jakiro
Recently, Farcaster founder Dan Romero, who had high hopes for Web3 social networking, made it clear in an open letter that after 4.5 years of exploration,The “social first” route has been proven to be unworkable. In the future, we will fully focus on wallet product development.,Because “every new and retained wallet user is a new user of the protocol.”
This star project, with a cumulative financing of US$180 million and a valuation of nearly US$1 billion, provides important commentary on the entrance battle in the Web3 industry with an almost “admission of error” attitude.
This change reflects the core difference between Web3 and Web2. In the Internet era, social networking is undoubtedly the super portal for traffic aggregation.
Facebook connects 2.9 billion users around the world with its social relationship chain. WeChat uses social networking as the cornerstone to derive full-scenario services such as payment and office. Social attributes have become the “traffic cornerstone” of Internet products.
But the core of Web3 is value interaction rather than information transfer.,The primary need for users entering the ecosystem is to manage digital assets and complete on-chain activities.
This makes wallets that carry private key management and asset interaction functions naturally become the entry-level product of Web3. Now Farcaster’s transformation is essentially a recognition of this logic, but is this really the end of the Web3 entrance?
Why are wallets increasingly important?
The core value of the wallet stems from its irreplaceability as an interactive portal on the chain.
Different from the account password system of Internet products, in the Web3 world,The wallet address is the user’s unique identity, and the private key is the certificate of asset ownership..
Whether allocating encrypted assets, participating in DeFi, or using on-chain applications, all operations must initiate signature verification through the wallet, making the wallet the “first door” for users to enter the Web3 ecosystem.
especiallyThe explosive growth of on-chain users in the past two years, further amplifying the strategic value of the wallet.
With the maturity of Ethereum L2 technology, the recovery of Solana ecology, and the entry of traditional financial institutions, the scale of active users on the chain continues to expand.
Dune data shows,Global active crypto wallet addresses reached 830 million in the third quarter of 2025,82% of the addresses have initiated on-chain transactions within 30 days, and the number of DApps connected to wallets has increased by 117% compared with last year.
At the same time, the rise of DEX and the erosion of CEX’s share further highlight the irreplaceability of wallets.
Since 2025,DEX market share increased from 10.5% at the beginning of the year to 19% at the end of the third quarter,The futures market share also increased from 4.9% to 13%.
Global DEX spot trading volume reached US$1.43 trillion in the third quarter.An increase of 43.6% from the previous quarter,A record high.
The core logic of this transformation is the user’s pursuit of asset autonomy. By connecting to DEX through the wallet, users do not need to trust their assets to the exchange, achieving“I have the final say on my assets”, and this trend is promoting the upgrade of wallets from tools to ecological entrances.
In addition, the layout of traditional financial institutions further confirms the industry status of wallets.For example, Bank of New York Mellon has used MPC (multi-party computation) to launch a custody wallet to provide secure asset storage services for institutional customers.
BlackRock even said bluntly,The company aims to replicate everything in traditional finance today into digital wallets.
The entry of these traditional institutions not only brings incremental users to the wallet track, but also promotes wallets to become the core bridge connecting traditional finance and Web3.
Competition among giants: the layout and game of the wallet track
Faced with the strategic value of the wallet track and the challenges faced by CEX, the giants in the encryption industry have launched a comprehensive layout. Among them, the development paths of Coinbase, Binance and OKX constitute a new picture of the industry.
As a compliance benchmark in the United States, Coinbase’s wallet products are deeply connected to its own exchange ecosystem, and users can seamlessly realize the closed-loop operation of “legal currency purchase – on-chain interaction – asset transfer”.
With the reform of the Base chain this year, the Coinbase wallet has become the main interactive entrance on the chain, attracting developers and users through fee subsidies and other methods.It has formed an all-round platform integrating finance, messaging, content creation and decentralized applications.
Binance relies on its scale advantage to build“Full-scenario wallet ecology“, its wallet products have integrated full-link services such as public chain interaction, staking, and Launchpad.
Inspired by the open ecosystem of OKX, Binance launched the CEX-DEX seamless trading function in August 2025. Users can directly call the liquidity of the relevant DEX through the wallet without the need for cross-platform transfer of assets.
Among the wallet layouts of the three giants, OKX’s advanced strategy is the most leading.As early as 2023, OKX broke out of the limitations of a single public chain and established a “multi-chain first” development strategy.
Its wallet has stably supported the asset storage and interaction of 130 public chains.,It is one of the wallet products that supports the largest number of public chains in the industry.
At the same time, as the core code of OKX wallet is completely hosted on GitHub, open source and transparency have won the trust of global developers through open standardized API interfaces.
Currently, thousands of decentralized applications have been connected, forming an ecological matrix covering almost all on-chain activities. Open source has also become a new trend in the industry.
OKX is also the first institution to support direct exchange wallets.It is said that a technical team of hundreds of people was built and millions of dollars were spent every month to create this wallet that is very popular among users.
It also broke into the originally crowded wallet track with a unique attitude and became the leading product of Web3. It must be said that such foresight and courage to spend money are rare.
Thanks to OKX’s early layout, Coinbase and Binance have also seen the opportunities and have chosen strategies to follow up.This is also the highlight of major exchanges this year.
At present, almost all of them have formed their own wallet ecology to meet the growing demand for on-chain economic activities, which has also contributed to the expansion of the wallet’s ecological status.
Is the overall situation of Web3 entrance determined?The answer may not be
Although wallets have now established the core position of Web3 portals, it is too early to assert that “the overall situation has been decided”. There are still some variables in the current Web3 portal landscape.
Reviewing the development of the industry,The entrance center has completed two key migrations:In the early days, user demand was concentrated on exchanges. CEX became the absolute entrance by virtue of its advantages in deposits and withdrawals, and once monopolized industry traffic.
With the rise of Ethereum smart contracts, the explosion of DeFi and NFT ecology, users’ demand for asset autonomy has pushed the focus of the portal to shift to wallets, and wallets have gradually assumed core functions such as DApp interaction and asset management.
Today, this landscape is still evolving dynamically.
In the future, with technological iterations, the entrance pattern may further evolve.The combination of AI and wallet has taken shape,Some products can achieve natural language interaction and intelligent risk warning through AI Agent, making the wallet more relevant to the needs of ordinary users.
At the same time,The popularity of account abstraction may lower the threshold for wallet use.,Push the entrance further down.
Just as the browser portal in the early days of the mobile Internet was eventually diverted by social networking and e-commerce, the Web3 industry is still in its early stages, and technological iterations and demand evolution may still give rise to new portal forms.
But what is certain is that in the context of financial on-chain becoming a clear trend, the core value of wallets will continue to be strengthened.
As OKX CEO Star said at the recent Abu Dhabi Financial Week, the Internet generation is creating a new on-chain economy.In the next few decades, about 50% of the world’s economic activities will run on blockchain.
Correspondingly,The scale of crypto asset custody by traditional financial institutions increased by 120% during the year.
Behind these data is the continued prosperity of economic activities on the chain, and wallets, as the core tool for asset management and interaction, will directly benefit from this trend.
Of course, looking back at Farcaster’s transformation is not the end, but the starting point for the Web3 industry to return to the essence of value.
The entrance to the Internet is to connect people, andThe entrance to Web3 is to connect people and value(In the future, it may also be possible to connect machines to machines). This core difference determines the irreplaceability of wallets.
For industry participants, whether they continue to innovate in wallet technology or explore the integration of wallets with other scenarios, user asset security and experience optimization must be the core.
The battle for Web3 entrance may not be over yet.ButThe wallet has become the most certain track winner at this stage with its unique value.
So, who will be the next track winner?
