Retail adoption has hit a wall. Walk through any corner of crypto these days and you'll spot the same pattern—sophisticated traders and large players engineering maximum liquidity extraction, leaving ordinary folks holding the bag. The question isn't rhetorical anymore: how do we actually make this space work for everyday users again?

The mechanics are brutal. High-frequency strategies, flash loans, coordinated dumps—retail gets caught in the crossfire every cycle. Information asymmetry widens. New entrants get priced out or liquidated before they even understand what happened. The promise of democratized finance rings hollow when the game feels rigged from day one.

Bringing retail back isn't just about marketing or UI polish. It requires rethinking incentive structures, improving transparency, and honestly, the market needs guardrails that don't strangle innovation. Otherwise, we're just watching crypto transform into another playground for institutional predators.