Why is "Narrative is useless" a cancer in the industry?
1) Narrative is not a single concept, but the result of a concept being accepted by the mainstream market. When a concept is proposed, there is no "narrative" at the beginning. Only when there are more related entrepreneurial projects, the market focuses on discussions, users have a brand impression, and capital begins to be deployed, can a narrative be formed.
A single concept only represents technological differentiation and cannot form a narrative. Many people are just disgusted by the act of "creating concepts" to attract attention and make money, not the "narrative" itself;
2) The narrative must follow a certain logic of business evolution. Whether the technical framework is solid enough, whether the front-end and back-end product systems are complete, whether the business model is feasible, whether the ecological landing application can keep up, what is the market user growth rate, whether the future revenue expectations can be settled, etc. All these must be considered. If the logic is not clear or there is no continuity, it will not constitute a real narrative.
VCs make heavy investments and entrepreneurs build all in based on these business logics. MEME, a topical and emotional Fomo investment product, can find investment logic, but to some extent it is "transaction game theory" rather than "business evolution trend". Therefore, strictly speaking, MEME is an emotional "narrative" that lacks business logic.
3) Narratives can gather the market's "attention, innovation, capital, talent, and resources" to generate synergy. Why do entrepreneurs like to pursue narratives? It is good for financing, communication, recruitment, and resource integration, and it can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
This means that scammers may use narratives to extract market liquidity. Fortunately, the business logic of narratives is destined to make scammers have to deal with VCs, exchanges, technical geeks, researchers, KOLs, and the majority of users at the same time. The reason why there are many scam traps in the MEME direction is that the business logic level on a chain has failed.
4) Narratives will evolve themselves (extend, differentiate, or even die), and there is an innovation cycle. The modular narrative has driven the development power of the B-end market to explode, but too much dispersion will promote the arrival of "chain abstraction"; ZK was originally just a technical means, but when there are too many homogeneous/heterogeneous chains, it will give rise to zkVM as a new focus; the Restaking narrative has driven the TVL points farming craze in the short term, but if the commercialization of AVS services fails to meet demand, the entire narrative will also be at risk of extinction.
In essence, the market does not reject "narratives". If the technology cannot be implemented, the application cannot be implemented, the business cannot be closed, and everyone's investment expectations cannot be "delivered", the "narrative" will be dominated by scams, and it will be rejected.
5) Narratives can promote the maturity and progress of the industry. The value of narratives that can stand the test of time is beyond words. Crypto has been adhering to the grand narrative of "decentralization" for so many years, and has made many Crypto practitioners successful. Narratives can be fabricated, organized, and manipulated, but such narrative logic is destined to be short-lived.
It is pleasing to see that narratives continue to emerge, evolve, iterate and reshuffle. This endless vitality of Crypto innovation is the best proof that the market is maturing.
Instead of suffering in the "desert" of faith, it is better to work in the "oasis" of narrative.
