This seems to be the destiny of the encryption industry: it develops in a sneaky manner, grows, becomes increasingly centralized, gets hit, is forced to decentralize, successfully decentralizes, then grows and gives birth to various giant central points, only to be targeted for elimination or self-destruct, and then decentralizes again, and the cycle repeats.

By: Huang Shiliang

Recently (mid-October 2023), Reddit announced the closure of the token moon, which was issued in specific subreddits, causing the price of moon to plummet by 85%.

In 2020, the news of Reddit issuing community tokens was exciting within the industry. Just think about how many new users Reddit's user base could bring to Ethereum. However, the token has still failed to succeed to this day.

I don't know about the operation of the moon token. Today, I just want to reminisce about the years I have spent reading information about the industry on various platforms. Looking back, it feels quite interesting.

As early as 2014, the blockchain industry only had Bitcoin, and at that time, the main source of information for the industry was forums.

At that time, almost all the industry experts were posting on bitcointalk.com, and all the high-quality information sources in the industry were from this forum. Additionally, there were more private and technically advanced information sources in email groups.

At that time, the main industry information in China was also from forums, and 8btc was the leader at that time.

In 2015 and 2016, I felt that Reddit became the main platform for the industry, with the rise of Ethereum and discussions about Bitcoin scalability.

At that time, I spent time every day on r/bitcoin, r/btc, r/ethereum, and other professional subreddits on Reddit.

Looking at the entire internet, social media had already become the main source of information at that time. In China, popular platforms included Sina Blog, Weibo, WeChat, and Zhihu. I'm not sure about the situation abroad, but it was probably similar, such as with Facebook and Twitter. However, the encryption industry chose to discuss on professional forums.

I felt that after 2017 and 2018, the forum model was not as popular in the industry. Professional media websites with strong editorial and content curation became mainstream. At that time, the highest-quality information sources in China were probably Chain News and 8btc, and internationally, there were professional platforms like CoinDesk, and the recent notorious rumor-monger, Cointelegraph.

Professional media websites collected and edited information from various platforms and accepted contributions from writers, with editors making modifications, translations, and other content adjustments.

At that time, the industry gave birth to more and more Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), who had their own platforms such as public accounts, Twitter, or their own websites.

For example, the most famous are Vitalik Buterin and perhaps the now-forgotten Gavin Andresen, who all had their own websites.

Media platforms also organized various interviews and offline conferences to create more content.

These high-quality articles scattered around the world were collected and edited by professional media platforms to be presented to their audience.

Many financial news websites like xx Finance were born during that time.

This was essentially Web1.0.

In 2019, Chinese media platforms suffered a fatal blow.

However, there has never been a professional and comprehensive media platform overseas like Chain News and 8btc. Perhaps the strict copyright laws in the United States scared platforms from freely reprinting and editing others' articles.

I felt that the main source of information for the Chinese in the encryption industry shifted to instant messaging tools for the first time, such as various social software groups, WeChat groups, and Telegram groups.

Various groups have always been popular in the encryption industry. In 2014, everyone was still using QQ groups, but it never felt like the mainstream, probably because people were too talkative and the information couldn't be consolidated.

However, after 2019, with the closure of reliable professional media platforms, the main source of information for the Chinese in the encryption industry became these groups. Everyone mingled in these groups.

In 2021, with the popularity of NFTs, DAOs, and special airdrop strategies, Discord became the daily communication tool for many people in the encryption industry.

Coupled with the popularity of DeFi mining and the sharing of various mining and money-making tips, various groups were established, including many paid groups, such as professional research reports and knowledge-sharing platforms.

It can be said that the channels for information have been completely decentralized.

It feels inconvenient for the majority of users to be decentralized, and everyone still yearns for a centralized source of information. There is an invisible force that drives information to converge on a single platform.

In 2022, with Elon Musk successfully promoting Dogecoin on Twitter, Twitter slowly became the main gathering place for blockchain information.

Now, almost all project parties, large and small retail investors, and KOLs are speaking and obtaining information on Twitter (X.com).

Even highly technical white papers and papers are shared on Twitter.

From the history of these changes in information sources, can we draw any valuable conclusions?

I feel that the following conclusions may be meaningful.

1. Early-stage phenomena (such as Bitcoin before 2014) tend to ferment information in niche forums or other niche platforms.

In any case, it will not be on mainstream social platforms.

If you want to deeply explore the origins of Bitcoin and blockchain history, you need to delve into the posts on forums like bitcointalk.

If you want to catch onto some other emerging industry in the future, don't forget to pay attention to various niche information discussion platforms.

2. The aggregation and dispersal of blockchain information has gone through a typical process of centralization, decentralization, and re-centralization.

I estimate that this historical process of decentralization and centralization will not stop, and X.com will not be the final gathering place for blockchain information. Crypto on X.com will be hit again.

It feels like this is the destiny of cryptocurrency: it develops in a sneaky manner, grows, becomes increasingly centralized, gets hit, is forced to decentralize, successfully decentralizes, then grows and gives birth to various giant central points, only to be targeted for elimination or self-destruct, and then decentralizes again, and the cycle repeats…

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