Jeff - Merlin Chain

Why Ordinals, BRC-20 and Runes Died (and how to bring it back to life) 🧵 In the beginning it all felt like an opportunity. Low cost to entry. You could get an airdrop for making a single transaction on Ordinals Wallet (Pixel Pepe, Space Pepe). You could inscribe $100 in transaction fees for ORDI or BITMAP mints and have infinite upside. The vibes were insanely high, and there was a big enough market to support the few good ideas that existed. Then big names came in and started to sell things at extremely high costs. Mints that costed 5 figures to enter (OMB, BTC DeGods, Yuga Labs, etc.,). Then Runes hit the scene, inflating attention in a market with too few participants. Nobody knew where to look: backwards towards their Ordinals and BRC-20 bags, or forwards towards the new Runes scene. It went from a market with a few good ideas with infinite upside to an over-inflated space where nobody knew where to give their attention and focus. Now we are seeing the results of moving from an experimental scene with cool ideas that people could speculate on --> to exponential greed and clout chasing. Prices of expensive mints are falling below 50% of mint price (Taproot Wizards, NodeMonkes), some of them went essentially straight to $0 (twelvefold, BTC DeGods) as there's zero liquidity for these collections. Some of you will have to come to terms with the reality that many of these collections will never return to their highest values. Others have potential, but founders will have to come out of retirement to spend some of those millions they extracted and give it back to the community. The only way Ordinals comes back is if the opportunity returns, and the vibes feel like they did – upside, fun, new ideas, exciting propositions for people. It's time for everyone to come to terms with the reality that nonstop extraction doesn't lead to new participants looking to come in. We need to bring back airdrops, free mints and fun memes or this space will be dead forever. No, it's not going to come back if we do nothing and wait for "retail" and hype. No one is coming to buy your bags. We have to create the opportunity.

今天游泳的时候突然想明白一个问题： Aster 之于币安，Aster 之于 CZ，就好比 iPhone 之于苹果、安卓之于谷歌、甚至 ChatGPT 之于 OpenAI——这是决定未来格局的关键支点。 可以说，中心化交易所（CEX）的战争实际上已经尘埃落定，剩下的竞争只不过是其他友商在争夺老二到老十的位置。而真正对 Binance 构成威胁的，其实是 Hyperliquid。 Hyperliquid 的崛起，并不是因为技术更强，也不是因为流动性更好（这些币安都能做得更优），而是它利用了一个巨大的 监管漏洞：美国用户不能用 Binance，却能用 Hyperliquid；同时，还有大量用户不愿意做 KYC，而他们的体量同样惊人。这些“灰色需求”汇聚在一起，形成了对币安极不公平的优势。 因此，币安必须要有自己的去中心化对策——那就是 Aster（三年前立项时叫 APX）。我甚至相信，出于监管考量，币安只能在暗地里推动 Aster，但这场仗，币安一定会打，而且必须打。 最近我频繁地在输出对 Aster 的观点，没错，就是因为我看好 Aster，看好币安的未来战略。我已经布局了大量 AST，就像八年前我坚定布局 BNB 一样。