IOSG Ventures founder: Eastern crypto communities can't remain memes forever—what's needed is a prairie fire
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IOSG Ventures founder: Eastern crypto communities can't remain memes forever—what's needed is a prairie fire
Crypto is not just about memes—there are many opportunities in infrastructure and applications waiting to be discovered and explored, and these represent the true alpha of the industry.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Jocy, Founder of IOSG Ventures
Recently I came across the story of the Reform Movement of 1898. The Hundred Days' Reform feels so vivid—hard to imagine that in an era like the Qing Dynasty, there were still young people willing to risk execution by following Emperor Guangxu, advocating transformative new laws decades ahead of their time, learning from the West to strengthen China, and promoting Western reforms regardless of personal safety. Though ultimately unsuccessful, their spirit and actions left a profound mark. These youths and pioneers became role models admired by future generations.
Such a spirit remains crucial in today’s crypto world. Today, many practitioners passionately denounce the "Western powers," yet simultaneously engage in recursive restaking mining schemes, front-run liquidity pools, and endlessly post memes or promote low-quality tokens on Twitter. Everyone knows where the problem lies, yet compromises for short-term gain. Both Eastern and Western crypto communities are currently caught in a frenzy of meme炒作 (meme speculation). Memes have become like opium—an imported Western narcotic—with top memes on Binance overwhelmingly originating from the West. Founders and community builders can easily lose their way amid this noise, as the Eastern crypto community sinks deeper into meme-driven speculation. After seeing the success of memes, many entrepreneurs begin questioning their original vision and purpose. I believe founders must resist memes, avoid shifting their startup focus toward memes, and absolutely refrain from mass-producing and hyping memes!
We need young people who balance practicality with idealism—especially those capable of carrying forward the aspirations of Eastern crypto. These individuals should not merely ride bull markets doing trading-related activities, but instead focus on building infrastructure and protocols, fostering healthier community cultures. We must prevent aspiring developers and youth from being immersed daily in stories of getting rich through memes.
To reiterate my stance: I don’t oppose traders who prioritize memes in the market. Personally, I received Dogecoin from the community back in 2013 and have long appreciated its culture. However, I do not wish for meme traders to dominate the Chinese-speaking community. Since the approval of Bitcoin ETFs, I’ve clearly observed a surge of entrepreneurs emerging in the U.S. and Europe, backed by abundant capital from American funds—while some prominent U.S. funds internally state they won’t invest in Chinese Web3 founders. It seems that both technologically and culturally, East and West are drifting apart in the crypto era. While Western innovation continues to flourish, the Eastern crypto community is陷入 a craze of meme speculation—a clearly unhealthy trend.
Meme speculation carries lottery-like dynamics, where the probability of later participants “winning” continuously decreases. Like opium, memes create path dependency among early beneficiaries, leading more people to advocate for them within communities (akin to compradors). Communities may thus reinforce this profit-seeking behavior repeatedly, but this does not make our protocols or communities more distinctive or powerful. Early participants might profit, but such shortsighted gambling—and the myths of instant wealth—will eventually burst the bubble, becoming a disaster for the Eastern crypto market, replaying the NFT story of the last bull cycle. Still, I firmly believe most top-tier Eastern entrepreneurs will persist on the front lines, finding their unique piece in the Lego set of infra or applications, advancing alongside—or even surpassing—mainstream Western protocols.
Perhaps the crypto market shouldn’t be divided into East and West—it’s a decentralized world. Over past cycles, we’ve seen diverse portraits of Eastern and Western founders: Western successes didn’t come by accident. Rune Christensen, founder of MakerDAO, spent years building in Web3 and significantly grew his protocol’s revenue even amid high U.S. interest rates and a crypto bear market. In March this year, he launched the Endgame plan and multiple SubDAOs—including Spark SubDAO focused on lending. The founder of EigenLayer was so busy during ETHDenver that every day’s meeting schedule was overloaded; to personally engage partners, each session was trimmed down to just 15–30 minutes. Clearly, in this globally competitive arena, many founders are sprinting at the front line. Uniswap’s founder, originally a hardware engineer, taught himself Solidity and wrote fifty lines of concise code that sparked the industry-wide AMM innovation wave in Dexes. They consistently focused on product design and deep protocol understanding, striving for leadership in the field. Eastern founders are among the most resilient and capable groups. We’ve already seen many standouts, but they still need greater support and positive reinforcement from the community. The Eastern community should be more united and stronger, spending time discussing how to learn from the West to surpass it, seriously considering how to nurture a more powerful, mysterious Eastern community force. When the community and founders reach consensus, it will generate further positive feedback for our protocols.
As a fund rooted in Asia, IOSG will invest in and support more Chinese founders in this cycle, helping them better enter Western markets and become mainstream. You cannot imagine that in three to five years, the core of this industry will still be memes. As we ride the waves of the crypto era, everyone inevitably becomes a wave-rider—yet beneath history’s footsteps, individuals seem small. Still, we must not overlook the negative energy generated when everyone shouts about investing in memes within the Chinese community.
In summary: We should unite more closely and face future challenges together. The community needs higher ideals and greater foresight, and someone must step forward for the future of the Eastern community. Crypto is not just about memes—there are vast opportunities in infrastructure and applications waiting to be discovered and explored. That is the true industry alpha. IOSG will drive long-term progress of the industry and community by investing in and supporting these pioneering young builders, empowering Eastern entrepreneurs to shine on the global stage.
Note: Image courtesy of the Dogecoin community
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