Improve awareness and maintain sensitivity.

Author: Rainy Sleep

The most impressive to me are "Inscription" and "Memecoin".

The emergence of such speculative activities is driven by "demand" (even if these demands are pseudo-demands or unsustainable demands) or "Ponzi" (high returns and high capital efficiency, stemming from greed).

A perennial topic: the speculation on Alt-Layer1 in the previous cycle was driven by users' demand for high-performance and low-cost public chains. The emergence of DeFi Summer (Ponzi) has driven the demand for Ethereum block space, while Ethereum's low performance and high fees (demand created) have pushed a large number of users to its competitors.

"Demand" and "Ponzi" interact with each other, but are also limited by cycles.

For example, the speculation on DeFi and Alt-Layer1 is the result of the interaction between "demand" and "Ponzi". GameFi is an upgraded version of DeFi, packaging liquidity mining as a game and selling it to on-chain users. However, in the end, GameFi did not create new demand (perhaps only the game guilds benefited from the GameFi speculation), and it was limited by the cycle. If GameFi successfully creates new demand and solutions appear at the same time, the bull market may last for a few more months.

@cobie refers to this narrative speculation as metagame.

In this cycle, we have also seen many metagames, such as the speculation on inscriptions and memecoins (as well as some fleeting metagames, such as modularization, and the Kankan upgrade / Layer2) that I mentioned earlier.

The speculation on inscriptions and memecoins is the most popular Ponzi play of this cycle. In short, these Ponzis continuously introduce new assets and then use expectations to attract subsequent buyers.

The speculation on inscriptions and memecoins is not groundless.

I personally believe that the speculation on inscriptions is probably driven by miners. In the run-up to the halving, miners need to drive the growth of Bitcoin on-chain activities to increase mining profits. In other words, in the future, as the halving continues, miners will need to subsidize mining expenses by promoting the development of the Bitcoin ecosystem. It can be foreseen that in the future, a large number of new assets and new gameplay will emerge in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and new wealth opportunities will also arise.

And memecoins?

A mainstream view is that the market's enthusiasm for speculating on memecoins is due to market participants' aversion and resistance to low-circulation, high-FDV VC coins.

What I want to add is that the wave of memecoin frenzy is more like the result of the combined effect of "timing, location, and people": Solana needs a wealth effect on-chain in order to revive, and users need to enter the Solana ecosystem for Solana to promote other products (DeFi, mobile, Depin) to users. Memecoin is a catalyst.

The resistance movement against VC coins has pushed the memecoin speculation wave to a new height.

The speculation on memecoins has brought about the demand for trading memecoins and issuing memecoins. Therefore, we have seen the popularity of Telegram Trading Bot and Memecoin Launchpad.

All of the above is actually a simple review of this cycle. After reviewing the past, let's briefly discuss my predictions for future metagames.

The basis of the prediction is based on the mainstream industry's difficulties and market mainstream views.

I. Alt Layer1 (market speculation demand)

The discussion about Alt Layer1 mainly focuses on the topic of the "successor to Solana." On social media, I have seen many opinions that $SUI will become the next Solana. Although these opinions are a bit biased (there have been a lot of OTC trades for $SUI? I'm not sure about the details, but the market rumors are like this), $SUI does have the potential to become the next generation of Alt Layer1.

However, my question is, has Solana encountered any problems?

At present, there are not too many problems (similar to Ethereum in the previous cycle), although Solana occasionally experiences some lag and downtime, it does not affect user usage. The current dilemma for Solana is the market's fatigue with Solana memecoin speculation—without enough wealth effect on-chain, there is no speculation expectation. Pumpdotfun has to some extent pushed this situation.

There is currently no sign that $SUI can take over from Solana.

I personally believe that the core of a chain lies in developers, and the ecosystem is the foundation for attracting and retaining users. Solana has captured a large number of developers in the previous cycle and left behind a lot of on-chain infrastructure, which is the basis of its success, while $SUI has not.

$SUI's competitors also include Fantom, $SEI, and other chains. $SEI's fundamental data has recently increased a lot (expectations of airdrops have driven data growth), which may provide fundamental support for future possible unlocking and rallying. Fantom also provides airdrops for Sonic chain users. Although they are following in the footsteps of their predecessors, they have been effective in the short term.

Let's talk about other chains.

Avalanche's direction is enterprise adoption (subnets) and RWA. The market's expectations for RWA will decrease with the start of interest rate cuts, and we have to put a question mark on enterprise adoption here. Avalanche's speculation is not about the number of users, but about market attention. The means to attract market attention can be frequent release of positive news to raise market expectations.

One important difference between Berachain and other chains is that PoL is very obvious to users' perception, and it will push users to play games with validators and project parties at various levels, while the consensus mechanism innovation of other chains is imperceptible to users, and users may only feel that this is another faster and cheaper Layer1. This is also an interesting point about Berachain, coupled with the fact that Berachain's community is doing well, so it can be foreseen that after the mainnet launch of Berachain, the level of discussion and market attention will not be less, and PA will be affected by this.

II. Fragmentation of Liquidity (real market demand)

In my opinion, the solutions to the fragmentation of liquidity are nothing more than the following:

• Chain abstraction / intent abstraction
• Shared liquidity
• Cross-chain / interoperability

No matter what abstraction, in simple terms, it means: creating a front end where users can seamlessly use products from various chains to achieve their intentions. The launch of Uniswap v4 may be the opportunity for this type of infrastructure speculation. But real large-scale speculation may still have to wait for the large-scale entry of liquidity and users (late in the bull market), in other words, the on-chain activity is not active enough, and the number of users determines the scale of demand.

Shared liquidity is just as it sounds, putting all liquidity together to provide liquidity for other products. However, shared liquidity cannot solve the problem of user experience. The demand for such products often manifests on the B side, rather than the C side. It is very difficult for me to see the possibility of speculation on this track—unless it has good fundamental data + builds basic market awareness + CT (community) massively promotes a specific project.

I won't talk about cross-chain, as many people are already talking about it.

III. Buying BTC and Holding BTC (real market demand)

In this cycle, we may see a trend shift from "institutional buying + holding" to "national buying + holding." Therefore, trading venues may become more important as a result of the push from such demand. Relevant targets include $BNB, $COIN, and others.

And, we have already seen more countries holding BTC through mining, and speculation on energy-related targets will probably occur (timing cannot be predicted).

IV. AI (market speculation demand)

About the speculation on AI, we have seen it many times. Including the continuous innovation from OpenAI, Nvidia's financial reports, etc., have given the market sufficient speculation expectations. I personally believe that the key to the speculation on AI lies in the trading venue. The potential of AI assets traded in venues with ample liquidity is greater than other assets. The quality of the trading venue also depends on the background of the corresponding assets.

V. New Ponzi

It is difficult to predict the new Ponzi play.

Currently, market attention is still focused on memecoins and the BTC ecosystem. The BTC ecosystem is strong, while memecoins are relatively weak. In this cycle, everyone is enthusiastic about the speculation on newly issued assets, but Ponzi schemes similar to DeFi and GameFi have not appeared. One day, the market will tire of the speculation on new assets and shift its focus to projects with real income, such as $BANANA, or projects with full circulation and strong fundamentals, such as $UNI, $LDO.

VI. Conclusion

Metagame is a concept I borrowed from Cobie's proposal in 2021. I am also unclear about the potential future speculation opportunities until the signs appear. No one can accurately predict which track the next narrative-level opportunity will emerge on.

"Improve awareness, maintain sensitivity" is what we need to do now.

This content mainly discusses the prediction of future metagames. I recommend reading Cobie's old article from 2021 (the article also mentions the rotation and exit timing of metagames): Trading the Metagame

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