Exploration of the Narrative in the Crypto Market

In the previous text, we predicted and analyzed the potential demand growth brought about by the clearing tide, attempting to explore what the true crypto narrative should be amidst the overall paradigm shift.

The crypto world originates from a utopian-like idea, a collective creation that is continuously passed on through faith. Faith brings infinite passion, and we need to discover boundless belief in the midst of fragmentation.

What kind of narrative does the crypto market need?

After the liquidation wave, the crypto market is like a wooden barrel with leaks everywhere.

We discovered the charm of donation governance, while the treasury has become a private vault, and the incubation plan has turned into a link in the capital assembly line.

We are starting to expand our incremental users while facing countless Ponzi schemes and zeroing out.

We focus on the security audits of contracts, while countless assets are stolen, projects run away, and liquidity dries up.

We want to increase product retention rate, while facing new users are countless nested dolls and lock-ups, which is "true retention".

We shouted the slogan of the metaverse, the market exploded, and everyone claimed they were working on the metaverse.

The project team is not working, but rather composing poetry.

There has been too much bloodshed here, and native encryption players prefer to call this place the "dark forest."

It seems that a new order is proclaiming, "If you want to pass this way, leave behind a toll." Encryption will fully financialize, showcasing the power of the free market to the world. This power allows things to quickly self-heal and evolve, possessing anti-fragility. At the same time, a large number of projects and entrepreneurs quickly die in the cycle of free competition and rapid iteration.

Being in this "crypto community", I feel excited, but also a bit confused.

"Grand Narrative"

Jean-François Lyotard introduced the term "grand narrative" in "The Postmodern Condition." The "grand narrative" can explain everything and points to the future of all social issues. In short, it criticizes the legitimacy and rationality of science in narratives. This made me rethink the narratives in the crypto market.

When explaining the concept of the semiotic triangle, Léotard gave the example "this cat is white." He said that the speaker is the one who utters the phrase, the listener is the recipient, the cat becomes the referent, and "is white" represents the meaning. Once the word is spoken, the four essential elements are immediately captured together, constructing the world of the phrase.

Problems arise. In what context is this said, and to whom? If this cat is black or another color, would the speaker still insist that "this cat is white"? Or is it not a cat at all but a pig? The meaning of this sentence varies in different contexts such as a classroom, casual conversation, court, or mental health facility. It also has different meanings for people who have or have not owned cats.

The language not only reflects the above context but also the ideological structure and power.

In a market-driven global economy, the value of postmodern knowledge lies in its efficiency and profitability. "Postmodern knowledge" can be simply understood here as many sensational stories from modern history, and perhaps "metaverse" is one of them.

This criticism is hidden in every corner of the market, and every judgment we make is an analytical choice of the "meta-narrative." We question what true demand is and what false demand is. We are clear about what the story is and what can be realized. All these details are constantly reflected in the token prices of the crypto market.

Today, we do not prescribe a remedy; we choose to expose those things that cannot be perceived by mainstream discourse, giving these silent phenomena a measure. Only after this can we calmly reflect when the market experiences FOMO. What we need to do is:

"Find yourself."

Narrative Above Narrative

According to Li Ai Ta, as capital operations increasingly become the main form of human social development, "knowledge" is gradually being reduced to a type of capital.

In such a state, the authenticity of "knowledge" itself is greatly discounted. When knowledge is no longer trustworthy, people's "narratives" in social interactions also lose their credibility.

This criticism is not intended to replace the outdated order, but rather to try to find a crack that allows individuals to restore the truth (ensuring that Web3 builders can remain clear-headed) and to ensure that a new order is not chaotic (ensuring that the narrative of the crypto market is genuinely driven by intrinsic demand).

If we know nothing about the society in which "knowledge" exists, we cannot know what "knowledge" is, nor can we understand the problems it faces in terms of development and dissemination today.

Just like Satoshi Nakamoto published "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" in 2008. In just 9 pages of text, Nakamoto indicated what "knowledge" (Bitcoin) is and demonstrated how this "knowledge" fits into the society (the genesis block also contains a message written by Nakamoto: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." This message serves as a timestamp, referring to the newspaper headline from January 3.)

As of today, 14 years have passed, and encryption has moved onto the world stage. The whole world is watching this monster, and as more and more capital flows in, we should be more clear-headed and calm, pondering what our "knowledge" really is?

From the blog of the Ethereum founder, it can be seen that his mindset has been changing. Do most believers in decentralization still remember what our "knowledge" was, and what position "knowledge" holds in society now?

"Knowledge" has already become a commodity, a resource, and a war, but Lyotard splits it into scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge. For example, mathematics is about calculation, but why calculation? In fact, it doesn't need to be known; mathematics only cares about calculation. We are educated that mathematics can lead to truth, that mathematics can be transformed into code, and that code is law.

The crypto market is filled with countless "narrative knowledge" and also filled with numerous "scientific knowledge"; their combination forms a "grand narrative". This "grand narrative" naturally becomes a "consensus", as the distinction between the two is like the saying that many voices can melt gold.

We often talk in the primary market about which projects can survive bull and bear cycles, which is equivalent to questioning which narratives are built upon narratives. Are they truly "scientific knowledge"?

Carry "change and information", "critique and skepticism", to explore the boundaries of "grand narratives".

A well-known blockchain developer stated in his interview:

"Web3 is somewhat like the home computer revolution of the 80s and 81-82. People will ask, where is AI? Where is VR? But the difference is that the computers we have now are much more powerful than those back then.

Although Web3 has come a long way in terms of computing power, there are still significant gaps in higher-level elements. These gaps essentially boil down to software, software libraries, software development kits, services, and integration. Integration refers to the integration with services from other parts of the world, whether they are digital or real.

We are making slow progress, but it takes time. This is not something where you can just snap your fingers, invest a billion dollars, and expect everything to be sorted out within three months.

It is necessary to make many people understand this; it is an educational issue as well as a technical issue. Everyone must think about what this is.

Just like in the 5 or 10 years before the emergence of Web2, many Web2 products could have been built on existing technologies, but these products were delayed in appearing. It wasn't until everyone understood the difference between telephone lines and DSL lines, how to connect to the internet, and the difference between a computer connected to the network and one that isn't, that Web2 emerged.

To make Web3 a reality, a lot of foundational education is necessary, and this world must revolve around a new way of doing things.

"Discover the fracture in the crypto market, learn to educate the market"

Recently, a very important criterion in our investment methodology is whether the project and the team have the ability to educate the market.

To consciously educate the market through our own products is essentially a glimpse into the "grand narrative"; it is a filtered action. We focus on discovering whether those backgrounds truly exist in the market, rather than simply listing a comparison chart with checks and crosses.

In the past, I had a persistent skepticism towards the high volatility of the crypto market. I tried to find the issues in "Is over-collateralization in DeFi really the best solution?" and discovered that we need a credit assessment model. At the same time, we also need a deconstruction and construction of identity, as well as regulation and trust. We need so much.

I previously listed the drawbacks of over-collateralization, but it is still the best collateral model relative to others at present. But why is that?

Later, I read a sentence written by Taleb in "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable": "Change is information." It is precisely this multitude of changes that gives this market its antifragility, an endless supply of information. However, I do not think this is telling us that volatility is reasonable. Information provides us with a boundary, allowing individuals to have a space that accommodates a marginalized thought pattern.

In this new order, we need to carry a vigilance similar to Lyotard's towards "grand narratives" so that we can better utilize the "anti-fragility" and "change is information" of the crypto market to truly construct a new order. Only in this way can we slow down.

Fear cannot change the world; the core of Web3 is not only a technical issue but also an educational issue.

Critiques like these are often criticized as nihilistic and relative, mostly targeting the untimeliness of their critiques, and I once thought so too. But what lies before us now is a hodgepodge, filled with a market of various fast-paced information. We attempt to deconstruct all of this and uncover the problems and flaws of the old order, renewing the construction of a new order with marginalized thinking (which is also what most people discuss when asking "What is Crypto Native?").

Lyotard is a person who has a firm belief in a pluralistic society and pluralistic discourse. Those who criticize him with the question "What use is your theory to society?" are not discussing issues within his paradigm. He has never told us to be a timid turtle that only focuses on criticism and the pursuit of the sublime.

What we can do is to try to give a "name" to those silent phenomena from the warnings, to break the collective illusion, rather than getting caught up in the ultimate indications brought by a certain discourse structure.

The blog of the Ethereum founder has left a deep impression on me. I am fortunate that there is such a person in the crypto world who is always exploring the boundaries of the "grand narrative."

To truly enable Web3 and the crypto market to be accepted by the masses, we must discover fractures as much as possible, rather than tokenizing everything.

We need to be skeptical of all the "grand narratives" currently in existence; perhaps there is no such thing as modern or postmodern at all.

Because we can discuss finance, history, politics, art, and even the grand fate of humanity in the crypto market. All of this constitutes what we call "consensus."

However, not all consensus signifies truth; people assume that the truth of a statement necessarily brings consensus.