Token has completely exploded, and the blockchain is very sad

Author: Gu Yu, ChianCatcher

Suddenly, the English word "Token" has appeared in the public eye with unprecedented frequency. As the billing unit for various AI products, Token has become well-known alongside the explosive popularity of products like OpenClaw, ChatGPT, and Deepseek.

On March 24, the National Bureau of Statistics officially confirmed the Chinese translation of Token as "词元" (ciyuan), and this news quickly spread across social media platforms like WeChat Moments and Douyin.

For practitioners in the blockchain industry, this is undoubtedly a bittersweet moment. Once upon a time, we struggled to explain what a Token was to outsiders, discussing decentralization, economic models, and consensus mechanisms at length; now, large models have completed a nationwide popularization of this term in just one year using a nearly blunt commercial logic.

Getting Token accepted by the public was once a long-held aspiration of all blockchain practitioners. Now, the vision has come true, but it leaves behind awkwardness. This is not only because "this Token is not that Token," but also because the "transformation of production relations" that blockchain once promised is now caught in an unprecedented crisis of faith.

I. The Evolution of Token Semantics: From Verification and Assets to "Computing Power Currency"

In the long history of computer science, Token is not a new term.

In the Web2 or earlier coding world, Token was a "pass" used for login verification. It is an encrypted string obtained after logging into a server, proving "you are you." It quietly resides in the browser's Cookies or Headers, lacking social attributes and possessing only functional attributes.

In the Web3 world, Token has been endowed with an unprecedented grand narrative. It is translated as "代币" (dai bi) or "通证" (tong zheng). In the context of blockchain, Token represents assets, votes, ownership, and is the glue of communities. We attempt to reconstruct the world through Token, believing it can break the monopoly of tech giants.

In the AI era, Token has transformed into the currency of computing power and the unit of API calls. It is another way of saying electricity costs: the more you use, the more you pay; the smarter the model and the longer the output, the more terrifying the Token consumption.

II. The Struggles and Confusion of the Crypto Industry

Blockchain practitioners once had a grand ideal: "Tokenization of Everything," hoping to convert real-world assets, credit, and labor into Tokens for free circulation.

Ironically, AI has indeed achieved a certain form of "tokenization of everything," breaking down text, sound, and video into Tokens. For the public, they do not need to understand cryptographic principles, do not need to manage private keys, and do not need to worry about losing mnemonic phrases. They only need to input a Prompt, and the model will consume Tokens and spit out Tokens.

Getting Token widely accepted by the public was once the goal pursued by all practitioners in the blockchain industry. Now, the vision has come true, but it leaves behind awkwardness. This is not only because this Token is not that Token, but also because many practitioners no longer believe in this goal and vision themselves.

In recent years, as a type of token, Token has formed a trend of going mainstream in various forms such as NFTs and memes due to its permissionless and low-threshold characteristics, but ultimately, with the collapse of prices, it has been labeled by outsiders as "speculation" and "fraud."

Meanwhile, the intrinsic innovation momentum in the blockchain industry is insufficient, with conceptual projects like DePin, DeSci, AI agents, and RWA progressing slowly and having limited real-world applications. More and more crypto entrepreneurs are pausing their projects in confusion, either waiting for new opportunities or choosing to embrace the AI field, and capital is doing the same.

"As time goes by, I feel like I've lost my direction in the cryptocurrency field. After fully committing, the initial allure of cryptocurrency's transformative power has gradually faded. I feel disappointed in the target group I truly fought for. I completely misunderstood the difference between the true users of cryptocurrency and the promotional targets. Cryptocurrency claims to help decentralize the financial system, which I fully believe, but in reality, it is merely a super system of speculation and gambling, just a replica of the existing economy." In a recent article that went viral in the crypto industry, former crypto entrepreneur Ken Chan wrote this.

This entrepreneur's thoughts are not uncommon in the crypto industry; the struggle of faith and the loss of ideals continuously impact the psychology of crypto entrepreneurs during this bear market cycle. Although this is not the first time—such voices emerge every time the market turns bearish—this time, the strong rise of AI has made this crisis of faith particularly glaring.

III. The Second Half of Token

This may be the cruel logic of technological iteration: what truly changes the world is often not the grandest narrative, but the most practical tools. Blockchain endowed Token with ideals, while AI endowed Token with necessity; blockchain wanted to change the world, but AI first changed life.

As AI's Token becomes the new "digital oil," blockchain can only watch its once-held dreams land in a completely unfamiliar way. This misaligned popularization is a victory for AI, but also the deepest helplessness for blockchain.

However, there is good news; in the past year, assets like U.S. Treasury bonds and stocks in the Web2 world have also been rapidly tokenized, becoming one of the highest trading volume Token assets due to low trading thresholds and high convenience. When speculative bubbles burst one after another, and financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity enter the arena, Token may be returning to the essence of being a "value carrier."