A bull market that does not belong to Ethereum and VCs

This is a bull market that caught people off guard.

I occasionally communicated with several VC friends and could clearly feel their anxiety. VCs were also extremely FOMO and uneasy about this unusual bull market. The reason was simple: the market was hot, but it had nothing to do with them .

Whether it is the inscriptions such as BRC20\ARC20 that the leeks are collectively obsessed with, the Solana and its ecosystem that have been skyrocketing, or the POW ecosystems such as KAS, TAO, and ZEPH, or the Cosmos ecosystems such as Kuji and INJ, all the big increases have nothing to do with them, and they have no chance to participate in them.

On the one hand, restricted by the fund structure, most VCs can only invest in the primary market . At the same time, the vast majority of VCs are essentially Ethereum ecosystem VCs . They have reaped the benefits of the times and have therefore strengthened their convictions, firmly tying themselves to the Ethereum ecosystem train and making big bets on Layer2, account abstraction and everything Vitalik advocates.

Thus, a paradoxical scene emerged: VCs were all in Turkey talking about Layer2, full-chain games, and the autonomous world, and it was very lively; retail investors were all rushing into various local BRC20s and small-cap POW coins, and miners were repeating "Kas is the next Bitcoin"... parallel worlds, different excitement .

This "bull market" in assets has nothing to do with the Ethereum ecosystem, so it naturally has nothing to do with VCs.

Looking at the main thread of this mini-bull market, "MEME" is an unavoidable keyword. In the past, MEME was a sign of the end of the bull market cycle, but now it has become the beginning. When the market lacks sexy new narratives, MEME takes over the responsibility and becomes the simplest and most direct bull market starter, but this time MEME is on top of Bitcoin .

What is Ethereum’s biggest narrative?

The simplest answer is to issue coins. It was the ICO that made Ethereum successful .

In the last bull market, new public chains were also able to issue coins at a faster speed, trying to challenge Ethereum, but in comparison, they lacked "orthodoxy" (not halal).

Today, issuing coins on the Bitcoin network is slower and more congested, but more "legitimacy", even if it is just MEME.

MEME is precisely the natural enemy of VCs. It is a deconstruction of VC narratives. VC investors often like to write various analyses such as the track, team, and problems to be solved in the memo (MEMO) to prove the rationality of their investment. MEME completely tears up MEMO. It has no practicality, does not solve any problems, and does not need VC...

Whether it is MEME on Bitcoin or POW assets like Bitcoin, they are not VC-dominated, but community-first .

In the past, the community empowered the projects, but in the MEME wave, the projects empower the communities. Some projects have chosen to directly use the popular community tokens as ecological tokens in the future, rather than issuing them themselves.

The world seemed to have changed overnight.

Teng, a "big brother" who runs an investment (cryptocurrency trading) studio, has repeatedly warned people around him that if they still hold on to assets such as Ethereum or L2 with the past mindset, they will most likely miss out on this bull market .

He concluded that this wave of mini-bull market is dominated by hot money and emotions and has nothing to do with so-called fundamentals. The Ethereum ecosystem is too cumbersome and has long been occupied by various VCs with tens of billions of dollars in funds . Entering is equivalent to taking over for the VCs, and only a fool would be willing to do so. The Bitcoin ecosystem, very early and fair launches, or projects like Solana that have been thoroughly cleansed and reborn from the ashes have more opportunities.

Funds always choose the weakest points to make sudden moves. Hot money will also choose to intervene in some projects with quite dispersed chips and good liquidity on Binance\Upbit, such as TRB and Gas. There are hot money behind them. Teng chose to follow the hot money and reaped a lot of rewards this year.

A friend who went to Turkey to attend Devconnect lamented upon returning home that the Ethereum ecosystem is becoming more and more boring, with nothing new but old stuff .

Although more and more people are pessimistic about the Ethereum ecosystem and complain that Vitalik has become the emperor (or is passive), as long as the project party successfully "TO V God" and gain recognition, they can get a high premium from VC with this yellow jacket. The Ethereum ecosystem is paying more and more attention to "bloodline (relationship)".

But in my opinion, the Ethereum ecosystem still shoulders the heavy responsibility of "realizing large-scale application of blockchain". The continued rampage of MEME will not only disintegrate VC, but will also disintegrate the grand narrative of the entire Web3 and blockchain:

“We have been talking about ‘a more equitable next generation Internet’ and ‘large-scale application of blockchain’ for so long… In the end, we find that what everyone needs is just a hype target . Everything else is just packaging and gimmicks, whether it is Ethereum or Bitcoin, AI or blockchain… This market does not need VCs, but gamblers. The end point of innovation is not Silicon Valley, but Shenzhen.”

I hope that the above situation will not happen, and I hope that whether it is Ethereum or Solana, POW or POS, everyone will have a bright future.