From "looking up" to "looking straight", how did I become disenchanted with Web3?

author:@LiamWang88, Independent Web3 Researcher

I was the first to hear and participateBlockchainIt was around the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. At that time, I was working in a large Internet company. Thanks to the inherent advantages of large Internet companies in trying new technologies first in their business and the relatively strong programmer atmosphere, I had the opportunity to get in touch with it relatively early.BlockchainAt that time, I often hung out with a bunch of programmer friends, and the topics they talked about most were: "Bitcoin", "mining", "ICO", "air coins", etc.

I don’t come from a technical background, so what they said was completely confusing to me. But because I come from a content background, my intuition tells meBlockchainIt’s a very different technology.

So, I started to read the Bitcoin white paper and the Ethereum white paper. I remember very clearly that one night I read the Bitcoin white paper 10 times in English and still couldn’t understand it. I only remembered the title: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. This title was deeply engraved in my mind, and my intuitive feeling was: Awesome!

This is how it all began. Or, to use a popular phrase on the Internet: the gears of fate began to turn.

Interestingly, although I first learned about BitcoinBlockchainHowever, I listened to my friend’s advice and started playing with air coins. The result is predictable, and I couldn’t escape the fate of being a leek.

所以那个时候，我对待区块链的态度是很矛盾的。

• On the one hand, like many people, I thought this was a new scam to make money - in fact, at that time, this was indeed the case;

• On the other hand, I feel that at least the concept of Bitcoin is very new and indicates certain possibilities in the future.

From 2019 to 2020, I did not participate much in this industry. I just understood the development of this industry as a learner and observer. Until now, I still think that "learner" and "observer" are the most suitable labels for me.

2021: Immerse yourself in the beauty of Web3

If 2017-2018 was a "skimpy" experience of blockchain, then 2021 can be said to be a year of "in-depth personal experience."

That year, I worked at a US dollar fund. Thanks to the platform advantages of VC work, I had more opportunities to learn about the development of cutting-edge technologies and emerging fields. Coincidentally, it was also this year that the crypto market ushered in a bull market, and "Web3" replaced blockchain and began to become a new narrative.

If I recall that bull market, what comes to my mind immediately? There are several things that stand out to me:

• In early 2021, Bitcoin reached a market value of $1 trillion for the first time.

• Large companies like Tesla have disclosed that they hold Bitcoin.

• An NFT work by artist Beeple, "Everydays: The first 5000 days," was sold for $69 million.

• Basketball superstar Stephen Curry spent $180,000 to buy a BAYC NFT. Yes, you read that right, $180,000.

• El Salvador has passed a bill making Bitcoin legal tender.

• DAO — — A new social organization model of Web3 is beginning to emerge.

Looking back now, the overall mood of the Web3 industry that I have personally experienced in 2021 was very high. This high mood is reflected in:

1. Investment and entrepreneurship are booming

Because I am in the VC industry, I have many opportunities to communicate with investors and entrepreneur friends. During the whole process, Web3 is always a topic that will not be absent. At that time, I saw many investors start to leave the traditional investment field and transform into Web3.

It’s not just investors, it’s the same for entrepreneurs. In traditional VC investment, senior talents from large companies are often the first choice for investment. But in that year, I also saw many outstanding talents from large companies begin to flock to the Web3 field to start businesses.

When I asked investors and entrepreneurs who have invested in Web3 why they chose Web3, a common answer was: the Web3 industry is like the Internet in the 1990s, a blue ocean, and the sooner you occupy the ecological niche, the more industry dividends you can get.

2. Stir-fry hot

In Web3, speculation is a common verb. Especially in a bull market, speculation is even more inevitable.

1. Speculation, especially speculationcontractIf we look at the K-line alone, the growth of the entire crypto market in 2021 is very sharp. So at that time, on social media, you can always see many people showing off their huge earnings and sharing how to easily make money in the crypto market.make moneySuch information is available almost every day, and if you read too much, it will give you an illusion that this industrymake moneyIt is very easy. No matter what your professional background or academic qualifications are, as long as you leverage in a bull market and are bold enough, everyone can make money easily.

2. Speculating on NFT. In 2021, the most talked-about thing is undoubtedly NFT. In particular, BAYC's popularity has converted a large number of Web2 users. At that time, the greatest value of NFT, in addition to speculation, was to be used as an avatar. If your social media avatar is a bored ape or a CryptoPunk, then congratulations, many people will regard you as an OG or a particularly powerful person, because people who usually own this kind of NFT are either worth a lot of money or have a good reputation. It can be said that NFT satisfies the satisfaction of showing off in human nature in a very targeted way. So at that time, many people around me were speculating on NFT, especially some young friends. Since many NFT castings are not based on Eastern Time Zone 8, if you want to cast an NFT that you like and has a high price speculation, you have to stay up all night to wait. At that time, the industry jokingly called NFTs small pictures. As for the behavior of speculating on NFTs, the industry jargon is: Have you worked hard today?

three,DAOPractice with passion.

直到现在，我都依然觉得，2021年DAO这个词的出现是一件非常有价值的事情。因为DAO这个词是去中心化自治组织的意思，相比炒币、炒NFT这些炒资产的行为，DAO的TokenThere is relatively less hype about the organization, and more exploration of an organizational form that is completely different from the traditional organizational model. This organizational form has three very important characteristics:

①Decentralization, there is no distinction between leaders and subordinates;

②Work together based on consensus and democratic rules of procedure;

③You can work remotely and complete tasks through online collaboration.

Of course, like the path of many things, DAO also first became popular abroad. The well-known DAOs at that time included:

• Bankless DAO (aims to promote large-scale application and social consensus of a truly bankless financial system);

• Pleasr DAO (a group of digital artists and collectors formed to acquire culturally significant works);

• ConstitutionDAO (raising funds to bid on a copy of the US Constitution), etc.

Later, DAO organizations took root in China and some experimental DAO organization projects emerged.

Just like the hype of NFT, young people are the main group participating in DAO organizations. They are more receptive to new things, and many young people at that time called themselves "digital nomads", and organizations like DAO are more suitable for their digital nomad lifestyle.

Looking at it in 2021, I was inevitably affected by the Web3 bull market. My feelings about Web3 in 2021 can be summed up in one word: Immersive Looking UpThis immersive admiration comes from the high technology represented by this industry - Web3 combines cryptography, distributed ledgers,contractNew technologies such as these also come from this industry, which seems to be easier to use than other industries.make moneyThe way comes from the emergence of new organizational forms such as DAO, exploring the possibility of new organizational forms and new forms of collaboration in the future human society.

To sum it up in one sentence, everything is good in a bull market.

2022: From looking up to being calm, changes are always rapid

If everything is good in the bull market of 2021, then 2022 will be a year of shattered beauty for the crypto market.

This year, there have been many historic events that can be remembered in the crypto industry:

• In May 2022, the public chain Terra collapsed, and LunaTokenZero overnight.

• In July 2022, Three Arrows Capital, a leading investment fund in the crypto industry, filed for bankruptcy protection.

• November 2022, HeadexchangeFTX was exposed to have a problem of misappropriating user funds. The entire process from discovering the problem to declaring bankruptcy took only a few days.

Although there are still some positive events that can give people comfort this year, such as the Ethereum consensus mechanism completing the transition from PoW to PoS, the occurrence of the above events can be said to be the darkest moment in the history of the crypto industry, and it also directly set the tone of "depression" for the Web3 industry in 2022.

I no longer hear those inspiring and emotional news, but more disappointing and terrible voices: XXX suffered heavy losses from speculating in cryptocurrencies, XXX quit the circle, XXX project stopped operating because of lack of financing, XXX crypto fund stopped investing. No one is discussing which coin is worth speculating, no one is discussing whether NFT will continue to rise (on the contrary, everyone is selling, but because NFT liquidity is too poor, many NFTs are basically zeroed out), no one is discussing what DAO will do next, and no one is discussing how to mass adopt this industry. The entire industry has quieted down, or to use the word I said above, the entire industry has become depressed.

Like many people, after witnessing and experiencing so many thrilling and ups and downs in the industry, I also began to break away from my admiration for Web3 in 2021 and slowly calm down:

• 一方面，加密市场行情的巨大波动让我看到，踏足这个领域的人不只有一夜暴富的狂喜，也有一夜巨额亏损的悔恨。尤其是对加高杠杆把contract当现货炒的人来说，他们把Web3视为“搏一搏单车变摩托”的命运场。

• On the other hand, the problems exposed by this industry, such as the opaque use of funds and the lack of effective supervision, have really hit people's confidence in this industry. Although for a long-term development, the sooner such problems appear, the better, it has indeed poured cold water on the excited mood, making everyone start to look at Web3 objectively and calmly.

• 最后，对于那些在我看来更有社会价值的尝试，比如DAO模式的进一步探索和讨论，比如通过Token化促进慈善和环境保护等方面在这一年并没有取得长足的发展，反而跟随加密市场行业的走向一并陷入沉寂。

For a while, I have been wondering: Why are there so many new people entering the circle in 2021?

I think media like NFT play a big role because it expands the application scenarios of Web3 (even if it is just as an avatar), allowing more people in Web2 to intuitively experience NFT and Web3.

The problem is that once people come into contact with NFT, they will immediately realize that it is an investment/speculative product.

So overall, Web3 is weakly integrated with real-life scenarios, and the core is still in the asset attributes or financial attributes - creating more tokenized financial derivatives to attract and enhance the liquidity of capital, and generate more investment and speculation possibilities. So at that time, I thought that if Web3 really wanted to develop as an industry in the long term, it must take into account the balance between financial speculation and application scenarios.

2023: Markets recover, but not back to the past

After the bear market in 2022, 2023 can be said to be a year of self-healing for the crypto community. This year, the price of Bitcoin has slowly climbed from $16,000 per coin at the end of 2022, includingBinanceMainstreamexchangeWe began to increase investment to promote compliance operations. But when I talked to some friends who invested in primary projects, they chose to invest in secondary or continue to wait and see. As a friend said to me at the time, "Now the prices of mainstream coins in the secondary market are so low, why invest in primary projects with high uncertainty?"

At the same time, I originally thought that as the market slowly recovered, discussions about Web3 on social media would heat up again. I remember that during the bull market in 2021, a niche social platform, Moments, gathered a large number of people interested in Web3. In the circle of the Web3 Research Institute, if you post a dynamic, you will get a lot of likes. But when I opened this social software again in 2023, I found that some people or project parties who were often active before no longer posted dynamics, and some new posts had almost zero likes and comments. Everything seems to be unable to go back to the past.

So this year, I began to consciously communicate with many people, including people outside the circle, people who have just entered the circle, and players who are very experienced in DEFI and MEME. When I asked them what they thought about Web3, I got a unanimous answer: Web3 is a casino for cutting leeks, and the key is to see who the leeks are.

Based on the feedback I got from communicating with them, I began to have the idea of publishing a book, hoping to objectively introduce the development status of Web3 at that time to more people, so that I and those who want to understand and enter this field can look at Web3 at eye level, rather than putting a subjective good or bad prejudice on this field. So, I and more than a dozen friends in the circle, who have deep professional backgrounds and knowledge accumulation in their respective fields, jointly published a Web3 popular science book "From Technology to Application: Ordinary People's Web3 Learning Manual", which was officially published at the end of 2023 and received a lot of praise. Looking back now, although only half a year has passed, the chapter system and framework in the book are far from enough to cover the current status of Web3 development. I admit that my mentality towards this industry has changed a lot, but what remains unchanged is that this industry is still developing rapidly at its own unique pace.

2024: The bull market is back, is Mass Adoption far away?

At present, the bull market in 2024 is a certainty. This year, two major events have become catalysts for the continuous rise in the price of crypto assets: first, the US SEC approved the issuance of Bitcoin spot ETFs, which means that more and more Wall Street funds will flow into Bitcoin, directly pushing up the price of Bitcoin and even other crypto assets; second, Bitcoin will experience a halving cycle. From historical experience, each halving of Bitcoin will drive a bull market, and this year will most likely be no exception.

Based on my own observations, I also compared this bull market with the bull market in 2021 to see what remains unchanged and what has changed.

What remains unchanged is:

1. The bull market amplifies the power of speculation.In 2021, NFT is a speculative product, and in 2024, MEME coins have become a unique speculative product. In my opinion, there is no right or wrong in any speculation related to assets. After all, the traditional stock market also has short selling and long selling. It’s just that the crypto market is too volatile and lacks effective supervision. Therefore, in the bull market, when the speculative game of each participant is aggregated into a K-line, it will be infinitely magnified.

2. Tokens still need to have better liquidity and the ability to make money.In addition to NFT, GameFi and SocialFi are also eye-catching tracks in the bull market of 2021. The unique tokenization attribute of Web3 needs to rely on specific tracks or businesses to better realize the flow of tokens and create more assets. The same is true in 2024. On the one hand, the Bitcoin ecosystem has begun to be hyped. From inscriptions to runes to Bitcoin Layer2, Bitcoin re-staking agreements, etc., Bitcoin has almost experienced the process that Ethereum has experienced; on the other hand, the re-staking project based on Ethereum has become a hot topic. Since Ethereum transformed from POW to POS in 2022 to generate staking, what everyone wants today is far from the income from staking, but how to continue to improve the efficiency of capital utilization on the basis of staking to obtain higher returns.

What changes are:

1. The paths to Mass Adoption have become diverse.In 2021, everyone placed the Mass Adoption mission of Web3 on games, social networking and other projects, but the results did not meet expectations.AIIt is increasingly integrated with offline physical infrastructure, thus shaping another narrative of DePin, hoping that "curve-saving" can achieve the goal of Mass Adoption.Xiaobai NavigationFrom this perspective, Web3 needs moreAI或物联网，而不是AI和物联网更需要Web3。另外，In my opinion, the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF and the acceptance of crypto asset donations in the US presidential election have already shown that crypto assets have become mainstream, but this is a Mass Adoption that everyone can have, not a Mass Adoption that everyone needs.

2. The importance of MEME culture in Web3 is further highlighted.In the decentralized world of Web3, I think believing and maintaining what you believe is a spiritual core, and MEME is a direct expression of the native spiritual core of Web3.This is enough to explain why the growth of MEME coin will be better than other altcoins in this bull market.

After experiencing two rounds of bull markets from 2021 to 2024, as I said before, my attitude towards Web3 has changed from looking up to it at the beginning to looking at it at eye level now. In my opinion,Web3 is a person or a group of people "selling" an idea or vision and raising funds from the public. Those who agree and participate are rewarded with tokens, and in order to make the tokens effective or liquid, they are given financial attributes. In simple terms, it is a consensus of a group of people covered with a financial coat, and then constantly looking for utility scenarios enabled by tokens.

Conclusion: How to better gain a foothold in Web3?

The above is my understanding of Web3. As I said at the beginning, I regard myself as a learner and observer in this field. So in the process of in-depth participation and personal experience in the past two years, I have had many opportunities to communicate with friends and practitioners in the circle. I found that many people face a common problem, that is, when we choose Web3 as the field for future development, how can we better gain a foothold in this field?

This question varies from person to person, after all, everyone will come up with different answers based on their own experiences and feelings. I cannot call myself a Crypto native because I have more experience in Web2, and I have no long-term experience in well-known Web3 projects or investment institutions, so it is difficult to say that I have any outstanding achievements (although my personal investment return rate is still good), but fortunately, in the past two years, I have met many practitioners in the industry and learned a lot of experience. Combining my own experience and the experience of my friends, I would like to share my comprehensive views:

• Don’t enter this circle with the mentality of speculating in cryptocurrencies.This industry seems to have many opportunities to make money, but in fact, there are not so many. I have heard of a saying before that there is a pyramid model for making money in this field. The first is to set up a project or a plate; the second is to make VC investments; the third is to be a trader using arbitrage and quantitative strategies; the fourth is to make investments after research; and the fifth is to hoard coins. My own experience is that those participants who frequently speculate in coins may not have a very high rate of return. Instead, traders who use arbitrage and quantitative strategies and investors who foolishly hoard mainstream coins will have a stable rate of return. The former is because of professional ability, and the latter is because they believe that mainstream coins such as Bitcoin have long-term value that can survive bull and bear cycles. Therefore,In Web3, for most people, having a sustained and stable rate of return is far better than frequently speculating in cryptocurrencies to get a high-risk and high-return.

• Treat people with the best of intentions.Web3 is a relatively mixed field. Since everyone has different purposes for entering the field, and since many communications and collaborations are based on virtual online methods, the cost of trusting people or projects is relatively high. If you have found a team that you can work with for a long time, then congratulations, you are lucky. If you haven't found it yet, it doesn't matter. In the process of communicating and trying with different people, although you will encounter some disappointments, you will find like-minded partners to do something with you in such an experience. The more liquid and trust-cost-intensive the field is, the more you should judge people with the greatest goodwill.

• Do Your Own Research.This is the most widely circulated sentence in Web3, and it is recognized by everyone as a very valuable suggestion. Because there are all kinds of people, speeches, opinions and information in this field, when we try to judge people with the greatest goodwill, we also need to form our own independent thinking and judgment in a dazzling environment, so as to form our own thinking mode and professional investment methodology. Please remember, don't be kidnapped by emotions, don't be kidnapped by other people's CX, everything needs DYOR.

I wrote this article to summarize my change in my understanding of Web3 over a period of time. This is because this field provides me with a better return on investment than other traditional investment products. It also allows me to meet many different people, including real industry builders, powerful traders, and some speculators who want to make a fortune in the short term. This is a very interesting thing. More importantly, through personal experience in this field, I also realized my niche in this field and how to stick to some of my principles.

Of course, these are based on my own personal experience and feelings, and are not universal. I believe that everyone in this field will have their own cognition, understanding and feelings about Web3. I hope everyone can make money while also finding a niche that suits them.

The article comes from the Internet:From "looking up" to "looking straight", how did I become disenchanted with Web3?

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