Lately, watching the fluctuations of NFT “floor prices” feels more like an emotional index than watching crypto prices itself: when it’s hot, everyone tells stories and talks about a sense of belonging; when it cools down, all that’s left are pending orders and a mutual wait-and-see. Royalties are also pretty awkward—put simply, when the market tightens, everyone’s first instinct is to try to pay less. The result is that the project teams have even less money to keep things going, and the community’s narrative naturally becomes more hollow.

Recently, new L1/L2s have started rolling out incentives to pull in TVL again, and old users complain about “mine, then sell.” I think this is the same logic as with NFTs: liquidity arrives quickly and leaves just as fast. If the narrative relies only on subsidies and hype, in the end it all comes back to the boring question of whether there’s sustained buy demand. Anyway, for now I’m paying more attention to who can last and who is still genuinely doing real work. That’s it for now.