A few days back Vitalik tweeted that the crypto space no longer needed L2 projects and coins. Which I believe he might be right .
Looking at the 2021 to 2025 cycle (that's if the 4 years cycle is still in place) we'd realize that it's mostly BTC ETH, HYPE, maybe XRP and Solana that joined the BTC pump.
However we never did the see the traditional x3 that's always done by BTC. I have a theory that BTC pump was stunted in the cycle and the pump we saw for it was majorly because of institutional involvement.
For what it's worth, most people predicted 180 to 200k pump for BTC and we never got to see it, but 126k ATH wasn't bad, and of course a lot of alts didn't reclaim their previous ATH.
I think this was because we didn't get the expected calculated pump for BTC, I may be wrong but this is what I think.
A lot of people didn't make money from NFT, and other DEFI projects like in 2021 and certainly didn't make anything tangible with BTC, so retails didn't have a lot of classic rotation because we got a lot of scam projects in 2025 and founders recycling same old web3 projects.
This clearly means that crypto may no longer need new projects, just current and existing projects marketing themselves even better. Donald Trump and his wife launching their own coin did even more damage to the market and retail.
So we had more of greedy personnel hijacking retail as people chased the next big narrative. Think a lot of projects also failed on their end to make it right. With Hive for example, the witnesses didn't take governance by the throat to fix the issues we have (has).
They still don't look concerned by any means. A lot of projects also had their issues too, but sometimes I feel like as an OG layerzero chain the witnesses we have here should be able to morph the chain with some of the latest and hottest crypto narrative, and the regular folks can do nothing about it.
However is it the end? No. I think one of the biggest advantages we have is the project itself is solid tech, and a two is three forks will fix everything we need to fix and get folks believing again.
In the grand scheme of things, the cycle fell short and this is one of the biggest things. Will the next cycle fall even shorter? No one knows I guess we will find out soon.
Having explored a lot of projects in web3 in 2025, I like to say the entire market fell short, but this is actually the time to position. This is not the time to throw in the towel, because our time will come once again.
People are always quick to say "crypto is dead" when the market is either hibernating or looks stagnant, but that's basically the best time to continue to position. It isn't so easy, if it was we'd all be rich.
Finally
For me, I've watched countless cycles go by without truly finding any edge. I got involved fully into other aspect of web3 starting from July 2025, only to realize I wasted another cycle, but I'm glad to have learned a lot of lessons.
These experiences will come handy, God willing and I know the time will come. Keep hustling. As for Hive, folks needs to start asking the witnesses to do the right thing very soon.
I think for some things crypto related it's game over, like nft art and such, I also think play 2 earn games are gone aswell, their model where everyone earns and no one loses tokens is not sustainable in long term... Play to own would be a better turnaround... Crypto can survive but need to come up with something
I agree that a lot of narratives might be over, I still think NFT narratives are still here, we have the likes of magicEden and opensea still doing quite well. I think the current sentiment we have is not so good, but I guess if happens when prices are really bad
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A hard fork or two to realign our goals might be exactly what's needed to shake off the stagnation. It’s frustrating to see the potential and not see it being fully taken by the throat as you put it!