I’ve been thinking about a question lately— we’ve been in this industry for almost 9 years. So why do we feel the most lost right now?

On the surface, it seems like we have everything. Institutions have come in, people are using the technology, but it still feels like something is missing. It’s not a price issue— it’s that sense of “what are we actually doing?” has disappeared. Of course, some are celebrating stablecoin price increases, some are touting that decentralized exchanges can beat traditional finance, and others are thinking about how to build an empire at the intersection of DeFi and traditional finance. But I’m not excited, even though institutions like Wintermute— merging with traditional finance— can still make a lot of money.

I look further ahead. There are really only three paths in front of us, but only one is both feasible and worth taking.

The first is that traditional finance swallows us. Stablecoins go mainstream. Enterprise chains go through KYC. Decentralized exchanges also go through KYC. Bitcoin becomes digital gold, held by sovereign governments, corporate treasuries, and ETFs. Or the whole world adopts CBDCs, and our financial privacy is completely controlled. The technology is impressive, but we’ve lost— isn’t that obvious?

The second is that governments surrender to blockchain. Everything runs on permissionless ledgers, and KYC/AML systems disappear. Token market caps reach the trillions, creating a free and glorious world. But honestly, that’s just a dream. Governments can’t give up sovereignty, just like companies can’t voluntarily give up their monopolies.

That leaves only the third path— an uncomfortable coexistence. We build a system that runs in parallel with the existing one, completely independent. You can stay on both sides. The government can’t touch it, because it’s isolated by design. That’s the true victory.

The problem is that many people have never truly “learned this lesson down to the bone.” Especially those of us in the West—we’re used to progress and convenience, and we’ve never truly experienced what it feels like to have no sovereignty. From 2022 to 2024, the SEC and CFTC regulatory crackdown, the collapse of FTX—we were supposed to learn the lesson. And what did we do instead? We start thinking that as long as we put the right people in the right positions, we can win.

We’ve complained for years about user experience, the inconvenience of Bitcoin payments, and hacking incidents— but what if these are fundamentally the costs that must be paid for sovereignty? We should optimize UX, but not for that 50% of people who don’t need it. We should optimize for that 50% who truly do need sovereignty. In developing countries, people watch democracy get eroded with their eyes wide open. In developed countries, places that are increasingly starting to resemble China and Russia, and rolling out anti-privacy laws.

Our goal isn’t to fight regulation. It’s to create something that they can’t control at all. The key is not to rely on those links that can be cut— fiat on/off ramps, app stores, DNS resolution, centralized sequencers, social media platforms, and centralized stablecoins. What we create shouldn’t be shut down because of a court subpoena or some bureaucrat flipping a switch.

So how do we do it? Embrace permissionless, sovereign protocols. A real DAO isn’t the kind controlled by centralized entities, or the kind that puts on a fake governance performance. Learn either to not depend on centralized systems, or to be able to switch instantly when external dependencies get cut— including infrastructure, coordination tools, and stablecoins. Let algorithmic stablecoins be great again. The ideas behind DAI and UST were right, but it was wrong to add USDC or pile on unsustainable yields. Privacy must be protected— what tools you use doesn’t matter, as long as they can deliver.

The ending of *Dune* is “dispersal”— the God Emperor dies, and humanity scatters into the void. We should start building something now, so future generations will have a place to escape to. The only things worth building are the tools that can be used to escape. Even after crypto is no longer popular someday, it should still be able to keep operating without being affected by outside forces.

Most of us will choose to coexist with the empire, because responsibility, comfort, and money are all understandable. But that small minority will open an exit and reclaim what we’ve lost.