Why I no longer advise my friends to “learn about cryptocurrency” first.

Last month, I once again tried to get a non-cryptocurrency friend started. Ten minutes into the tutorial, her eyes started to wander as she was talking about “choosing a wallet” and “now you need to pay for gas in another token.”

Last month, I once again tried to get a non-cryptocurrency friend started. Ten minutes into the tutorial, her eyes started to wander as she was talking about "choosing a wallet" and "now you need to pay for gas in another token."

It suddenly dawned on me: What we’re facing is not a knowledge gap, but a design gap.

The harsh reality is that the speculative wave brought in the first wave of users, but it won’t attract the next billion. Real adoption begins when cryptocurrency products become invisible — people can benefit from them without realizing they are using cryptocurrency technology.

From the rise of stablecoins and institutional staking to the growing role of AI in the development of the digital economy, the foundation for the large-scale application of cryptocurrencies has been laid. But to open up such a future, we must stop requiring users to learn about cryptocurrencies and start building crypto products that allow them to be unaware of the underlying technology.

Here are eight narratives and projects worth watching in the cryptocurrency application space.

Currently, wallets are in a stage of structural transformation: users are forming the habit of using two complementary wallets - one is a wallet for daily use, similar to a fintech app, and the other is a "vault wallet" for asset storage, similar to a bank account.

Wallet functionality and experience are diverging. As a result, developers who try to cram all functionality into a single interface will ultimately lose out to developers who focus on (a) frictionless onboarding and (b) high-security storage.

Data shows that most users now use 2-5 wallets, with nearly 48% of respondents saying this is because each blockchain is still isolated in its own "walled garden".

At the same time, there is a top concentration of wallets. Senior users (with more than 2 years of experience) are concentrated on Binance, Coinbase, MetaMask or Trust (accounting for more than 54%), while the share of any single wallet in the novice group is less than 20%.

In addition, for most users, self-custody is still daunting. An interesting data is that Binance's self-custody solution "Binance Web3 Wallet" has only attracted 22% of users despite providing a familiar brand and a simplified self-custody path, and most users still have concerns.

In reality, users don’t want to use multiple wallets at the same time. This is not their subjective preference, but they have no choice.

Obviously, the "seamless multi-chain future" that the industry has been talking about has not really arrived. In addition to 48% of users having multiple wallets mainly to access different blockchain ecosystems, 44% of users actively split their wallets for security reasons, which is a significant increase from 33% last year.

It can be seen that the industry has failed to provide true interoperability, thus shifting operational complexity to end users. At the same time, these users are becoming smarter and smarter - they no longer blindly believe that one wallet can handle all scenarios.

Project Examples

Phantom: A popular cryptocurrency wallet that supports Solana and Ethereum.

The divergence between behavior and belief

Speculation remains the core driver. Although 54% of users actually used cryptocurrencies for payments or peer-to-peer transfers in the past quarter, when asked what their favorite activity was, only 12% of respondents chose payment. Speculation (spot, MeMe coins, DeFi activities) is still the most frequent behavior every week, covering almost all user types. Therefore, speculation will continue to plunder the future attention share of cryptocurrency payments as a utility.

The core reasons that hinder the development of practical scenarios are three major obstacles:

Project Examples

The chain is a new infrastructure layer, but users don’t need to be aware of its existence

The essence of a multi-chain ecosystem is a system of division of labor. Chain abstraction will become the winning user experience (UX) model, and wallet sessions can smoothly route orders, balances, and identities to any backend that provides the best combination of latency, cost, and security without requiring users to make a choice.

Currently, Ethereum remains the institutional-grade settlement layer, but Solana is quickly becoming the chain of choice for high-frequency, high-engagement retail activities. From a momentum and growth perspective, Ethereum faces the strongest competitive pressure to date:

The survey shows that 43% of respondents said Ethereum is their most commonly used chain; 39% of respondents said it is Solana; only 10% of respondents mainly use L2, which shows that interoperability is still in the theoretical stage rather than the practical stage.

Project Examples

The illusion of increased security

Users claim to feel more secure on-chain, but their wallets tell a different story.

So, how do we explain this paradox?

In fact, users confuse personal enhancements (