The narrative has changed this year. NFT and the metaverse are the core narratives of 2022. Ethereum L2 is a hot topic in 2023. Now Solana, Base, TON, and BTCFi are the ecosystems that people are most concerned about this year.
This year, the protagonist has changed. The crypto ecosystem is no longer dominated by American projects alone. Americans, Russians, and Chinese have all built their own crypto platforms. Ethereum is no longer the absolute overlord. The rise of Solana and TON has made people believe that they have the opportunity to match or even surpass Ethereum.
This year's capital has changed. The time in 2003 when you could raise all the primary investment by just attending a conference is over. Many entrepreneurs have found that there are not many investment institutions with sufficient funds this year, and they need to go to Europe and the United States to find funds.
Three years of TOKEN 2049, three completely different crypto industries. Bitcoin has not changed, but the crypto industry has undergone tremendous changes.
The four new ecological kings born in the cryptocurrency circle:
Solana Base Ton BTCFi
In the past year, most of the hot events have revolved around the four ecosystems of Solana, Base, TON, and BTCFi, and the same may be true in the coming year. The Matthew effect, the strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker. These four ecosystems have repeatedly demonstrated their strong innovation and ability to stir up trouble, and have shown a siphoning effect on capital. They will still be the tracks and directions that many entrepreneurs and investors focus on.
However, some practitioners still expressed concerns about BTCFi, saying that UXTO is not suitable for large-scale applications. BTCFi is more of a nesting doll game. The essence of interest-bearing is to let latecomers pay the bill. Where is its positivity? Although the Bitcoin ecosystem has experienced nearly two years of development since the birth of Ordi, many practitioners still expressed their concerns about whether BTCFi has long-term sustainability.
1 Solana: The most exciting blockchain
In order to gain a larger market share, Solana has unknowingly left other public chains far behind.
Solana may be the public chain ecosystem with the most projects on mobile phones. Magic Eden, the largest NFT platform on Solana, Phantom, the largest wallet on Solana, Backpack, one of the largest DEX platforms on Solana, and Depin, the largest platform on Solana, have all launched mobile APPs. From this point of view, compared with other crypto ecosystems, Solana ecosystem projects are already more prepared to compete for larger-scale users.
Solana is also the first public chain ecosystem to successfully develop a Web3 mobile phone (SAGA mobile phone). During 2049, the mobile phone JamboPhone 2 supported by the Solana ecosystem was officially released on Solana Breakpoint. It is also the first public chain ecosystem to successfully develop Depin (Helium). It is also the first ecosystem to expand and strengthen the meme platform in this cycle (Pump.fun). Recently, it has also strongly promoted the concept of PayFi.
The activity of the ecosystem has far exceeded that of other platforms, which may be one of the reasons why Solana ecosystem tokens account for 7 of the top 100 tokens. Judging from the performance of the top 100 ecosystem tokens, it is still far ahead of Base, TON, and BTCFi.
2 Telegram is the global version of WeChat and the new center of the crypto industry.
Telegram will soon launch video streaming, completely copying WeChat and creating a global version of WeChat.
Currently, Telegram's WeChat applet has achieved initial success, and the Telegram version of WeChat Pay and TON have also been successfully built. The next step for Telegram is to make videos to keep more users on Telegram.
In the cryptocurrency industry, Telegram’s advantages cannot be replicated. Its users highly overlap with current cryptocurrency users. And a scary trend is that it will even become a very important center in the cryptocurrency industry. Currently, whether it is Binance, Bybit, Bitget, OKX, HashKey, Huobi and other leading exchanges, or some ecological project parties such as Blast, Base, Solana, etc., they are all building mini-programs on Telegram to grab a large chunk of user traffic.
At TOKEN 2049, I found that the project team of Depin wanted to develop on Telegram, the project team of AI application wanted to develop on Telegram, the project team of Base and Blast wanted to develop on Telegram, and the company doing Web2 taxi business (TADA) also wanted to develop on Telegram. Telegram embraces both Web2 and Web3. Some investors also believe that Telegram's successful transformation this time may even make Telegram itself the largest Web3 social application.
TON and Telegram are two different things. But in this process, TON will be one of the biggest beneficiaries.
The organization that holds the right to speak in the TON ecosystem is called TOP, which currently has about 200 people, most of whom are Russians. Some of the most popular projects in the TON ecosystem, such as Notcoin, Catizen, and Ston.fi, are members of TOP. For entrepreneurs who want to get the greatest support from the TON ecosystem, they need to contact TOP.
3 Behind the false prosperity of data, bad money drives out good money
Where does Base's millions of active addresses come from every day? This problem also occurs in various ecosystems.
DUN data shows that the total number of addresses on the Base chain has exceeded 44 million. On September 14 alone, there were 1.55 million active addresses on Base. However, are these data true? Analysis shows that the active addresses on that day should mainly come from Coinbase Wallet, Aerodrome, and cbBTC. However, it is difficult to count the real number of users.
It can only be counted that cbBTC had 2,472 holders on that day, with a total of 37,903 transfers; Aerodrome's most active fund pool WETH/USDC had only 1,049 addresses interacting with it in the past 24 hours. Where do 1.55 million active addresses come from? The openness, transparency, and permissionlessness of blockchain have always been its praised advantages, but now it is still inevitable that false data is prevalent.
After analyzing Base's multiple data including protocol revenue, I am sure that Base is indeed the fastest growing L2. However, this does not prevent me from believing that Base's current traffic is exaggerated, although this behavior is not caused by Base.
In addition to Base, TON and Solana all have such problems. For example, what are the real users of TON games on the chain? How many are the on-chain users created by robots? How much of Solana's data is meme and how much is real application? And these blockchain ecosystems mentioned are still the best developed.
Behind the false prosperity of data, there is a more embarrassing problem. When we unveil the emperor's new clothes, the truth is too cruel. When the most real but bleak data of the project is placed in front of us, will investors, retail investors, and builders still accept it calmly and still be optimistic about it?
When survival issues arise, the cost of cheating will not be that high for many people. The phenomenon of bad money driving out good money continues to occur in the blockchain world.
