The consensus conference has no consensus, and the Meme mountain is overcrowded

Author: Shenchao TechFlow

The joys and sorrows of people do not resonate with each other.

Apart from not taking over from each other, there is also a mutual lack of attention to market hotspots.

For example, today, everyone is only concerned about the soaring performance of NOT and the return of RoarKitty driving GME-related memes, forgetting that today is also an important day for the annual Consensus conference in the industry.

Since 2015, the Consensus conference organized by CoinDesk has become one of the most important annual gatherings in the global blockchain and cryptocurrency field. At that time, it was a barometer of technological innovation and a weather vane for investment and regulatory trends.

Each year's conference generally gathers global elites from the crypto industry to discuss and shape the future direction of technology and the market.

And often at this time of year, there will be reports on new viewpoints or topics released at the conference.

However, this year, it seems that there is no consensus at the Consensus conference.

From a Boisterous Consensus Conference to No Consensus

Holding a conference, to some extent, is a visible reflection of the rise and fall of the industry.

For example, in 2018, during the ICO frenzy, the Consensus conference was crowded, with everyone wanting to sniff out their own opportunities from the atmosphere of token issuance; while later, during the bear market cycle, the Consensus conference appeared somewhat bland and dull, and everyone began to seriously discuss building.

This year's Consensus conference, regardless of whether the market is bullish or bearish, one easily observable phenomenon is that there is not much discussion at the conference.

Flipping through the dense bombardment of news from various media every minute, you can't even find a single piece of information about the Consensus conference; clearly, the information push mechanism has already filtered out "which information is unimportant."

Yes, the market is more important.

The once high-level discussions on industry trends and technology at the Consensus conference have gradually led everyone to form a consensus that "the conference has little impact on the market."

You do your thing, I do mine.

This disconnect between industry communication and market participants' behavior, the decoupling of authority and attention, has made the entire crypto market resemble a thorough Meme amusement park.

According to the impressions of attendees, the audience for keynote speeches was sparse, and it was incomparable to the thriving scene of the New York Consensus conference five years ago.

If the conference itself is not popular, and there are still a bunch of memes soaring in the market, then this bull market seems more like localized capital movements and PVP, with the industry pie not getting bigger, retail investors not entering more, and Google Trends remaining low and stable…

In a structural bull market, could the recession be locked away by information cocoons?

If the impressions of individual attendees might be a very subjective illusion, then the remarks of the guests on stage may be more referential.

Casey, the founder of the Ordinals protocol, bluntly stated at Consensus 2024 that 99.99% of the projects attending the conference are complete garbage.

This inevitably brings to mind the classic meme being replayed in the crypto circle: "Don't get me wrong, I mean everyone here is trash."

It is clear that the attending guests know what everyone is there for and are aware of the caliber of the attendees.

However, the Consensus conference, which represents the barometer, has also gradually been diluted, making the industry characteristic of form over content even more apparent.

At the Foot of the Meme Mountain, Crowded with People

In contrast to the lack of consensus at the Consensus conference, there is naturally a flurry of Meme speculation.

NOT is leading the way, but in reality, NOT itself is not a "value coin" in classical narratives; to some extent, you can still categorize it as more of a Meme type; and the latest data shows that NOT's 24-hour trading volume exceeds $4.6 billion, second only to BTC and ETH.

Apart from NOT, different memes are like different mountains formed by attention impact, with crowds at their bases.

Whether it's political elections or celebrities issuing coins, it's merely a pretext for attention-seeking, and related new coins can soar; even old coins may revive due to a tweet from RoarKitty declaring their return, with doubling in a few hours not being uncommon.

Everyone is eager to hop on different Meme mountains and does not believe they are standing at the peak.

In this climbing competition, WangQiao also pointed out another consensus in Meme speculation: when a celebrity buys a certain coin, it's a good thing; when a celebrity issues a certain coin, it's a bad omen.

All consensus is related to the play of attention: who brought the goods, what goods were brought, when to buy… all of this has nothing to do with technology.

Making Money is the Best Consensus Mechanism

Consensus, in blockchain technical documents, is often used to describe consensus protocols.

What is a consensus protocol?

In simple terms, it is a method that allows parties who do not trust each other and have no vested interests to reach an agreement.

Today, this technical term has a more humanized layer of interpretation:

The agreement reached may not necessarily be technical; it is more likely to be about interests.

For today's crypto market, making money is the best consensus protocol. We should focus on where we can make money.

Doing technical work and practical matters is too exhausting and not cost-effective; if we can make money today, then we should do today's business. This has probably become an unspoken consensus among industry participants.

Once, the consensus about crypto assets was Bitcoin as gold and Litecoin as silver; then it changed to Bitcoin as gold and Ethereum as silver, and now there are even debates and challengers about whether Ethereum is silver.

There is no fixed standard beneath the gold medal; different sectors and hotspots are competing for attention.

Reaching a consensus often requires a price to be paid; may we all not be the ones paying the price, but rather the ones holding the profits.