Looking Back on the Past Three Years at the Hong Kong Carnival: Frenzy, Disenchantment, and Transcendence
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Looking Back on the Past Three Years at the Hong Kong Carnival: Frenzy, Disenchantment, and Transcendence
From market dream ratio to market share, I really love this shift because it's exactly what I've always wanted to do.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Shijun
This is a short reflection on the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival.
It might sound harsh, but I want to talk about some past illusions and why they've been disproven.
1. Was the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival cold?
Yes, it was cold—and that’s many people's first impression. In previous years, events were packed; you could barely move through the crowds. This time, most faces were familiar project teams, VIP rooms sat empty, few attendees visited exhibition booths—where will liquidity and creativity come from next? Yet there were more people in suits than ever. The industry’s underlying logic seems to be restructuring.
Some blame the venue layout for feeling hollow and sparse; others say MixC wasn’t well-prepared, struggled to invite speakers, lacked projects, and even saw speaking slots priced far more rationally. Some voices onstage felt less like vision statements and more like declarations: “I’m still alive, not dead yet.”
In my view, the relationship between East and West remains one of warm faces meeting cold shoulders.
Western faces were notably absent—three years on, across web3 (and perhaps many other fields).
Even if Vitalik showed up in person, beyond fan photos and socializing, he’d face one-sided accusations from certain bald guys—the clowns who’ve ruined this space.
At the root lie deep cultural and philosophical differences.
Those treating web3 purely as a casino, chasing banana-aligned screenshots every cycle, steer the entire direction toward building more slot machines, luring more gamblers, siphoning off builder-driven user acquisition—all while ignoring real value creation.
Major Western Layer 1 chains treat the East mostly as users, not partners.
Is it that they don’t want us at the table, or do we have our own problems?
Or are we simply chasing entirely different goals while pretending we can play together?
2. Is RWA right?
At nearly every keynote, over half the content feels like clickbait. When will the substance finally match the flashy titles?
RWA has become this year’s dominant narrative. But fundamentally, how different is it from NFTs three years ago, inscriptions two years ago, or memes last year?
Look closely at each cycle’s foundation—you’ll find that once zoomed out to a macro perspective, everything eventually appears correct, thus justified.
RWA is just another shell wrapped around a new macro narrative.
Yet grand narratives often infinitely disregard individual rights—a sense of "heaven and earth show no mercy," sometimes not even seeing people as dogs, just numbers.
Catching a mainstream narrative certainly enables explosive growth: Phantom rode Solana and meme airdrops; Bitget leveraged the Telegram ecosystem with multi-chain + annual narrative strategies, achieving massive annual growth.
But growing users has never been hard in this industry—the real challenge lies in retention. (With proper resources and hype, growth here can outpace traditional internet via flywheel effects.)
The scope of what blockchains actually enable remains limited, rarely touching daily necessities. After the battle of hundreds of wallets, even last year’s hottest Unisat wallet hasn't been opened in months—no need to open it anymore, only brings melancholy.
RWA institutions now repeat the **Web2 elite PowerPoint scam**: individuals spouting “empowering ecosystems” without ever having used a wallet.
Interestingly, BTC events care little about narratives—which gives hope. After all, those chasing narratives usually miss them, while those creating narratives still have a chance to flip the script.
3. Is V still okay?
What kind of conspiracy is truly terrifying?
I think it’s when the essence of tragedy becomes a choice trap: self-immolation through burning passion or slow decay via chronic stagnation. Most horrifyingly, whichever path you choose adds constraints to exploration along the other.
V already stands trapped in such a dilemma—no matter the decision, personal or collective tragedy looms.
To be fair, V is a genius. His work ethic ranks number one in the industry. He’s also young. If Ethereum’s future rests on anything, its greatest potential lies in visionary minds like his, offering boundless room for growth.
But every strength carries an equal weakness behind it.
At 30, there are downsides: too easily surrounded by sycophants, too vulnerable to sweet talk.
V stakes his entire presentation at every conference on L2s—an understandable position backed by strong internal logic.
A compelling argument: EF excels at on-chain innovation, not off-chain integration. They possess infinite capacity for on-chain creation, but bridging to the real world requires partners. Since EF can no longer redistribute pie effectively, why not transform into a platform, vacate booth spaces, welcome every team to bring their own resources, and grant them whatever titles they desire?
But who fed these ideas to V? Why did they become his deeply entrenched scaling doctrine?
If L1 were good enough, would we even need ghost towns called L2s? What about the fragmentation between L2s themselves?
EF’s next phase of upgrades begins returning focus to L1 user experience—then the biggest resistance won’t come from L1 itself, but from the L2s.
That’s precisely today’s choice trap.
4. Web3+Gaming: Reluctant but Trapped
Among dozens of conferences I attended, web3 gaming sessions remained the boldest in speech—perhaps because attendance was low, allowing deeper, more grounded insights spoken plainly.
I originally entered the field inspired by Loot, Axie, and move-to-earn shoes breaking into the mainstream. Now everyone’s waking up—players, investors alike. Only old obsessions remain stubbornly asleep.
Those still investing here can only comfort themselves with phrases like “ecosystem positioning,” “defensive strategy,” and “cost considerations.”
Games once had countless reasons to become great businesses—even China’s game licensing freeze three years ago became a catalyst for web3 gaming. Hardware demands naturally differ from financial use cases, making dedicated web3 gaming chains a persistent frontier.
Yet play-to-earn, on-chain games, Telegram mini-games—all turned into traps.
Because within crypto circles, dopamine rewards from inscription farming exceed those from gaming.
During inscription mania, who wasn’t waking up at 6 AM and staying awake until 3 AM? No game delivers purer, more direct core incentives.
And since no one brings in genuine new users, it’s just mutual traffic redirection to inflate metrics and fool investors. It used to be falsified financial data; now audits collude in fraud. Even investors funding web3 games often don’t play games—some only played Contra.
Crypto should stick to finance—stop meddling in games.
Meanwhile, game companies treating web3 as a new domain—from Perfect World to Korean gaming conglomerates, to Western metaverse dreams—all crashed and burned in the wasteland left by crypto’s failed game ventures.
All roads lead back to the same 1 million spoiled users: non-chain natives won’t engage, chain users only chase financialization. And if you’re going to play financially, memecoins offer better returns.
If you try educating outsiders from scratch, you quickly realize—why bother? Who wants to endure that painful user onboarding?
Still, games undeniably make excellent businesses. Even MiHoYo’s merchandise alone boosted total revenue by 10%, with margins reaching 70%.
Currently, no team fully masters both game development and profitability. As emotional-value products, games generate value throughout the journey—not just at final outcomes like most purely result-oriented on-chain products (e.g., painstakingly built blockchains that lose all value if unused).
Thus, games will continue deceiving hopeful investors who refuse to give up.
With 600 million valid addresses, some liken this to the internet in 1994—just pile on more manure, the flowers will bloom eventually.
5. Is a bear market coming?
I’ve seen relatively bearish periods—not the worst—but also witnessed breakthrough eras. Each time narrative confusion strikes, it tends to coincide with HK conferences.
After last year’s Bitcoin Asia event, inscriptions cooled down. Markets chilled, pressure mounted on projects, irrational moves increased, clear thinking faded.
This year’s lineup featured many familiar faces, though projects cycled through 2–3 rounds. Serial entrepreneurs may face mockery, but deserve greater appreciation.
Those who’ve lived through cycles know: bear markets are builders’ opportunities.
Only after years of falling into pits do we clearly see what survives.
“Enterprise blockchain” initiatives were widely deemed dead ends—but with the rise of L2s, they’re reviving. Soneium is a prime example.
Increasingly ineffective “decel” communities exist—loud in condemning mainstream actors’ immorality and incompetence, yet unable to offer viable alternatives.
But these are all traps.
DeFi aimed to replace banks, NFTs sought to redefine ownership, the metaverse intended to become humanity’s new gathering place. Yet after tens of billions in promises, the only widely adopted tools are stablecoins, their trading pairs, and markets.
Some say businesses without repeat purchases are tough—they must constantly hunt new users, provide long-term service, cling to old clients until they collapse. But high liquidity without core retention is equally exhausting.
In these models, the biggest losers this cycle are a new underclass: VCs. Once kings advising startups, securing one winning project meant 100x returns. Now they’re being skinned alive by projects. Post-TGE selling benefits teams and market makers first.
They dare not invest—every bet loses money. Rather than blaming the industry, it’s clearer now: early-stage project operations are broken.
The era of inflating infrastructure via narratives is over. High-valuations with low circulation leave no room to survive. All VC valuation frameworks are being rebuilt. Legacy projects are reshuffling.
In the new cycle, don’t overly rely on policy.
Hong Kong has changed significantly—but beneath it says: “We tolerate it, as long as you don’t mess things up.”
Today’s market is institutionalized. The days of small startups challenging giants are gone. Either adapt and learn this game, or get eliminated. One-sided dominance is unlikely. The era of symbiosis between institutions and founders has just begun.
6. Where are the next opportunities?
This piece may seem critical, but flawed endeavors deserve criticism. Once vented, we return to rationality—after all, not everything these years has been worthless.
After the inscription shockwave, chaos erupted unexpectedly. Six months later, what remained was layered optimization of infrastructure.
The current meme storm is halfway through. From GMGN to Axiom, survivors include product teams deeply understanding user needs and engineers mastering底层 chain technology. Many performance feats are unattainable without profound底层 expertise.
Explosive but greedy players like GMGN—who didn’t know how to share profits—forced top talent to circulate within the industry.
Demographically, entering deeper waters completed a wave of user education普及 and shifted academic research focus, laying a solid talent foundation for the future.
Directionally, building chains is losing mystique. Capital flow patterns have shifted away from blindly backing big protocols. While VCs grow cautious, tooling and application layers with clear business models and defined user bases now receive objective evaluations.
Cryptography has hit bottlenecks. Users’ interaction boundaries are being redefined.
Many real-world actions cannot be cryptographically proven, and not everything benefits from decentralization. Efficiency and technical ceilings exist—each ceiling represents an opportunity. The future won’t endlessly sustain irreconcilable tension between centralization and decentralization. Instead, both sides will gradually compromise.
Until clarity emerges, protect your attention fiercely. Sharpen your ability to identify garbage. Ride out cyclical volatility with peace of mind—and stay alive.
7. Finally
My disappointment in this industry is real—born from unrealistically high early expectations, treating the invented term “web3” as the next-generation infrastructure tier.
Now, viewing it simply as “crypto finance 3.0” brings much-needed rationality.
Attempts unrelated to crypto finance aren’t worth tracking.
There will always be a group pursuing freedom. Building the best tools and infrastructure for them is meaningful work.
To readers who made it this far—your attention is precious. Don’t let gossip fill your life. Otherwise, when ordinary people’s information sources are monopolized by Twitter KOLs and abstract-speaking communities, you’ll merely become “consensus cannon fodder.”
What truly deserves attention are those who achieve excellence in their craft first—and incidentally become KOLs.
A friend (@Odyssey_Leexixi) once said:
Now, people no longer believe in inflated bubbles—this shift is evident at events. Low-hanging fruit have been picked. Focus turns to product-market fit: building products that genuinely meet user needs, generate cash flow, and sustain business models.
From price-to-dream ratios to market-share focus—I deeply appreciate this transformation, because it aligns exactly with what I’ve always wanted to do.
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