Op-ed by Carla, Head of Ecosystem, Alephium
Hello and welcome! This is the second column article from Carla, our Head of Ecosystem. She’ll be using her vast experience in the blockchain industry to explore important topics and discussions.
Note: The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and may not reflect the official stance of Alephium.
We scroll. We swipe. We get bored the second a video lasts more than twenty seconds.
Then, we act shocked when crypto projects die after three months.
We’ve integrated this rhythm into our lives, our work, and even into the way we build. The attention economy didn’t stop at our screens, it moved into our brains. It turned us into dopamine hunters, always chasing the next “WOW moment,” unable to commit for the long run.
Crypto is no exception. Every narrative, project, and token now works like an infinite scroll. NFTs, AI, DeFi, restaking, perp dexes, prediction markets…
A new trend appears, everyone rushes in, then the attention disappears somewhere else.
The market has adopted algorithmic logic. Nothing lasts, except the race toward the new shiny toy…
When hype becomes the engine
I saw a project valued at €90 million collapse to zero in two months. Not because it lacked vision. Not because the team wasn’t working. But because after too many pivots, the vision simply evaporated.
Each pivot looked rational, sometimes even necessary; they were chasing the trend of the moment, trying to stay alive in the noise. Funds kept coming in as long as their quarterly buzzword was in the deck.
But with every new direction, they had to start again. Product, positioning, storytelling. By trying to catch the wave, they ended up being too early for some ideas and too late for others. All the money raised was spent, not stupidly, but in a useless quest to stay firmly inside the market’s field of view.
That was the moment I understood the real risk in this industry. It’s not missing an innovation… it’s becoming invisible.
Crypto as a mirror of TikTok
TikTok doesn’t reward depth, it rewards retention. You can post a brilliant video, but if the first three seconds don’t hook people, the algorithm buries you.
Crypto works the same way.
A project can be solid, innovative, and well-designed… but if it’s not “hype,” it becomes invisible.
Investors fund trends, not long-term innovation convictions. Users test things but don’t get attached. Founders themselves become addicted to the dopamine of novelty.
Within this hype cycle, slow building almost looks outdated. We replaced patience with pivots. Strategy with storytelling. Vision with speed.
The result is an ecosystem where everyone ships but almost nobody finishes. “Soon” becomes a permanent state.
Honestly, it makes sense. Just like on TikTok, people prefer the potential of an idea to its reality. The dream sells better than the product, and the product is never fast enough.
Today, I Work on Infrastructure
It (almost) feels like an act of resistance.
No one applauds Alephium at every release. There’s no token pump every time we update something. But I genuinely feel we’re building something that will still stand in five years. Because what we’re doing is not driven by attention but by necessity and what speculative projects burn in hype, infrastructure silently holds together.
Without the base layer, nothing survives. Building infra means accepting the longer waits, the code, the research, and getting the outcome of more reliability.
It’s the opposite of TikTok Shop. There’s no dopamine, little visibility, but the satisfaction of creating something that outlives the cycle.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Alephium…
The projects that last are not the ones that yelled the loudest. I believe they are the ones that kept building when nobody was watching.
Relearning How to Build Slowly
The promise of Web3 was resilience, innovation, and long-term systems. It was never meant to devolve to trend-chasing.
But, somewhere along the way, by trying to get attention, it appears we rebuilt Web2 with tokens instead of likes. Projects aren’t building to last anymore, they are building to exist, and existing today often means being seen, tweeted, shared, viral.
Maybe we need to relearn how to be a bit bored. To let things grow. To accept that a good product doesn’t have to be a buzz, and a real vision doesn’t fit in a 15-second pitch.
Because in crypto, just like on TikTok, dopamine is free, but vision is expensive.
In the long run, the only things that survive the speed are the things that weren’t built for it.
