Alliance DAO co-founder QW (Qiao Wang) recently shared his ratings of the strength of the 'moat' of various tech companies and blockchain projects, sparking widespread discussion in the crypto community and the tech industry. A moat is generally seen as the ability of a company or protocol to fend off competition and maintain a long-term competitive advantage.
QW places traditional tech giants generally in the high score range (full score of 10 points), while crypto companies and public chains receive lower overall scores, reflecting his structural judgment that the crypto market is 'highly competitive and easily replicated.'
10 points: almost unshakeable moat
QW believes that a few companies possess a near-unreplaceable position, including:
Microsoft: Mission-critical SaaS, strong ecosystem binding
Apple: Brand power + developer ecosystem
Visa / Mastercard: Strong global payment network effects
TSMC: Technological IP and capital-intensive manufacturing advantages
He pointed out that the moats of these companies are composed of brand, infrastructure, network effects, or technological monopolies, making it almost impossible for competitors to catch up within a reasonable time.
9 points: Extremely strong advantages, but long-term risks exist
Second-tier companies still hold overwhelming advantages but may face structural challenges:
Google: Leading in search and AI technology, but its entry position may be weakened by new AI interaction methods
Amazon: E-commerce network effects + logistics infrastructure, but gross margins and competitive substitutes still pose pressure
Moody's / S&P / FICO: Regulatory moats + brand trust, extremely difficult to replace
QW also rated cloud giants like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud at 9 points, reasoning that they have high enterprise binding and high switching costs.
8 points: Strong technology and network effects, but can be caught up
Meta: Strong social network effects, but user habits may be disrupted by new platforms
NVIDIA: GPU technology and CUDA ecosystem form a strong advantage, but competitors continue to invest
Crypto companies 5 points, L1 only 3 points
QW rated the moats of crypto companies at about 5 points, as most of these companies' products are open source and can be quickly replicated. Additionally, the low switching costs for users and the lack of regulatory barriers in the ecosystem are significant issues. Since the cryptocurrency industry is still immature, most companies do not possess long-term brand or enterprise-level binding power.
As for public chains, he gave a lower rating of 3 points. QW explained:
"The blockchain itself is highly competitive and has almost no monopolistic nature. Having no moat is not a bad thing, but the team must continually innovate."
Bitcoin is the exception: moat 9 points
QW rated Bitcoin's moat at 9 points. He believes that Bitcoin possesses origin conditions that are extremely difficult to replicate, including Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymous identity, the absence of any pre-mining or corporate control, and a completely decentralized early development model. These founding conditions have endowed Bitcoin with unique and irreproducible historical legitimacy, giving it an irreplaceable position among all crypto assets.
Moreover, as Bitcoin exists for a longer time, its credibility and security strengthen, reflecting the "Lindy effect"—the historical accumulation itself is the strongest trust mechanism.
However, he still deducted one point, reasoning that Bitcoin still faces two long-term uncertainties: whether it can maintain a sufficient security budget after its block rewards gradually decrease, and whether Bitcoin can quickly complete necessary upgrades to maintain network security after the advent of quantum computing.
Tesla and ASML's positioning
In subsequent comments, QW rated Tesla's moat at 7 points. He believes that Tesla possesses leading intellectual property in automation technology, but the automotive industry is inherently a highly commoditized market with fierce competition, making it difficult to establish a lasting and unshakeable moat. Additionally, he pointed out that it remains uncertain whether Tesla's humanoid robot business can form a competitive advantage of equal strength.
In contrast, he gave ASML the highest rating of 10 points. The reasons are similar to TSMC: ASML has an unmatched technological advantage in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, and the manufacturing of its equipment requires extremely high physical and capital thresholds, creating a strong and irreplaceable moat. ASML almost monopolizes the global market for EUV lithography machines needed for advanced processes, making it one of the most irreplaceable key companies in the semiconductor industry.
Source
