Next, the market will enter a big cycle of "lowering expectations":
1) The project Builder lowered its expectations. From a luxurious startup team with a financing of tens of millions and a valuation of hundreds of millions, it is now back to a financing of $100,000, which is not too little. The fighting mentality of Xiaomi plus a rifle is that being able to "survive" is the first priority;
2) VC investors have lowered their expectations. The high valuation model of following the big VC Fomo investment is no longer effective. The VCs that survive will inevitably return to looking for small and beautiful innovative technology teams or Ponzi who can stir up trouble. Small investment, multiple targets, and quick exit will become the mainstream. What, gathering? ? You have to meet the threshold of gathering;
3) Coin holders lower their expectations. Previously, they adhered to the "technical narrative + long-termism" and always wanted to follow past empiricism to make a big profit (10-100 times). In the future, retail investors will have to strengthen their "Trader" skills. On the premise of having some basic investment research and learning ability, they will increase the frequency of transactions appropriately and give up the illusion of 100-1000 times. 3-5 times is already a hellish difficulty (except for pure PVP lottery logic). After all, how cruel the situation of this year's holders is, everyone has learned a profound lesson;
4) The airdrop hoppers have lowered their expectations. When everyone is gathering around the focus of attention to get the airdrops, the potential airdrop reward space will actually be narrowed. After all, the studio's industrial assembly line is already extremely mature. Therefore, it is highly likely that "quietly getting the airdrops" will become the norm, and the tens of thousands of dollars invested in getting the airdrops will become history. The main goal is to never bet heavily if you can get zero airdrops, and never share the opportunity with others if you can enjoy it privately;
5) Market narratives have lowered expectations. In the past, the Crypto market has always pursued the "narrative resonance" effect. From DeFi, NFT, GameFi, to Restaking, BTCFi, chain abstraction, and AI Agent, each round of narratives wanted to stage the glory of the former DeFi Summer. However, it has been proven that the expected evolution of narratives has become weaker and weaker. It is difficult for the market to support a huge market bubble with a single technical narrative. Perhaps micro-narratives with multiple points of blooming will become the norm.
6) Chain infra construction reduces expectations. Crypto has always relied on continuously stacking infra narratives to expand expectations, from high-performance layer1 to Rolllup layer2, as well as various chain architecture models that take differentiated technical routes. Facts have proved that the era of pure technology is over. In the future, the market will only shift to "attention is king". Infra with only technology but no community stickiness and continuous capital accumulation and circulation will lose the market;
7) The wealth effect of CEX has fallen short of expectations. For a long time, CEX has become the focus of public opinion and topics because it controls the vast majority of liquidity. The so-called "CEX listing effect" and "DEX PVP free market" have become the A and B sides of the market's attention. However, over-reliance on CEX to create a wealth effect will inevitably result in a weaker and weaker listing effect. Ultimately, the wealth effect should be determined by the project's long-term build cycle and onboarding costs.
