With MEME coins rampant, where will the five major mainstream narratives such as Layer2 go?
Original author: Haotian
The continued carnival of MEME coins and the relative sluggishness of mainstream narrative coins make people always have the illusion that this bull market is driven by AltCoin. This can’t help but make people with a lot of mainstream coins still building at a loss. Is value investing about to lose to pure emotional FOMO? Obviously not.
In my opinion, the frequent breakthroughs of MEME coins are just a warm-up for the belated mainstream narratives such as Layer 2 Summer, AI+DePIN, and Chain Abstraction. Big ones may be in the making:
First of all, BOMEs three-day listing on Binance has achieved a miracle day for the MEME market. The narrative of MEMEs pure asset issuance, although the risk is very high, is like licking blood from the edge of a knife, but from the initial DOGE to the last round of SHIB PEPE, MEME currency has already It has become the “mainstream narrative” during a long period of emptiness in which there has been no progress in the mainstream narrative relay.
But it needs to be understood that the fundamentals of the narrative of pure asset issuance are emotions. Some funds that prefer high risks and tend to be highly volatile will speculate on emotions. Some new OTC funds and users are prone to emotional FOMO, but emotions are emotions after all. The low issuance and operating costs of MEME currency are destined to have a short life cycle, so don’t be greedy.
In fact, through contact with VC friends during this period, and at the same time looking at a large number of early projects in the vertical narrative direction, I firmly believe that MEME is rampant just because it takes time for the mainstream narrative to ferment, and value investment will not fail. A more majestic and lasting bull market needs these mainstream narratives to take over. Next, share my trend observations:
1）AI+web3
AI+DePIN will definitely be the main narrative of this bull market. The reason is very simple: a new story, highly malleable and slow to implement.
The AI concept will capture the attention of web2+web3 and will attract a large number of developers, VC funds and large-scale users to enter the market. Whether this round of bull market can break the cycle of existing funds depends on the power of AIs cycle-breaking effect;
At the same time, AI scenarios have great possibilities for expansion, including computing power aggregation, model training, model communication and interoperability, intelligent automated transaction execution, AI distributed data verification, data IP ownership, etc. There is so much room for development in this narrative scenario. .
AI+DePIN, which is currently the focus of the craze, is essentially using blockchain Tokenomics to empower AI. When the AI foundation infra matures, AI will use AI Agents such as intent transaction paths and experience upgrades to empower blockchain DeFi. The narrative imagination space of AI+Web3 will be beyond imagination.
With narrative space, development is carried out in various vertical directions, and various infra projects are combined to expand industries, attract VC investment, play with hair, develop applications, etc. The key is that the prosperity of infra is not directly proportional to the markets expectations for the implementation of applications. , we all know that AI applications are difficult to implement. Isn’t this an opportunity for the infra market to take off?
Just imagine, if the mainstream narrative of the market can shift from DeFis infra to AI+web3s infra, even if we dont talk about landing applications, the big narrative framework of AI will have no problem traversing both bull and bear cycles.
2）ETH layer 2
Although the modular one-click chain issuance and the benefits of the Cancun upgrade have reduced the development and maintenance costs of layer 2, layer 2 has been burdened with the market expectations of a comprehensive chain.
Which layer 2 technology is more unique and differentiated, which layer 2 user and traffic growth rate is fast, which layer 2 B-side Stack strategic resource coverage is large, which layer 2 ecological implementation is progressing quickly, which layer 2 can The emergence of killer applications and so on will become indicators of the layer 2 value evaluation system.
This means that the layer 2 track will become more and more complicated, and more cutting-edge layer 2 projects such as Metis will frequently cause surprises and disrupt the situation. The four kings standing at the forefront of layer 2 will be under great pressure. Huge market expectations + slow ecological implementation will make it extremely difficult for these layer 2 projects to reach a new height.
To a certain extent, choosing layer 2 is doomed to endure suffering and loneliness. Fortunately, the layer 2 track is also scalable enough, with modular combination of new chains, Rollup As A Service, Stack strategy, layer 3 application chain, Paymaster subsidizes War, Tokenomics catalyst, commercializes output of Primitive components, etc., are all areas where it can make efforts.
I have always believed that the current layer 2 is essentially a soft fork of the layer 1 main network, standing on the shoulders of giants, and carrying out Crypto-Native chain changes in a more flexible and autonomous way. To some extent This also gives Ethereum a second life.
If you think about it this way, will you have new expectations for layer 2, which has always been less than expected? Without him, the battle for Ethereum layer 2 is difficult but necessary.
3）BTC layer 2
If we look at the BTC ecosystem from a modular perspective, BTC seems to be more suitable for promoting a series of BTC layer 2 derivative ecosystems, because it has a stronger consensus, while its technical flaws are obvious, and its sense of technical boundaries and principles are not strong. The BTC mainnet serves as the settlement layer, and then builds a BTC derivatives market that can release huge liquidity, which is unique.
However, the BTC ecology sprouted from the ordinal theory of Ordinals and broke out from the inscription asset issuance paradigm after BRC 20. Currently, a series of technical narratives surrounding RGB, Lightning Network, CKB replacement chain, BTC-EVM chain, etc. are being explored and implemented.
The third wave of Inscription that many people are anxiously waiting for is likely to be driven by the upcoming BTC layer 2 narrative, or BTC layer 2 infra itself will take over the third wave. After all, the BTC ecosystem has accumulated a large number of users and funds through asset issuance. , only layer 2 that can land directly can continue the story.
From a pessimistic point of view, we can think that the BTC layer 2 market is actually new wine in old bottles, but from an optimistic point of view, the development of the Ethereum ecosystem requires too high a threshold for resources, manpower, and funds, and BTC layer 2 is a completely new strategy. In the highlands, more developers can join the ranks of Builders with a relatively low threshold.
Moreover, the consensus on BTC is even stronger, and the road to BTC layer 2 is wide and wide. Why not let developers go wild and take advantage of it?
4) Alt-layer 1 high-performance chain
In the last bull market, everyone discussed who was the killer of Ethereum. In this round of Alt layer 1 competition, the competition is about who can become an effective complement to Ethereum.
The layer 1 expansion of EVM-Compatible is more about developers who want to use subtle differences to divert the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone is just repeating what Ethereum has done. This round of high-concurrency transaction chains, parallel EVM chains, MOVE language underlying chains, etc. are more intended to take a path that Ethereum cannot take and attract more innovative developers to start all over again.
My confidence in this high-performance layer 1 chain comes from this. Including, the potential of Solanas high-concurrency transactions in the DePIN narrative, the reshaping of the SUI Move language in DeFi security, the development of a series of parallel EVM chains such as Sei, Artela, Monad, etc.
In my opinion, these emerging chains have essentially transcended the technical limitations that existed when Ethereum launched the chain, and tried to use greater underlying innovation to activate a new round of Lego narrative. As for whether Solana can revitalize DePIN and SUI, New DeFI cannot be revived, it is not known yet, but it is worth looking forward to.
5) Chain Abstraction chain abstraction
With the development of modular thinking, I no longer think it is as simple as narrative, but has become the lowest level of blockchain thinking. The account abstraction that has been proposed for many years around the Ethereum EVM environment has become outdated in the environment of more complex UTXO chains and non-EVM multi-chains. As a result, another more abstract concept came onto the stage - chain abstraction.
It should be said that chain abstraction is the perfect combination of account abstraction + modularization. It is really too important. The slogan of Mass Adoption has not been implemented for so many years. In the final analysis, the market is still in the stage of speculation on basic infra such as chains, wallets, exchanges, and DeFi. This has brought a lot of trouble to a new Onboard web3 user. Extremely high threshold and challenge.
Chain abstraction is based on user experience. It lowers the threshold with more to-B service forms such as intermediate chains or chains-in-chains, allowing a wider group of web2 people to enter web3 and have a smoother and smoother experience, thereby changing Cryptos niche. And the fundamentals of the existing market game.
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In addition, there are subdivided tracks such as Restaking, Fully-onchain full-chain games, intent-centric transactions, Privacy transactions, etc., all of which more or less carry part of the mainstream narrative development direction.
I know that there will definitely be some people who regard these mainstream narratives as MEME, or even worse than MEME. If the market FOMO is impetuous to a certain extent, it will inevitably lead to confusion of values. Anyway, let’s just say this is a bloody article written for people who stick to the direction of value investing. I hope it can reflect the true voice of a large number of persistent Builders. That’s enough.
The long road through Xiongguan is really like iron, but now we are crossing it from the beginning. Stay firmly on the right path that conforms to your own knowledge and continue building.
