Source: Galaxy; Translated by Golden Finance
In the past few weeks, news about new 'enterprise-grade' blockchains tailored for specific application scenarios has been emerging continuously. DTCC is tokenizing securities held at DTC on Canton. Stripe has launched a testnet for its payment-focused blockchain, Tempo. Robinhood is building its own L2 layer for storing real-world assets.
For crypto natives, these developments may trigger a familiar anxiety: the cypherpunk values that underpin cryptocurrency are being diluted. The generalized, permissionless blockchains that facilitated the popularization of cryptocurrency will be bypassed by regulated existing institutions that possess distribution channels and balance sheets.
If tokenization, real-world assets, and stablecoins are increasingly deployed on private or semi-permissioned tracks, then what role is left for decentralized protocols? This is a reasonable question. The answer is: a significant one.
Our perspective:
To borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, the claims about the death of general-purpose L1s have been greatly exaggerated. These networks are fulfilling their intended purpose. They still represent the only environment for the large-scale emergence of new financial technologies. As technology accelerates, regulation improves, and experimental costs decrease, this role will become even more crucial.
Yes, the competitive landscape is becoming increasingly crowded. However, competition from specialized or permissioned blockchains does not negate the role of open networks. On the contrary, it highlights the different problems they solve (and, please don't misunderstand, this does not mean we need to launch more general-purpose L1 blockchains).
The core error lies in assuming that blockchains are interchangeable infrastructure. This is not the case. Enterprise-grade blockchains excel at tokenizing existing assets within known legal and financial frameworks. This is both an advantage and a limitation. In contrast, general-purpose L1 blockchains are places for creating new assets, markets, and coordination mechanisms. Bitcoin did not originate from a UN working group, nor did decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoins. These systems require an environment where anyone can deploy code, issue assets, and iterate without permission. This capability is not an ancillary function of decentralized blockchains but rather a primary driver of their long-term value. Almost all crypto-native technologies that later attracted institutional interest (blockchains, stablecoins, etc.) were born in permissionless environments.
In this sense, permissionless blockchains often tend to "self-erode." Once a model is validated and market demand is clear, their most successful innovations ultimately get adopted, replicated, or internalized by centralized entities. But this is not a failure of public blockchains; it precisely proves their role as discovery engines for a broader financial system.
In an AI-driven economy, this dynamic is particularly important. As AI reduces the startup costs of products, services, and even entire businesses, the demand for programmable, neutral financial infrastructure will also grow. Permissionless L1 payment systems provide global settlement, composability, and instant distribution capabilities for economic experiments that could not obtain any regulatory approval or endorsement from existing institutions in advance. They are optimized for exploratory innovation. Most experiments will fail, but a few successful experiments can reshape the market landscape.
It is also a mistake to assume that regulatory clarity will necessarily benefit centralized or permissioned blockchains. If the Clarity Act passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives could predict the ultimate direction of market structure, then decentralization may increasingly play a protective role rather than becoming a burden. More decentralized networks can provide developers and applications with greater freedom to innovate within clearer legal frameworks. In other words, as regulation matures, decentralization may shift from being viewed as a risk to being seen as an advantage.
Finally, the market sentiment of L1 tokens is closely tied to their price. When L1 tokens perform poorly, irrelevant statements about them tend to become rampant. This cycle is not new; it is a recurring feature of the boom and bust cycles in cryptocurrency. In fact, blockchains like Ethereum and Solana are closely related to innovation cycles rather than quarterly product releases. Their value should be measured in decades. Bitcoin is the best example of this.
