Recent top VC firms announced raising over $15 billion in new funds, sparking heated discussions within the community. This fundraising reflects a subtle shift in investment focus — from the past obsession with public chain performance to a re-evaluation of system-level infrastructure.

Honestly, those L1 projects competing for high TPS and optimizing consensus mechanisms have raised quite a bit of money in recent years, but their profit logic has reached its end. Ultimately, competition boils down to subsidy力度 and marketing narratives, which are cyclical opportunities in the long run and unstable.

Therefore, major institutions are now shifting their focus to another dimension — control over the system layer. Specifically, who determines the definition of assets and settlement methods? Who has the authority to call data and models? How are identity verification and compliance checks embedded into the system? These questions may seem like technical details, but in reality, they decide who can enter the ecosystem and who will be kept out.

Here’s an interesting logic: AI is responsible for production and decision-making, while encrypted networks handle value confirmation and circulation. Only by combining these two systems can the ecosystem operate fully.

Looking at recent investment trends makes this clear. For example, a certain project in 2025 received lead investment, mainly focusing on AI-native financial stacks, enabling software agents to perform instant stablecoin payments and low-fee transactions, while also integrating identity verification and compliance frameworks. This type of project is precisely the focus of the next wave — not just pure technical showcases or vaporware, but real, usable system-level infrastructure.