The short-lived frenzy of MEME coins seems to have made mainstream narrative coins look relatively bleak, which has confused investors who stick to mainstream coins and are committed to frontline construction. Is value investing really going to be defeated by pure emotional drive and FOMO? In fact, it is not.
I firmly believe that the frequent breakthroughs of MEME coins are actually more like warming up for the upcoming mainstream narratives such as Layer 2 Summer, AI+DePIN, and chain abstraction. Big events may be quietly brewing.
First of all, BOME was successfully listed on Binance in just three days, which undoubtedly made the MEME market a miracle day. Although the pure asset issuance narrative of MEME coins is extremely risky and like licking blood on the edge of a knife, from the initial rise of DOGE to the last round of SHIB and PEPE craze, MEME coins have become the "new favorite" in the window period of mainstream narrative relay.
However, we must clearly realize that the basis of the pure asset issuance narrative is emotion. Some funds that prefer high risk and high volatility will be keen on hype emotions, and some new funds and users are also easily driven by such emotions, resulting in FOMO effect. But emotions are short-lived and cannot last. The low issuance and operating costs of MEME coins are destined to a short life cycle, and we should not be overly obsessed with it.
In fact, through communication with VC friends and observation of a large number of early projects in the vertical narrative direction, I firmly believe that the rampant MEME coin is only temporary. The fermentation of mainstream narratives takes time, and value investment will not fail. A truly long-lasting and magnificent bull market requires these mainstream narratives to take over.
In the future, we may see more projects based on technological innovation, practical application and ecological construction emerge and lead a new investment boom. Therefore, investors should remain calm, look at market changes rationally, adhere to the concept of value investment, and wait for the mainstream narrative to truly explode.
1) AI+web3
AI+DePIN will definitely be the main narrative of this bull market. The reason is very simple: it is a new story with strong scalability and slow implementation.
The concept of AI has attracted the attention of web2+web3, and will attract a large number of developers, VC funds and large-scale users. Whether this round of bull market can break the vicious circle of existing funds depends on the power of AI's breaking circle effect;
At the same time, AI has great potential for extending scenarios, including computing power aggregation, model training, interactive model communication, intelligent automated transaction execution, AI distributed data verification, data IP ownership, etc. There is a lot of room for development in this narrative scenario.
The current hot trend of AI+DePIN is essentially still in the stage of using blockchain Tokenomics to empower AI. When the AI infrastructure infra matures, AI will use intention transaction paths, experience upgrades and other AI Agents to empower blockchain DeFi. The narrative imagination space of AI+Web3 will be beyond imagination.
With the narrative space, development is carried out around various vertical directions, various infra projects are combined to expand the industry, attract VC investment, play around, develop applications, etc. The key is that the prosperity of infra is not proportional to the market's expectations for the implementation of applications. Everyone knows that AI applications are difficult to implement. Isn’t this an opportunity to push the infra market to the sky?
Just imagine, if the mainstream market narrative can shift from DeFi’s infra to AI+web3’s infra, even without talking about practical applications, the AI narrative framework will have no problem spanning two bull and bear cycles.
2）ETH layer 2
Although the modular one-click chain launch and the Cancun upgrade have reduced the development and maintenance costs of layer 2, layer 2 has been burdened with the market expectations of the integrated chain.
Which layer 2 technology is more unique and differentiated, which layer 2 user and traffic growth rate is faster, which layer 2 B-end Stack has a wider coverage of strategic resources, which layer 2 ecosystem is progressing faster, which layer 2 can produce killer applications, etc. will all become indicators of the layer 2 value evaluation system.
This means that the layer 2 track will become more and more competitive, and more cutting-edge layer 2 projects such as Metis will frequently come up with surprising moves to disrupt the market, and the four kings standing at the forefront of the layer 2 trend will be under great pressure. The huge market expectations + the slow ecological landing will make it extremely difficult for these layer 2 projects to reach a new height.
To some extent, those who choose layer 2 are destined to endure torment and loneliness. Fortunately, the scalability of the layer 2 track is strong enough. Modular combination of new chains, Rollup As A Service, Stack strategy, layer 3 application chain, Paymaster subsidy war, Tokenomics catalyst, primitive component commercial output, etc. are all points that can be focused on.
I have always believed that the current layer 2 is essentially a "soft fork" of the layer 1 mainnet. Standing on the shoulders of giants, it conducts Crypto-Native chain reforms in a more flexible and autonomous way, which to some extent gives Ethereum a second life.
If we think in this way, will we have a new expectation for layer 2, which has always failed to land as expected? The battle for Ethereum layer 2 is difficult but imperative.
3）BTC layer 2
If we look at the BTC ecosystem from the perspective of modularity, BTC seems to be more suitable for promoting a series of BTC layer 2 derivative ecosystems, because it has a stronger consensus, and at the same time its technical defects are obvious, and its sense of technical boundaries and principles is not strong. It is uniquely positioned to use the BTC mainnet as the settlement layer and then build a BTC derivative market that can release huge liquidity.
However, the BTC ecosystem originated from the ordinal theory of Ordinals and exploded in the inscription asset issuance paradigm after BRC 20. Currently, a series of technical narratives such as RGB, Lightning Network, CKB alternative chain, BTC-EVM chain, etc. are being explored and implemented.
The third wave of inscriptions that many people are anxiously waiting for may be driven by the upcoming BTC layer 2 narrative, or the 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, and only layer 2 that can be directly implemented can continue the story.
A pessimistic view is that the BTC layer 2 market is just new wine in old bottles, but an optimistic view is that the development of the Ethereum ecosystem requires too high a threshold of resources, manpower, and capital, and BTC layer 2 is a completely newly opened new strategic high ground, and more developers can join the ranks of builders with a relatively low threshold.
What’s more, BTC’s consensus is even stronger, and the road to success for BTC layer 2 is wide and open, so why not let developers give it a try?
4) Alt-layer 1 High-performance chain
In the last bull market, everyone was discussing who was the Ethereum killer. In this round, the competition among Alt layer 1s is about who can become an effective supplement to Ethereum.
The expansion of EVM-Compatible layer 1 is more about diverting developers from the Ethereum ecosystem through subtle differentiation. 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 about taking a path that Ethereum cannot take, attracting more innovative developers to "start over again."
My confidence in this high-performance layer 1 chain comes from this. Including the potential of Solana's 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, and Monad, etc.
In my opinion, these emerging chains essentially surpass the technical limitations that existed when Ethereum launched the chain, and try to use greater underlying innovation to activate a new round of Lego narratives. As for whether Solana can revitalize DePIN and whether SUI can revive the new DeFI, it is still unknown at present, but it is worth looking forward to.
5) Chain Abstraction
I don’t think modularization is just a simple narrative now, but a basic blockchain concept. Account abstraction, which has been proposed for many years in the Ethereum EVM environment, has become inappropriate in the more complex UTXO chain and non-EVM multi-chain environment. Therefore, another more abstract concept came on the stage - "chain abstraction".
It should be said that chain abstraction is the culmination of the combination of "account abstraction" and "modularization". It is so important that the slogan of Mass Adoption has been shouted for so many years without being implemented. In the final analysis, the market is still at the stage of basic infra such as chain speculation, wallets, exchanges, and DeFi, which brings extremely high thresholds and challenges to new onboard web3 users.
Chain abstraction is based on user experience, and lowers the threshold through more B2B service forms such as intermediate chains or chains within chains, allowing a wider range of web2 groups to enter web3 with a smoother user experience, thereby changing the fundamentals of Crypto, which has always been a niche and stock market game.
In addition, there are small sub-tracks such as Restaking, Fully-onchain games, intent-centric transactions, Privacy transactions, etc., all of which more or less carry part of the direction of mainstream narrative progress.
I know that some people will regard these mainstream narratives as MEME, or even worse than MEME. When the market FOMO is so impetuous to a certain extent, it is inevitable that people's values will be confused. Anyway, let's just say that this is a motivational article written for those who stick to the direction of value investment. I hope it can reflect the true voice of a large number of persistent builders. That's enough.
The road ahead is long and hard, but we will start over again. Stay firmly on the right path that suits your own cognition and continue to build.
