The "counter-consensus" choice of an eight-year-old exchange: Why give up easy profits and not treat trading as the end goal?

Author: momo, ChainCatcher

After several cycles, many crypto builders seem to have reached a “consensus”: no matter what you initially set out to do, it often ends up being about trading.

Take OpenSea, once the leading NFT platform, as a typical example of transformation. When the NFT market cooled and revenue shrank to around $3 million per month, OpenSea pivoted in October 2025, becoming a “multi-asset trading platform” supporting tokens and memecoins across 22 chains.

As a result, in its first month after the shift, trading volume soared to $2.6 billion, with nearly 90% from token trading. CEO Devin Finzer’s remark that “you can’t fight the trend” sounds like going with the flow, but also reveals a sense of helplessness and compromise.

OpenSea is not an exception. Looking back at this bull cycle, memecoin trading became a “lifeline” for many projects. In a16z’s January report, “2 notes for crypto builders in 2026,” partner Arianna Simpson openly states that this trend is accelerating: almost every successful crypto company has shifted or is shifting toward trading activities.

While focusing on trading for revenue is understandable, then what? This has evolved into a “marshmallow experiment” for the crypto industry: pursuing short-term gratification often comes at the cost of product depth.

As Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently pointed out in a discussion on decentralized social media: if the industry merely packs a speculative token into a product and claims to be “innovative,” it’s just creating corporate garbage.

If all innovation is just a means to increase turnover, what can individuals, projects, and the industry truly leave behind for this era?

Fortunately, as the collective begins to reflect, divergences are emerging. Amid the trend of “everyone moving toward trading,” some veteran platforms like CoinW are exploring whether there’s a longer-term, more effective path.

Divergence in Industry Dilemmas

Why is early entry into trading and solely doing trading unsustainable? Friend.tech and Pump.fun, two former star products, might hold the answer.

Friend.tech, once the top SocialFi platform, succeeded and failed through trading. It aimed to create social connections but pivoted directly to trading, turning each KOL into a tradable asset, with prices set by buy/sell activity and platform fees taking a cut. This model led to rapid growth and skyrocketing fees, setting a daily revenue record surpassing Ethereum within just a month. But once speculation faded, the social relationships had no intrinsic value or lasting user base, and Friend.tech eventually failed.

Pump.fun pushed the trading-centric model to the extreme. The rise of memecoins allowed platforms like Pump.fun to profit immensely. However, most trades are zero-sum, and in a bear market, trading volume can plummet by 90% from peak.

The question remains: how to find a longer-term scenario or second growth curve? The answer is still unclear.

For the entire industry, this “trade-first” approach leads to over-reliance on short-term gains, resulting in homogeneous competition and a lack of genuine long-term value. This is a key reason why this cycle’s crypto industry has been criticized for lacking innovation.

But if trading alone isn’t the only path, where are the new opportunities?

Some industry players are beginning to experiment differently. This new thinking doesn’t deny trading but redefines its role: making trading not the end goal, but an entry point into a richer participation ecosystem. In other words, users shouldn’t be limited to speculation; they can also generate value through more “consumption” and engagement scenarios.

This approach is understandable when looking at traditional sectors. Any sustainable business model must allow users to naturally create value through daily use, participation, or consumption, enabling platforms to build long-term relationships and ecological resources.

However, this path is challenging. It requires platforms to have sufficient capital and patience—first to survive, then to develop slow-to-yield initiatives like developer cultivation, community management, or real-world integrations.

Currently, this adjustment isn’t mainstream; it’s mainly being attempted by established projects with a solid user base and stable operations. For example, CoinW, an old exchange with millions of users and steady daily trading volume, has enough capital flow to support building a long-term, slow-yield ecosystem of value.

What’s the Logic Behind the “Counter-Consensus” Choice?

For some crypto projects, solely focusing on trading threatens long-term survival. But for a platform like CoinW, which can earn steadily from transaction fees, why bother with slower, more complex initiatives? Looking into CoinW’s public discussions and strategy offers some clues.

It’s likely related to the background of CoinW’s leadership. Omar Al Yousif, a board member, has extensive experience in traditional finance and investment. He is Vice Chairman of 7-E Emirates Holding and a partner at 10X Capital.

In multiple internal and public talks, he has emphasized that aggressive trading and homogenous competition are old financial paradigms: when all players chase the same metrics, the result is often just chaos. While it may seem prosperous, it actually depletes long-term value.

For a veteran platform like CoinW, fostering ecosystem development isn’t just about leveraging existing stability; it’s a strategic move to “think ahead.” Relying solely on trading will be insufficient to gain advantages in future competition. The earlier they expand into value scenarios beyond trading, the better positioned they’ll be in industry segmentation.

How to implement value beyond trading? CoinW announced a comprehensive upgrade at its 8th anniversary, which can be summarized as focusing on two strategies: “internal circulation” and “external circulation.”

1. Internal Circulation: Making it Easier for Users to Stay

Internal circulation involves redesigning the user journey within CoinW: not assuming users will repeatedly trade the same assets, but extending their meaningful engagement time.

For example, as a trader, most start with spot or futures trading. But many don’t just want to “place more orders”; they also want to participate in other on-chain activities beyond market movements. CoinW aims to meet this demand seamlessly.

With a unified account system, users no longer need separate wallets or worry about Gas fees to try new features:

• On GemW, users can explore on-chain assets directly with low costs and barriers.
• On DeriW, perpetual trading is more transparent, and zero Gas design encourages trying different strategies.
• On PropW, trading isn’t just about profit and loss; users’ trading skills can be recognized as a “skill” and supported with platform funds, changing the participation mode.

In the short term, this design may not immediately boost trading volume, but a clear effect is that users won’t leave just because the market cools. When trading opportunities decline, other ways to participate can keep their attention. When new assets or features emerge, they can naturally be integrated into existing pathways.

The result: lower psychological barriers for exploration, longer platform stay, and increased user stickiness. From this perspective, internal circulation isn’t about forcing more trading but making it easier for users to stay.

2. External Circulation: Moving Beyond Pure Trading and Crypto Scenes

External circulation means actively connecting the platform to broader industry ecosystems. CoinW aims to involve users and projects in growth and resource allocation, rather than just competing on trading.

Practically, CoinW doesn’t treat ecosystem partnerships as merely token listings or traffic swaps. Instead, it builds deeper collaborations with promising projects—offering real user access, liquidity, and infrastructure support—integrating them into a long-term ecosystem rather than one-off trading targets.

This approach is reflected in initiatives like the flagship WConnect event, which fosters cross-ecosystem dialogue among exchanges, developers, and projects; and ongoing participation in regional industry conferences like Coinfest Asia, embedding the platform into a global crypto collaboration network beyond just trading.

For users, this shifts the engagement logic: no longer just trading the same assets repeatedly, but early involvement in projects through product use and participation, establishing more sustained relationships and moving participation earlier in the process.

CoinW is also trying to bring crypto assets into broader social contexts—partnering with La Liga, East Asian football tournaments, sponsoring events like TAIWAN GQ Style Fest—making crypto more tangible in public scenes.

These external actions don’t aim for immediate trading volume growth but transform the platform’s role—from a simple matching engine to a hub connecting projects, users, and real-world scenarios. In an industry historically dominated by trading logic, this long-term strategic shift may not show quick results but provides a foundation for future competitiveness.

Conclusion

Looking back, these industry divergences are hard to quantify with just a few data points. But they reflect different understandings of the industry’s long-term future.

As trading becomes more standardized, true differentiation may no longer come from higher-frequency matching but from whether a platform is willing to reserve space for value beyond trading. CoinW’s approach is an attempt based on this judgment.

Their 8th anniversary theme, “Trot On To Infinity,” is less a slogan and more an attitude: it doesn’t specify an endpoint but accepts that this is a long-distance race requiring patience and continuous course correction.

In a highly utilitarian market environment, this path may not be the most clever, but it offers a possibility: when the tide recedes, what sustains a platform’s growth might not be greater “fee extraction” but whether it is truly rooted in a long-term valuable ecosystem.