The current Layer 1 market is booming, with various public chains competing fiercely on TPS—everyone wants higher numbers. But here’s the problem: this kind of "land grab" competition is somewhat off track. The real bottleneck preventing large-scale Web3 applications boils down to two words: experience and cost.

Think about it—if payment applications are to scale massively, they must be seamless for ordinary users. But now? Gas fees are unstable, and block confirmations can take ages. With this kind of experience, users are forced to ponder for a long time just to buy a coffee on-chain—this is definitely not acceptable.

A new idea is starting to emerge: instead of getting caught up in an arms race of throughput, why not fundamentally address the real pain points of users? In the payment and DeFi infrastructure tracks, some projects are indeed trying a different approach. Combining zero Gas fees with instant finality sounds like a "dimensionality reduction" attack on traditional public chain models.

Why is this approach so attractive? The core reason lies in the essence of payments—users simply don’t care how complex your backend is; they only care about two things: can it confirm quickly, and is the fee acceptable?

First, regarding zero Gas fees. Imagine the logic of Web2 payments: when users use Visa or Alipay, they don’t feel the transaction fee at all—because merchants or platforms have already bundled and handled it. New public chains are also trying to replicate this experience, allowing users to complete transactions without holding native tokens. It’s like bringing the proven Web2 payment logic onto the blockchain.

Next, consider instant finality. What does a long block confirmation time mean? It means waiting. The most disliked thing in payment scenarios is waiting. If confirmation times can be reduced to seconds, the experience changes completely.

This approach not only patches up existing public chain architectures but also fundamentally redefines the underlying mechanism of value transfer. Instead of obsessing over TPS numbers, it starts from actual application needs and back-engineers the technology design—this is a pragmatic direction.

In the upcoming bull market, those who can truly solve user pain points will have the chance to stand out. The payment and DeFi infrastructure tracks are definitely worth paying attention to.