Foresight X: To define, what is Crypto Native?

Original Author: Boo@Foresight X

The Crypto industry has been around for 14 years. This is a new stage of history. You will sing and I will appear on the stage. In each cycle, giants will fall and newcomers will become kings. When you are in it, you can't help thinking, what is the constant? This unchanging rule, through the precipitation of history, may have formed the popular vocabulary "Crypto Native" today. This term is very popular in the primary market and is a common reason for rejecting a case, so what is crypto native?

Having Web 3 experience does not mean Crypto Native. The new cycle is generally newcomers are king. Just taking this cycle as an example, it has experienced DeFi summer → Polkadot summer → Gamefi summer → NFT summer → Solana Summer → Alt L 1 summer → Mass adoption summer → LSD summer and other narrative changes.

Orthodoxy does not mean Crypto Native. The narrative threshold with V god as the party center is getting higher and higher, which has created L 2 summer and LSD summer. This kind of orthodoxy cannot always become the main narrative as time goes by. On the stage, no one can really become a god, except Satoshi Nakamoto.

In the final analysis, the big bull market of Crypto is the overflow of dollar liquidity, and Native does not create externalities. Hot money from USD flows into Crypto, hot money from BTC flows into ETH, hot money from ETH flows into the DeFi/NFT ecosystem, hot money from the industry flows into Alt L 1/L 2 , when the bear market comes, all flow back to BTC, externally minted USD stablecoins The increment also drops suddenly, so the cycle flows repeatedly. In this capital flow feast, it is really impossible to define native itself. Money and people flow in a cycle that never stops, and the intermediary that facilitates the flow - CEX is getting bigger and bigger. To me, CEX means Crypto Native.

Putting aside the public chain and CEX, back to the application, what does Crypto Native mean?

Throwing bricks to attract jade, taking history as a mirror, I will list three team characteristics that I think can present Crypto Native:

No.1 The ability and courage to build a community from the bottom up

This has nothing to do with crypto experience. Many top web 3 project founders have no relevant experience before. Adam of Uniswap is a mechanical engineer, the two founders of Crypto Punk are traditional computer engineers, the founder of Solana is an electrical engineer, and Jerry of StepN Before engaged in construction, and so on. The wind started at the end of Qingping. Looking back at the founders in the past, they often started at a young age, but they have strong resilience and build a community step by step.

• Building a community from the bottom up requires courage and courage, tenacity and persistence, love and faith. And these have nothing to do with experience and endorsement.
• Negative examples: The original web 2 users and business models are directly transformed and migrated; web 3 major companies hold high to launch projects, and high-starting low-moving is a high-probability event; following VC narratives, simple problems are complicated and abstracted.

No.2 Product rapid iteration capabilities around user needs

From the slow formation of a community to the exponential explosive growth, it is often a sudden change, and the formation of exponential growth relies on products. User needs and product iterations are interleaved and iterated continuously. Even when a certain user threshold is reached, the product needs can be determined. To have the courage to launch tokens and launch rough and crude products, in the real community feedback and connections, needs may be created, and it is also possible to tap the original unmet needs.

• Graph and Chainlink, as successful infras in the last cycle, have the courage to introduce Tokenomics, decentralize and network the supply-side infra services, re-excavate and meet new demands. Sushiswap’s vampire attack back then, StepN’s mining currency GST, and LSD summer’s Lybra also supported Token transactions in the early stages of product launch.
• Compromise: Abandon the community construction or network node construction of to C, abandon Tokenomics, focus on the existing needs of the previous cycle, and focus on BD SaaS services.

No.3 Understand funds (Ponzi), respect funds

Regardless of whether crypto is recognized or not, looking back four weeks, at the juncture of 2023, besides Crypto, which industry has the effect of wealth redistribution? Which industry hero does not ask the source? We must respect the flow of funds and understand the role of Ponzi's game in wealth redistribution. What about the demise of Ponzi? The demise is for the next greater prosperity and bubble, and this cycle is determined by the inevitability of the law of historical cycles.

• DeFi: GMX has undergone six Ponzi iterations and cut several new disks before it has the current pattern; the pool model iteration of the GNS v 2 version returns to the degen gameplay, without the arrogance of the early financial elites; from YFI to Curve war Then to RDNT, the so-called DeFi Native lies in the bold trial and error of Token
• GameFi/NFT: Axie, StepN, and Opensea all started from Weishi, and there is no Ponzi who is successful immediately.
• Negative example: Use Web 2 user experience, user retention time, and protocol revenue as key indicators of the product. But just like the hook project, answering questions to make money, a purely swiping volume platform, the highest single person earns 9 US dollars a month, topping the list in Indonesia; the reason for it being listed on Binance is that CEX and retail investors are willing to take orders for data under that market, even if it is swiped out , Funds need new hype targets in that market.

Whether it is native or not, it still depends on who the corner of the stage is. As practitioners, we must have the courage to face the community and create new needs in the community; we must embrace new product models and support new blood. History is rolling forward, and Lao Mao once said, "The past is more than a thousand years old, and Wei Wu waved his whip." We must be alert to the past experience of Crypto, what we do is a drop in the ocean after all, and it is not worth mentioning.