“Self-Orientalization” in Cryptographic Narratives

Written by: Zuo Ye

To begin with, I want to talk about the East-West divide in cryptographic narratives.CommunityPreference, to Xiaobai NavigationFrom the capabilities of the founders to the market sentiment of not taking over each other, these topics will be mentioned explicitly or implicitly.

In fact, everyone’s perspective is inconsistent. For example, in the eyes of Snowden, an older generation of liberals, Solana is centralized. Although this is true, it is too hurtful to say it directly.CommunityFew people criticize Solana like this. After all, everyone is using the PoS model. The most important thing is to work together to expand the public chain market.

Let’s change the topic. Why are Chinese founders considered good at making applications, but why can’t they make a centralized public chain?

A clever defense is that the public chain is closer to the underlying protocol, which is the promised land of Western founders. They are selfless and particularly love to serve all mankind.

Of course, these are all nonsense, but it should be pointed out that in the early public chain entrepreneurship boom, the funds and available technologies gathered by the Chinese were not inferior to those in the West. It is difficult for Western entrepreneurs to "beat the East" in the public chain. From the epic collapse of EOS to the bad luck of Near, Avalanche, Fantom and ICP, it is difficult to say that Solana and TON will survive to the next cycle. It’s just that Ethereum’s success is too dazzling.

Ultimately, the cultural division between the East and the West does not apply to the field of encryption. Under the current trend of the retreat of globalization, the field of encryption has become a rare reserve of global discourse.

Don't fall into the self-shackles of nationalism, and don't fall into the trap of "self-orientalization" to force yourself to fit. I want to emphasize the second half of the sentence.

The Dream Palace of Crypto Narratives

In my previous articlearticleIn the film, the real gravity of technological narrative is to cater to a certain country and oppose other countries, so it is not free enough. However, in the logic and development process of technology itself, there are not only two diametrically opposed reactions of simple recognition and opposition. More often, technology, business, and different subjects are intertwined and difficult to distinguish from each other. For example, to this day, the civilian-grade 4090 and the industrial-grade H100 are still playing their due or inappropriate roles in a certain Eastern country.

Going back to the narrative of "Eastern founders are suitable for applications, Western founders are suitable for technology", the underlying logic is that Westerners create a basic protocol or a programming language, and then some Chinese teams in Shenzhen or Kuala Lumpur work overtime around the clock to develop programs and bring them to market in an assembly-line manner. The formation of this stereotype does have a realistic basis, at least in the Web2 field.

But this is not the case in the Web3 field. Today, it is hard to imagine that any Web3 entrepreneur is targeting the mainland or Chinese market from the very beginning. This is purely sewing machine-oriented development. Globalization has never been so real. Even the internationalization of the foreign trade field is not as high as Web3.

Secondly, if Chinese entrepreneurs are suitable for application development, then Mass Adaption is not needed. This is more like a dark humor irony. Currently, the application fields with the largest number of users in the Web3 field areexchangeand stablecoins,exchangeIt is indeed dominated by Chinese, but whether the transactions are equivalent to those of real users remains to be discussed.

Unfortunately, the crypto narrative has not found its dream palace. From watching the funds on the chain to paying attention to the Federal Reserve’s decisions and dynamics, the direction of the US stock market, and even Musk’s dynamics, all of this shows thatcryptocurrencyThe only imperfection of the "mainstreaming" is that these are either on the West Coast or the East Coast of the United States, and Web3 is not happening all over the world.

What is happening all over the world does not negate the rate of crypto adoption in other regions. In fact, dollarized countries such as Cambodia and Nigeria rely on USDT to avoid being harvested by the dollar tide. This is even the first time these countries have survived the crisis safely.

But it is not enough. If we think more deeplycryptocurrencyIf we analyze the operation process of the "two-way trade" policy, the situation is not good. From the three aspects of capital, technology and market, the West occupies the capital and underlying technology, the Chinese have the implementation technology and market, and the wider third world cannot provide any public goods outside the market.

Three hundred years ago, the slave trade crossed the Atlantic Ocean. A hundred years ago, colonies were used as commodity dumping markets. Today, Web3 still has huge inequalities between regions. The crazy devaluation of Nigerian fiat currency reflects the cruelty of Web3’s internal circulation.

我们必须再一次提到比特币，中本聪用其嘲讽次贷危机后的各国政府救市之举，这是加密货币能从理想落地的最重要背景，而十余年后 Solana 力推 PayFi，Vitalik 为 Celo 稳定币地址超越 Tron 而欢呼，那为什么不从一开始就从支付开始做呢？

Since we are still pursuing consumer-level applications, why should we impose the stereotype that Chinese people are better at making applications, and even cater to VCs and developers? This does not help actual business expansion.

The establishment of stereotypes, in addition to being imposed by external factors, is also a result of one’s own active adaptation, which can be called self-orientalization.

In a sense, I can understand this feeling. Said's Orientalism explained this mentality decades ago. Ordinary people in non-Western countries will subconsciously think that the West is either terrible or paradise, and the elite groups will construct an image of "others" for themselves, and try their best to analyze which aspects of themselves are not "Western" enough, and then use their nature as test-takers to overcome them one by one.

Rejecting self-orientalization and moving towards internationalism

The East is a term derived from Westernism. When we cannot express ourselves, we will be defined by others. Over time, we will even get used to being defined. After defining a specific framework, we will thenSafetyDistrict action.

In last year’s Token2049, crypto-Jews became the synonym for the Chinese mentality, but in Token2049 a year later, consumer-grade applications have not become a truly universal consensus. If you really don’t want to make quick money from on-chain cryptocurrency speculation, PVP and Meme, it may not be easy to go to Asia, Africa and Latin America and have face-to-face contact with local people. Quite a number of practitioners are afraid of this.

However, the era of high returns on the chain is undoubtedly over, as can be seen from the failure of VC coins to the shrinking market value of new memes. The era of huge profits has come to an end.

This is the best era. Real developers, globally minded founders and long-term oriented funds will create new legends in Asia, Africa and Latin America, just like Paypal in the United States and Alipay in China.

Always free, no need to define.

I believe that the non-trading of cryptocurrency is about to happen, and the benefits will be dozens of times more than the current on-chain PVP. From trading to non-trading, and then to applications in non-financial fields, real users and application scenarios will gradually reveal their true colors.

Hopefully this isn't the worst time.

The article comes from the Internet:“Self-Orientalization” in Cryptographic Narratives

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