Recently, top-tier VCs announced raising over $15 billion in new funds, sparking heated discussions in the community. This fundraising reflects a subtle shift in investment focus—from the past obsession with public chain performance to a reevaluation of system-level infrastructure.

To be honest, those L1 projects competing for high TPS and optimized consensus mechanisms have raised quite a bit of money in recent years, but their profit models have reached a dead end. Ultimately, competition boils down to subsidy levels and marketing narratives, which are cyclical opportunities and unstable in the long run.

Therefore, major institutions are now shifting their attention to another dimension—the control over system-level governance. Specifically, who defines asset types and settlement methods? Who has the authority over data and model invocation? How are identity verification and compliance checks embedded into the system? These questions may seem like technical details, but they actually determine who can access the ecosystem and who will be excluded.

Here's an interesting logic: AI handles production and decision-making, while cryptographic networks handle value confirmation and circulation. Only by combining these two systems can the ecosystem operate fully.

Looking at recent investment trends makes this clear. For example, a certain project received lead investment in 2025, focusing on an AI-native financial stack that enables software agents to perform instant stablecoin payments and low-fee transactions, with built-in identity verification and compliance frameworks. These types of projects are the focus of the next wave—neither pure tech showcases nor vaporware, but real, usable system-level infrastructure.