimately returned to daily maintenance of the Ethereum mainnet, yet it is hard to see the fiery ecological expansion of the past.
The partial loosening of the Ethereum Foundation
Partial delegation of power
The foundation newly established a 'Community Autonomy Department' to allow 20 regional committees to participate in the review of key proposals, marking a surgical reflection on past centralized decision-making.The game of technical routes
Danksharding and Proto-Danksharding have repeatedly become focal points of debate; the tug-of-war between community representatives and core developers reflects the eternal contradiction between technical ideals and landing efficiency.Transparency and Distribution
In the face of questions about 'the foundation using huge resources but lacking clear purposes', the team started quarterly public funding reports and let the community vote to decide the next round of research funding. This semi-autonomous, semi-managed model is both a compromise and a gentle protection of ideals.
Market and Retail Investors: Trading First
Retail investors are no longer users.
Besides BTC, how long will users hold a new asset? Or will they become part of the points army?
Retail investors no longer read lengthy white papers but only focus on market fluctuations; VC-backed projects struggle to retain people's hearts, and more people act like part of the 'points army', sweeping airdrops and profiting from price differences. Only Bitcoin remains a faith beacon, treated as digital gold; other tokens resemble fireworks, blooming and quickly dissipating.
The hot money represented by $TRUMP, along with the route of going public in the US stock market, is accelerating the tear from native Crypto.
DEX trading volume remains at new highs; Raydium and Uniswap attract more on-chain users; however, fiat channels, leveraged trading, and derivatives are still the forte of CEXs. Both compete with each other and coexist in cooperation.
Tracks and Interpretation
How far can the RWA track go?
#ONDO, #CFG with venture capital support, the underlying and compliance continue to negotiate, will institutional funds truly flow in continuously, or is it just a passing wind? #STO hasn't taken off, what about #RWA?#SOL could be the next #ETH?
SOL was once expected to become 'the next ETF target'. After the pump, what then? Has ETH grown 'old'? Can SOL truly challenge and replace it, or will it be a new emerging major chain yet to appear?WLD, Loot, #FIL, #NUTS
Can #WLD drive a new generation of identity and privacy markets? How high can its market value go?
Can #Loot's absurd 'text NFTs' welcome a second spring?
Can Filecoin's storage imagination recreate its prosperity?Is there still opportunity for combinable assets like NUTS?
The answer seems to be negative: the narrative is dead.
#TON, Ordi
The meme NFT of the TON ecosystem was popular for a while, yet it cannot hide the controversy of it being a privacy platform—besides traffic data, there is no real landing value.
As the first leader project of Ordinals in the BTC ecosystem, will #Ordi still welcome a comprehensive takeoff?The blood and tears of L2
Just as most L1s disappeared in the previous two cycles, most L2s will also fall in this cycle; only three to five can truly laugh to the end.Liquidity and value will regroup. Which L2 do you think has the greatest opportunity?
DePIN and SocialFi
#DePIN projects are emerging endlessly, from shared charging piles to IoT nodes, all boasting 'on-chain governance + incentives'.
The mechanism design of #SocialFi is commendable, yet there is still no industry benchmark. Perhaps this track lacks the soil to exist in the first place.Others
#AVAE ecosystem X
#COSMOS ecosystem X
Task platforms and DID projects are merely running alongside ENS
In the long run, payment projects similar to OMG are all deadlocks
ETH still focuses on financial applications, emphasizing security
#RGB + the ecosystem remains quiet
Focus on the HYPE ecosystem
When #Grin miners turn to dust, #Vite dreams shatter, when #Yescoin and 3WW3's DAO management frequently falters, when Aragon falls from grace after its glory, when the Ethereum Foundation attempts to partially loosen its power, when $TRUMP and regulatory threats tear the industry apart—we see that ideals seem so fragile in the face of commerce and speculation.
But ideals have never truly left; they are just quietly waiting: for those laboratory teams still obsessed with the limits of cryptography, for grassroots developers who adhere to community autonomy, and for entrepreneurs willing to hold onto their original intentions amidst the winds and bubbles.
Blockchain has no ideals, but ideals will eventually be reborn.
-end-
Author: Cat Buboo
Contributor to Forbes Chinese Network / Former Loopring Content Director / Former Senior Operator at Sina
Represents personal opinion only.