Why some crypto narratives are shrinking while others are quietly taking over

A lot of people look at crypto right now and think, “interest is dying.”
It’s not.

What’s actually happening is attention is being compressed in some areas and expanded in others.

Think of attention like water.
It doesn’t disappear. It just flows to wherever it’s useful.

— 📌 The Narratives That Are Shrinking

Over the past year, some of the loudest crypto narratives have lost attention fast:

• AI
• Memes
• ETFs
• GameFi

These narratives were easy to talk about.
They promised big futures.
They were exciting, simple, and highly shareable.

But most of them hit the same wall:
people started asking, “Okay...but what does this actually do today?”

When a story stops answering that question, attention collapses quickly.

That’s narrative compression.

— 📌 The Narratives That Are Expanding

At the same time, a very different set of narratives is growing:

• Zero-knowledge tech (ZK)
• Real-world assets (RWA)
• Prediction markets
• Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)
• Privacy infrastructure

These aren’t flashy.
They aren’t easy to explain in one sentence.
Most people can’t even name a project in these categories.

Yet attention is moving toward them.

Why?

Because these narratives solve real, structural problems.

They make systems work better.
They reduce risk.
They enable trust, verification, and coordination.

That’s narrative expansion.

— 📌 The Big Shift Happening Underneath

Crypto is moving from spectacle narratives to infrastructure narratives.

Earlier in the cycle, narratives win because they are:

• exciting
• simple
• emotional

Later in the cycle, narratives win because they are:

• useful
• reliable
• hard to replace

This doesn’t mean AI or memes are “dead.”
It means they’re no longer the main attraction.

The spotlight is moving backstage.

— 📌 My Take

Crypto isn’t losing attention.
It’s growing up.

The narratives that survive are no longer the loudest ones.
They’re the ones the system can’t function without.

That’s the shift most people miss.

h/t: @KaitoAI.