Setting aside public blockchains and CEXs, what does Crypto Native mean?
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Setting aside public blockchains and CEXs, what does Crypto Native mean?
In this grand feast of capital flows, trying to define Native itself is ultimately indefinable.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Boo@Foresight X
It's been fourteen years since the birth of the crypto industry—a new historical stage where one actor steps off as another steps on. In each cycle, giants fall and newcomers rise to reign. Amid this ever-changing landscape, one inevitably wonders: what remains constant? Perhaps these unchanging principles, refined through history, have shaped today’s buzzword—Crypto Native. This term is popular in the primary market and often used as a reason to pass on a project. But what does Crypto Native actually mean?
Having Web3 experience doesn't equate to being Crypto Native. Each new cycle is largely dominated by fresh faces. Just look at this cycle alone: we’ve seen the evolution of narratives from DeFi Summer → Polkadot Summer → GameFi Summer → NFT Summer → Solana Summer → Alt L1 Summer → Mass Adoption Summer → LSD Summer.
Orthodoxy doesn’t guarantee Crypto Nativeness either. The rising threshold of narratives centered around V神 (Vitalik) has fueled the L2 and LSD summers. Yet, such orthodoxy cannot dominate the narrative stage forever. No one can truly become a god—except Satoshi Nakamoto.
Ultimately, major crypto bull markets are溢出 (spillovers) of USD liquidity. Being "native" doesn't generate externalities. Hot money flows from USD into crypto, from BTC into ETH, from ETH into DeFi/NFT ecosystems, and from broader crypto markets into Alt L1s/L2s. When bear markets hit, everything flows back to BTC, and the issuance of dollar-pegged stablecoins sharply declines. This cycle repeats endlessly. Within this grand flow of capital, defining "native" becomes nearly impossible. Money and people circulate with the cycles, ceaselessly. Meanwhile, the intermediaries enabling this flow—CEXs—are growing increasingly colossal. If you ask me, CEX *is* Crypto Native.
But setting aside blockchains and CEXs, what does Crypto Native mean at the application level?
To spark discussion and learn from history, here are three characteristics I believe exemplify Crypto Native teams:
No.1 The ability and courage to build communities from the ground up.
This has little to do with prior crypto experience. Many top Web3 founders had no background in the space: Uniswap’s Adam was a mechanical engineer; the two founders of CryptoPunks were traditional software engineers; Solana’s founder was an electrical engineer; StepN’s Jerry came from architecture, and so on. Great winds begin with a gentle breeze. Looking back, most successful founders started small but demonstrated extraordinary resilience, gradually building their communities step by step.
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Building from the bottom up requires courage, determination, perseverance, passion, and belief—none of which depend on experience or prestigious endorsements.
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Counterexamples: directly porting over Web2 users and business models; launching projects with high visibility from big Web3 firms that inevitably fizzle out; chasing VC-driven narratives that turn simple problems into overly complex abstractions.
No.2 Rapid product iteration centered on user needs.
The slow formation of a community followed by explosive, exponential growth is often sudden—and such growth is driven by the product. User needs and product iteration go hand-in-hand, evolving continuously. Sometimes, only after reaching a critical user threshold can true product-market fit emerge. Founders must be bold enough to launch tokens and release rough, minimal products. Through real community feedback and engagement, new needs may be discovered—or even created.
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Graph and Chainlink, successful infra projects from the last cycle, boldly introduced tokenomics to decentralize and network infrastructure supply, uncovering and fulfilling new demands. Sushiswap’s vampire attack, StepN’s mining token GST, and Lybra during LSD summer all enabled token trading early in their product lifecycle.
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Compromise: abandoning community or network node building for end-users, ditching tokenomics, and instead focusing on heavy BD-driven SaaS services built around last cycle’s known demands.
No.3 Understanding money (Ponzi), and respecting money.
Whether you approve of crypto or not, look around: in 2023, what other industry offers wealth redistribution? Where else do heroes emerge regardless of origin? We must respect the flow of capital and understand the role Ponzi dynamics play in redistributing wealth. What if a Ponzi collapses? Collapse paves the way for greater prosperity and larger bubbles—the cycle continues. This is the inevitability of historical cycles.
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DeFi: GMX went through six Ponzi iterations and several re-platformings before achieving its current status; GNS v2’s pool model reverted to degen-style mechanics, shedding earlier financial elitism; from YFI to the Curve Wars to RDNT, DeFi Nativeness lies in bold token experimentation.
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GameFi/NFT: Axie, StepN, OpenSea—all started small. None began as successful Ponzis. Their teams were makeshift, scrappy. If there’s a spirit of Crypto Native, it’s simply taking one step at a time, enduring with sheer willpower until breakthrough.
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Counterexamples: using Web2 metrics like user experience, session duration, or protocol revenue as key performance indicators.
Native or not, it always comes down to who stands on stage. As practitioners, we must dare to engage directly with communities and create new demand within them. We must embrace new product paradigms and welcome fresh talent. History marches forward. As Chairman Mao once said, “Thousands of years fade behind us; Cao Wei wielded his whip.” We must remain cautious about resting on past crypto experience—our deeds are but a drop in the ocean, insignificant in the grand scheme.
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