The crypto world is experiencing dopamine fatigue—how can the market rescue itself from short-term stimuli?
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The crypto world is experiencing dopamine fatigue—how can the market rescue itself from short-term stimuli?
When attention is so fragmented, long-term narratives seem harder to form.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Galois Capital
Translation: TechFlow
It seems that since Twitter changed its default algorithm, narratives in the crypto space have become less intense—thanks to AlokVasudev for the reminder. I suspect about half of crypto Twitter remains in the "For You" feed, which promotes TikTok-style engagement.
With elections approaching, this feed tends to surface more highly controversial political topics. The other half stays in the "Following" feed, whose algorithm may or may not have changed.
In any case, when attention is so fragmented, long-term narratives seem harder to form. As a result, nothing appears to last—narrative cycles feel extremely short and lack staying power.
Moreover, as we sense an oversupply of infrastructure alongside a lack of killer applications, and few projects truly achieving product-market fit, we’re now in a phase dominated by mimicry.
DriftProtocol launched a prediction market riding on Polymarket's success. Meanwhile, sunpumpmeme and ethervista are copying pumpdotfun.
From one perspective, the industry may have run out of ideas for application-level innovation, making replication of proven successes the optimal strategy. From another angle, Polymarket and pumpdotfun might have accidentally benefited from changes in Twitter’s algorithm.
The highly polarizing political content in the "For You" feed could have increased users’ willingness to place bets on Polymarket. This phenomenon may be intertwined with the fact that the upcoming election is widely seen as one of the most important for the industry.
I can’t help but wonder if this is a reflexive mechanism. Perhaps greater political polarization and heightened attention toward crypto lead to more political donations, prompting politicians to pay closer attention and speak more about crypto, ultimately driving more crypto Twitter users to engage with politics.
In other words, as the industry pays more attention to politics, could it be that politics starts paying more attention to the industry?
From another perspective, the algorithmic shift preventing sustained long-term narratives may inadvertently benefit pumpdotfun and its short-term narrative model.
When attention spans fragment and shorten, complex mechanism design feels too cumbersome for dopamine-driven individuals. At the same time, people’s gambling tendencies increase—similar to how stocks rose when Robinhood gamified trading.
This raises two questions:
1) How do we return to a better era?
2) If we can't go back, then under persistent attention deficits among crypto Twitter users, which tokens will perform well?
Regarding the first question, I believe that due to accelerationism, we're already feeling dopamine fatigue. Once this phase ends, I foresee a shift toward higher-quality choices—an embrace of authenticity and rejection of modernity. For crypto, this could mark a moment of neo-reaction.
As for the second question, while waiting, we might as well look for simple, easily understandable, and highly stimulating projects that deliver brief bursts of excitement. In such cases, you’ll need to act quickly to avoid falling into addictive patterns.
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