We have traveled 9,999 miles.

Written by: brother bing

Translated by: Block unicorn

Cryptography does not have a speed problem; it has a belief problem.

Everyone says they want faster infrastructure, but most no longer believe that performance matters.

DeFi runs well on Ethereum, Solana continues to deliver its dopamine hits, and Hyperliquid keeps doing what Hyperliquid does. So, high performance may have become an outdated category.

That is not the case. It remains the only important category.

Viewing performance as a solved or irrelevant issue is the reason for the demise of innovation.

Title: The Fable of Vanity, by Antonio de Pereda (1632-1636). Decline begins when we think we have been successful enough.

The Missed YouTube Moment

For nearly a decade, cryptocurrency has been chasing the YouTube moment—the instant when technology stops iterating and begins to transform.

"One day," they say, "someone will build the YouTube of cryptocurrency."

The success of YouTube was not because someone wrote a white paper. Its success stemmed from broadband, Flash, and compression technologies being mature enough to enable instant global video playback.

Suddenly, anyone could broadcast and watch worldwide. This was not just evolution; it was the birth of a whole new experience.

Since then, cryptocurrency has been chasing the same fusion. Initially, the dream of YouTube lingered in white papers, narrated in an almost sci-fi tone.

Then automated market makers (AMMs) appeared, feeling like the first discovery of SMS, followed by meme coins on sniper bots, feeling like WhatsApp—chaotic, addictive, and impossible to ignore.

Title: The Last Judgment, by Hieronymus Bosch (late 15th century). If Bosch were to paint cryptocurrency, this would be what "meme coins on sniper bots" would look like: fallen angels, flying creatures, half-human, half-divine machines.

But the industry has stagnated at the 9999th mile.

To be honest, despite our many successes (liquidity, legitimacy, and signs of longevity), the fatigue of cryptocurrency's native developers is more real than ever, with the most common complaint being that there is nothing new in the industry. Everything feels like financial over-engineering.

The missing piece, the last mile, is real-time infrastructure: a fast, cheap, seamless blockchain such that the interaction itself becomes the product.

This is our YouTube moment.

What is Last Mile Scalability?

Last mile technology is about mastering the touchpoints between technology and human life.

Title: The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo (1508-1512). The final touch that imbues everything with magic.

It is the moment your doorbell rings when the delivery person arrives. The last segment of delivery from the restaurant to your doorstep is the most difficult, expensive, and also the most delightful part.

It is the ease of buying groceries with facial recognition. Alipay made this possible, so smooth that swiping a card feels outdated.

It is having ChatGPT summarize a paper or plan your weekend fun. Chatbots are the last mile of large language models, transforming abstract intelligence into tools that humans can use.

In the crypto space, last mile scalability means building a cluster of technologies that connect abstract infrastructure with human experience.

This means blockchains capable of handling billions of gas units, with fees low enough that developers no longer cut corners, and delays short enough that capital feels like liquid flow, with user experiences so natural that the "confirm" button disappears.

This is the meaning of real-time blockchain: narrowing the gap between infrastructure and experience.

100x Cryptocurrency Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Title: The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1510). This is the Renaissance imagery of infinite TAM: a chaotic paradise filled with human activity—pleasure, trade, creation, experimentation.

The existence of technology is to unleash new productivity in ways that almost no original creator anticipated. YouTube is once again a typical example.

Most people think of YouTube as the "eureka moment" of online video. But that was just the beginning. YouTube combined user-generated content with algorithmic discovery to create a true business model. This model became the blueprint for Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok, each further developing this model.

Today, people watch TikTok not just for entertainment. In fact, if you ask my family what they do most on Douyin (the Chinese parent app of TikTok), it’s shopping. My mom will watch a yoga video and then click a link on the screen to buy the same yoga pants within seconds.

TikTok is the last mile of YouTube. It transforms user behavior into real economic activity (i.e., from attention to shopping cart).

Real-time blockchains will do the same.

• They will transform price speculation from a static experience into a dynamic, social, addictive mobile-first experience.

• They will turn DeFi from complex financial Lego for whales into simple savings accounts that anyone can use, yielding healthy returns from a basket of global currencies.

• They will turn meme mining into a cult-like formation process.

• They may even turn boring payments into "Gen Z banking." Every click awakens a new market, and each new market represents a new opportunity for greater returns.

This is the source of the next 100x users—not a better ledger, but a better experience.

Conclusion

The stagnation of cryptocurrency is not a technical problem—it is a psychological problem.

At some point, developers stopped believing that faster could also mean different.

But every major technological leap begins with the rekindling of that belief. Real-time blockchains are not just an upgrade in performance; they remind us that speed, if used properly, is the beginning of revolution.

We have traveled 9,999 miles.

The last mile is the key to making everything real.

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