jakiro
Author: Jesse Walden, co-founder of Variant Fund; compiled by: 0xjs@Bitchain Vision
The first decade of smart contract blockchain was born from Bitcoin’s original crypto-punk values: anti-censorship, open source, license-free, and new hopes to build a democratic/fair internet on shared world computers.
These ideological values are now under market pressure.Because mainstream markets value different things: performance, cost, profitability, compliance.
Powerful technology is rarely used as intended by its creators or early adopters.Take a look at how Bitcoin (“peer-to-peer electronic cash system”) compares to Bitcoin ETFs or USDC.
With the integration of the original value of smart contract blockchain with mainstream market value, the next decade may develop in different directions.
Many of the growing use cases of smart contract platforms (fiat stablecoins/RWA, open finance, many DePIN networks) are neither decentralized, license-free, nor censor-resistant, but are simply using the underlying blockchain toCentralize to achieve openness, interoperability and settlement.Applications are also increasingly abstracting L1 cryptocurrencies, which have been historically regarded as censorship-resistant “Internet currencies”, leading many to rethink the value proposition of the largest market capitalization tokens, including the underlying assets of the next generation of public chains..
This can be difficult to accept for early adopters.This is not what many people in the industry expect.Does this mean it’s over?
I don’t think so.But this may just be the end of a prologue.
To meet the market’s demands for its value, cryptocurrencies are being commercialized.Commercialization, especially the commercialization of open/licensed software, is the form factor that brings good ideas to the biggest audience, thus having the greatest impact on the world.
Commercialization is often accompanied by compromise.Opportunities are shaping the nature of these compromises, thus shaping the outcome of business impact.To do this, you have to give up on ideological dogma, adapt to the game on the field, compete, and try to guide things in the direction you want them to.
For example, making compromises in decentralization to scale up (whether through Rollup or integrated architecture) can better serve the use cases where wallets are handed to people.If this works, the next opportunity is to improve decentralization—and then teach more people to learn new things that tend toward primitive ideology.
For me, it’s a private thing.I care very much about the initial ideology; it was this attraction that brought me here.Having said that, I care more about influence.I learned this lesson in a different creative scenario.I went to college in Montreal, where the cultural scenes were extremely rich (Arcade Fire, Tiga, A-Trak, Chromeo, Grimes, Vice, American Apparel, etc.).Things that emerged from this local scene have also quickly moved globally, spreading through the internet and blending with other trendy scenes, especially the 2004-2012 music blog (Hype Machine, anyone know?).
Soon, this kind of scenario merged with the mainstream market.This way of fusion is mainly to capture the essence of sound and culture through clichéd artists and brands, remove nuances and package into retail in a popular but boring way.Meanwhile, a handful of artists and creatives who pioneered this original scene persisted and became a fixed figure in pop culture.To do this, they usually have to make enough compromises between the original movement and what the masses can perceive.This combination of determination and pragmatism is admirable because it has the greatest influence, thus pushing culture forward one step to the greatest extent.
So if you feel that the values that bring you into the cryptocurrency are being diluted by the mainstream market – I’ve heard of this, but try to look at it from a different perspective – because in terms of impact, the commercialization of cryptocurrencies may be possibleIt means that the real opportunity has just begun.I’ll try to write more specifically about what this opportunity might look like.I made a rough look at this in my article yesterday on “Only Cryptocurrency” / “Better with Cryptocurrency” but there is more to say.
