Reflections on public blockchains in 2026:

Whispers about public chains in 2026:

1. “Control inflation + high interest rates to attract deposits + DeFi three-piece set + the founders’ dog meme + we have our own hyperliquid +狂OTC selling to liquid fund” — this playbook is no longer workable.

2. This isn’t just a problem Monad and MegaETH need to deal with; it’s also a problem Rise, Fogo, and even N1 need to deal with. As for old public chains, it depends. Sei and Polygon feel like they’re still tinkering, and most have already given up.

3. The loyalty of projects incubated out of public chains on day one is still questionable, because within the industry there are only a handful of founders who already have options like BNB Chain and Solana, or even Base. Most of the teams deploying on a new chain are watching the public chain foundation’s moneybag. And once they’ve raised funding by leveraging endorsements, and after they’ve gotten the first wave of launch users from the public chain community, the founder suddenly has motivation: 1) build their own app chain to prop up valuation 2) switch to other chains and compete.

4. To the point where some founders have started not saying they’re part of the xx ecosystem anymore, but saying that xx chain is our “GTM Partner.”

5. So if the ecosystem projects are too weak, they’re not strong enough to prop things up; if they’re too strong, it’s like betraying the benefactor. It’s Lü Bu either way—too weak to carry, too strong to backstab.

6. The original loose, neutral public chain construction model has basically come to an end. The valuation model based on MEV revenue needs to be revised (here @LeePima). Now, public chains are more about hosting a kind of controllability rather than possibility. Under the premise that the economics are controllable, you build fintech.

7. After that, public chains will have a centralized power structure: top-down dev shops and CVC. The treasury’s main role is to do M&A, with relentless vertical mergers instead of nurturing the ecosystem. That means there won’t be another king maker like Solana anymore (cc. @mablejiang).

8. From this perspective, BNB Chain, Tempo, and Monad are all moving in the same direction—just issues with “south orange and north tangerine” and resource allocation tendencies.

9. The last problem arrives: at this point, what model should we use to estimate FDV and then follow the trading hype? And the skill set is entirely geared toward growth roles—growth manager, operations manager, and so on—focused on the bull-coin scheme economy that extracts value by pumping coins and running loops. The old era’s tickets probably can’t get on the new era’s ship.