Meme Cuts Imagination, Crypto Bids Farewell to the 'Shovel-Making' Era

Perps, prediction markets, and compliant stablecoins open up a real value cycle on the blockchain.

Written by: Haotian

If we were to reflect on the biggest mistake of the last industry cycle, it would be this: the prevalence of MEME has stifled the industry's imagination.

Of course, the rise of MEME is due to the industry's collective immersion in a narrative of hollow technological infrastructure that it cannot extricate itself from.

First, there was the arms race of high-performance public chains like Solana, Aptos, and Sui, followed by modularity, ZK scaling, data availability (DA), cross-chain interoperability, re-staking, chain abstraction, Intent-Centric, and so on. The industry's imagination was ample, with financing amounts reaching hundreds of millions and valuations easily soaring into the tens of billions, as top teams and capital rushed in.

However, these technological narratives have all stopped at the level of 'better shovels.' Thus, $ETH thrived with Layer 2, and $SOL soared during the MEME Season, but truly useful applications have yet to emerge.

Fortunately, @HyperliquidX has appeared, bringing on-chain Perps innovation that for the first time applies 'high-performance infrastructure' to applications with real demand, continuous trading, and clear value capture. This aligns perfectly with the overarching trend of asset tokenization in the integration of TradFi and DeFi.

Also fortunately, @Polymarket has emerged, turning prediction markets into on-chain applications with genuine information needs, continuous liquidity, and social impact. No longer are they vague concepts of 'decentralized governance' or 'information markets,' but rather directly serve pricing and hedging needs for elections, macro events, and real-world decisions.

Additionally, the x402 on-chain payment protocol has emerged, making payments truly programmable, automatically executable, and serving as infrastructure for AI agents and machine economies. It is no longer a simple transfer tool, but rather endows the on-chain economy with native settlement and value transfer capabilities, directly supporting real business and automation scenarios.

With the advancement of stablecoins and market structure-related legislation like GENIUS and CLARITY, the entire puzzle is becoming more complete.

The underlying linkage logic is roughly as follows:

The U.S. needs the stablecoin market to absorb a portion of short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, which directly drives the upgrade of stablecoins to compliant digital dollar infrastructure. As the scale of stablecoins continues to grow, they provide core circulation scenarios for Hyperliquid's Perps settlement, Polymarket's fund inflows and outflows, x402's payment circulation, and asset tokenization. The realization of these application scenarios, in turn, requires stimulating the continuous prosperity of the on-chain economy to sustain it, which ultimately reinforces the demand for U.S. Treasury bonds, forming a positive cycle.

In the end, on-chain perps, prediction markets, Agent Payments, compliant stablecoins, and asset tokenization all point in one direction:

The imagination of the crypto industry is back!