Author:Haotian
The superior man, upon hearing the Way, diligently puts it into practice; the average man, upon hearing the Way, is uncertain and indifferent; the inferior man, upon hearing the Way, laughs at it.
-- "Tao Te Ching"
This is a sentence that suddenly came to my mind recently amidst the noise of "Anything But Crypto," "Meme Nihilism," and "Crypto's End Times."
Especially after reading it. @VitalikButerin After that interview about 2026, this feeling became even stronger. (Related reading:Revisiting Vitalik: Rejecting Doomsday Scenarios, Seeking Crypto's Lost Soul)
We see that, @VitalikButerin Sitting relaxedly on a swing in Chiang Mai, I wasn't elated by the progress in Ethereum's technical roadmap. Instead, I noticed a significant gap between technology and its applications.
Why is that? Ethereum has made tremendous progress in scalability technologies, with the gas limit doubling, successful implementation of zkEVM, and significant improvements in user experience through features like account abstraction. Technically, we've won big, but at the application level, we've lost badly.
In other words, we've built supercars that can go 300 km/h (L2/L3), but all the vehicles on the road are "old man joyrunners" (local meme for low-speed vehicles) and "bumper cars" (PVP mutual exploitation).
This intense sense of "displacement" is something that the vast majority of people cannot comprehend. Drawing on Vitalik's reflections, I would like to move beyond grand narratives and discuss these four harsh truths that only the "upper-level individuals" are paying attention to:
When "infrastructure" becomes an addictive dependency
We have fallen into a collective illusion: not only building roads, but building more roads, faster roads, even when there are hardly any vehicles on them.
Originally, we aspired to a "decentralized Uber" or a "Web3 Amazon," but what we ended up with is endless financial speculation. This is a typical structural mismatch between "excess Infra capacity" and "extremely scarce PMF (product-market fit)."
Why is this so? The answer is simple: it's easier to tell a story about "selling shovels" than about "mining for gold."
In recent years, VCs and developers have colluded in a "technological narcissism" frenzy. As long as your TPS (transactions per second) is high enough, and your ZK (zero-knowledge) algorithm is sufficiently obscure, you can secure a high valuation. Whether anyone actually uses it or not? It doesn't matter—it's a problem for the next cycle.
In fact, true technology should be like air and water—essential for your survival yet so seamlessly present that you don't even notice it. The hype surrounding infrastructure must shift toward applications and services. If the question of "who will drive" remains unresolved, building more roads will only serve as tombstones for an industry's barrenness.
The Nature of Social Interaction: Don't Let Dopamine Kill Oxytocin
Vitalik said a big truth: if financial incentives are too strong, they will directly destroy the essence of social interaction.
When we introduce tokenomics into social products, we think we are incentivizing users, but in reality, we are feeding greed. The early growth metrics—was that really social interaction? No, it was a carnival for "crypto gold farming guilds." Once the expected returns decline and the crowd disperses, all that's left is a mess.
This is why Vitalik would approve. @farcaster_xyz The strategic wisdom of transitioning into a wallet business.
In the era of AI agents and high-frequency interactions, the wallet is the "universal connector" that links everything. When Farcaster decided to anchor social relationships at the wallet layer rather than simply becoming a "Web3 version of Twitter," it wasn't a sign of retreat or defeat, but rather a strategic move that accurately identified the vital core of crypto products.
The ultimate goal of social interaction is not to turn "likes" into transactions, but to transform "content" into an "asset." Only by stripping away excessive financial noise and returning to curation and selection logic similar to Substack can Web3 social platforms rediscover their lost soul.
The Redemption of AI: Issuing an "ID Card" for Silicon-Based Life
Wave after wave of grand narratives have been hyped around AI + Crypto, from the AI Agent MEME token rush to the x402 Agent payment expansion wave and more. But who can answer Vitalik's core question: What can crypto actually offer to AI?
The answer is not the next hundredfold golden dog, but rather, as Vitalik said, "permissionless"—whether it's humans, companies, or AI agents, they all have equal access rights.
In the Web2 world, even the most powerful AI agent is essentially an "unregistered entity." It doesn't have a bank account or a legal identity. It can be disconnected from the internet at any time by OpenAI, and its funds can be frozen at any moment due to risk control measures. It is merely a string of code on a server, private property of a tech giant.
But crypto provides AI with an unfreezable on-chain entity status. In response to this, Vitalik also proposed several directions:
AI bank accounts: This is the endgame of PayFi or the x402 protocol. Because high-frequency, transparent, and trustworthy micro-payments between AI agents can only be supported by blockchain.
Prediction Markets: This is the arena where AI's super cognitive abilities are transformed into value. Prediction markets will be the ideal stage for AI to demonstrate "cognitive monetization."
Data Rights Confirmation: When AI-generated content becomes rampant, only blockchain can prove "who is the original creator and who is the forger."
Perhaps this is the true convergence point of crypto and AI: we are not issuing tokens; we are building a legal and financial system that allows silicon-based life to breathe freely.
The End of Nothingness: Memes as a Rebound After the "Destruction of Technological Narratives"
Vitalik is worried that the industry will die from the nihilism of memes. I am worried too.
But we need to understand the logic behind the popularity of this meme: it represents retail investors' "nonviolent non-cooperation" against the greedy model of "VCs colluding, high valuations with low liquidity, and unlimited token unlocks."
When so-called "value coins" become tools for institutions to cash out at the top, retail investors' choice to go with Meme coins represents a kind of retaliatory rebound. The underlying message is: if everything is ultimately a scythe (i.e., a trap), then I might as well go to a casino where the game is played with open cards—at least it appears to be fair there.
But this kind of euphoria is dangerous because it is spending the future of the industry in advance. If crypto eventually becomes 100% gambling, it will lose its legitimate foundation for existence and ultimately wither away due to the loss of its ability to sustain itself.
Isn't the bias we recently feel from outsiders and the unfair treatment by algorithms just the cost of the distortion of crypto culture?
We can only break out of this "vicious cycle" when technological narratives serve the real world, rather than purely serving as a casino.
The above.
You might have noticed that I added an image at the end of this article similar to the "Last of the Mohicans." In my eyes, if one day the apocalyptic scenario of encryption really comes true, @VitalikButerin Will be the last crypto punk guarding deep in the jungle.
Going back to the beginning, there was that sentence from the Tao Te Ching, which I think it's necessary to explain:
"Corporal" Gambler is mocking the barren applications of the crypto industry, seeing through it at a glance, claiming that crypto is dead and becoming addicted to the thrill of PvP (player versus player) slashing each other.
Mid-level professionals in the industry are struggling with doubt and uncertainty. They endure the hardships of the industry without the motivation of idealism or the thrill of speculation. Their idealism has been eroded, and the excitement of opportunism slips through their fingers. What remains is only internal conflict and confusion.
Yet, there are only a few "upper generals," like Vitalik, who do not see an "endgame of crypto," but rather the night before another "emergence from the cocoon" for the crypto industry.
When a superior person hears the Dao, he diligently practices it. When a mediocre person hears the Dao, he is doubtful. When an inferior person hears the Dao, he laughs loudly. Often, the more popular something is, the less it aligns with the Dao. What the inferior person seeks is never the Dao, but rather the excitement and commotion.
The question arises: what if one day the doomsday scenario for encryption unfortunately comes to pass:
Would you like to follow? @VitalikButerin , join his army of crypto punks?