MEME casinos, developers fleeing, Wall Street tooling, does Crypto have a future?

MEME Casino Culture Dominance: The Crypto market is increasingly driven by speculative MEME-based trading, overshadowing long-term technical narratives. This shift amplifies risks for most participants, as projects focus more on short-term gains rather than sustainable innovation.
Developer Exodus & Stagnation: Active Crypto developers have declined by nearly 30% from peak levels, with talent migrating to AI and traditional tech sectors. Internal friction and lack of breakthroughs (e.g., Restaking, Intent, AI Agent) highlight a crisis in innovation, leaving many projects stuck in repetitive cycles.
Marginalization of Crypto: The market struggles to attract off-market funds and top talent, as AI and traditional finance sectors dominate attention. Crypto's appeal to traditional VCs wanes, with ETFs bringing institutional funds but failing to bridge the gap with altcoin markets or deliver unique value beyond decentralization.
Existential Questions: With diminishing narratives, developer flight, and weak incremental appeal, Crypto faces an identity crisis. While optimism persists, the path forward remains uncertain, raising doubts about its future role in financial innovation.

Author:Haotian

When I was traveling in Lijiang and Dali, I chatted with several first-line builders, and they all mentioned the same feeling: the current Crypto primary market seems to be caught in a multiple crisis of "no way out":

1) The narrative has become completely meaningless, and casino culture has completely taken over?

In fact, what is truly scary is not that technical narratives cannot be delivered, but that everyone simply abandons narrative packaging and fully embraces the MEME-based casino culture.

The slow delivery of technical narratives is at least a matter of long-termism. There is the innovation cost cover of the early VC round, as well as the roadmap implementation process of the project party's early construction, testing, mainnet launch, etc. The transparent display during this period can help ordinary users recognize the strength of the project and form a value judgment.

But what about now? Everything has become a game of pure community operation and capital behind the scenes, with trading opportunities exaggerated to the point of being counted by day or even minute. When the market is no longer built around technical narratives for the long term, the risks of pure MEME trading are multiplied, and for most people, this market will become more dangerous.

2) Developers are leaving at an accelerated pace, and technological innovation is stagnating?

Data doesn’t lie. According to relevant data, the number of active Crypto developers on Github has dropped by nearly 30% from last year’s peak, while the number of engineer recruitment packages for AI and traditional technology companies has skyrocketed during the same period.

The logic is simple. When OpenAI, Google, and Meta are all competing for talent in the AI arms race to build a silicon-based civilization, how many developers can Crypto's narrative of "subverting the Internet" retain?

The point is that after two or three rounds of build cycles, Crypto developers are now stuck in a stage of internal friction where their enthusiasm for innovation is rapidly declining, and there are very few real technological breakthroughs from 0 to 1. Narrative concepts such as Restaking, Intent, and AI Agent have been popular one after another, but what about the actual applications? Where is PMF? For some reason, everyone is reinventing the wheel, but they are powerless and helpless to care about how far the wheel can go?

Originally, when people were caught in the market noise and garbage time, most of them still had a belief that if they held on, things would get better sooner or later. But what about now? Where are the Holders?

3) With a lack of incremental attraction in the OTC market, is Crypto becoming marginalized?

Crypto is obviously not attractive enough to off-market funds and talents. Look at the current situation: the real secondary copycat season is in the US stock AI market, and the real primary innovation market is in the web2AI field. Crypto's appeal to traditional VCs and top talents is decreasing, and it will instead be labeled as "speculation", losing its dignity.

The reason is that Crypto has no other strong trump cards except for the golden signboard of "issuing coins". Although ETFs have brought institutional funds, it is more of a recognition at the level of financial instruments. The inflow of funds from Wall Street is only used as asset allocation, and the connection with the altcoin market is far-fetched.

What scenarios require Crypto? In the past, the value of Crypto was that it provided a relatively free experimental space for financial innovation. However, when traditional financial institutions began to embrace this market through stablecoins, ETFs, etc., what irreplaceable value can Crypto bring to users besides the technical feature of "decentralization"?

Note: This topic is only for discussion. Although you may be confused, at least you are willing to believe that the real way out may be somewhere not far away. Staying optimistic is the best help. Otherwise, what else can you do?