There is an interesting anticipated divergence brewing in the Irys project market.

Most people's perception still remains in the past, but if you pay attention to the project's recent progress, you'll find that the fundamentals have completely changed. Irys is undertaking a major transformation: gradually evolving from a middleware at the core into a high-performance Layer1 public chain. This shift is far more than just an upgrade of the tech stack; it involves a re-pricing of the entire value system.

Why do I say this? The market's imagination space for middleware and Layer1 is vastly different. The valuation ceiling for the former is relatively fixed, while the latter opens up multiple dimensions such as ecosystem capacity, application attractiveness, and token value capture. When a project undergoes such a transformation, investors who follow often only realize it after their perception has failed.