Space Review | Farewell to Narrative Frenzy, Web3 Enters a Pragmatic and Structured New Phase

When the clock strikes midnight on the last night of 2025, a unique gathering of ideas unfolds within the TRON ecosystem. Initiated by five major projects—SunPump, JUST, AINFT, BitTorrent, and WINkLink—the New Year's Eve Space blends the festive atmosphere of celebration with profound industry reflections, creating a distinctive annual "salon of thoughts" through relaxed interactions.

This event centers around the narrative of "Review × Emotion × Choice × Outlook," aiming to systematically review the key turning points in the crypto market over the past year and to build consensus on future value directions based on this foundation. The discussions deeply analyzed the structural changes affecting the market while exploring the truly noteworthy innovation signals and value cornerstones as the industry transitions to a more pragmatic development phase.

This article aims to systematically summarize the highlights of the dialogues and industry insights from this Space, presenting not only the reflections of market participants on extreme volatility and capital flows but also decoding how the TRON ecosystem builds a resilient, vibrant, and long-term value ecosystem through collaborative practices in decentralized finance, cross-chain infrastructure, and AI-integrated innovation amidst complex cycles. This gathering serves not only as an annual summary but also as a collective reflection and foresight on the future evolution path of the Web3 world.

Looking Back at 2025: The Collaborative Evolution and Value Accumulation of the TRON Ecosystem

The recently concluded year of 2025 was a year in which the crypto market underwent profound "realism" calibration. Guests who experienced the market reached a consensus during discussions: the industry is bidding farewell to the frenzy of narrative dependence and entering a more calm and pragmatic phase. As guest Anna Tangyuan summarized, this year was "a year of slowly calming down after being educated by reality"; the previous simple logic of "narrative-driven prices" repeatedly failed, and market sentiment shifted from optimistic expectations at the beginning of the year to caution and pragmatism by the end.

One of the catalysts for this transformation was the unforgettable market crash on "10.11." Participant Anna Tangyuan pointed out her experience of "40% of leveraged positions still being liquidated," highlighting that market risks lie not only in directional misjudgments but also in the severe underestimation of extreme market conditions and sudden liquidity exhaustion. In the face of systemic risks, any leverage strategy seems insignificant, and "survival" becomes the primary rule for navigating cycles.

Moreover, the market's calmness is also reflected in the choice of capital. Guest Web3 Monkey pointed out the structural flow of capital with "the strong getting stronger": after being validated (or invalidated) by the market, a significant amount of capital accelerated its return to core assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, indicating that the market is pursuing more solid value foundations.

Despite numerous challenges, innovation has not ceased; it has simply become more demanding of meticulous craftsmanship. It is under this new industry tone that emphasizes real utility and risk management that the annual performance of the TRON ecosystem provides an excellent example of "how to navigate cycles."

Throughout 2025, the five core projects of the TRON ecosystem—SunPump, JUST, AINFT, BitTorrent, and WINkLink—have vividly illustrated "pragmatic construction" and "ecological deepening" through their actions. They not only achieved breakthrough progress in their respective fields but also collaboratively built a more resilient and vibrant decentralized ecosystem through close synergy.

Firstly, in the DeFi application layer, JUST has established its position as the ballast of value in the TRON ecosystem with its solid protocol performance. The total value locked (TVL) in its core protocol JustLend DAO approached the $10 billion mark mid-year and has consistently ranked among the industry's top, demonstrating the market's high recognition of its safety and innovative model. Additionally, the robustness of the ecosystem is reflected in the broad participation of core businesses: as of December 31, 2025, the on-chain staking volume of TRX has exceeded 9.25 billion, with over 13,417 addresses participating in staking, and the annualized staking yield stabilizing at 6.65%, forming a solid income base within the ecosystem.

Beyond the strong performance of the protocol and market recognition, the token buyback and burn mechanism driven by community consensus has also become a key decision to boost the long-term confidence of JST holders. This mechanism transparently links protocol income with token value on-chain. The first phase of the buyback utilized the existing income of JustLend DAO, totaling 59,087,137 USDT, of which 30% (17,726,141 USDT) was used for the initial buyback and the destruction of 559,890,753 JST, accounting for approximately 5.66% of the total supply. This substantial deflationary action lays a credible foundation for JST's long-term value model.

While JUST is committed to creating value through buybacks and burns, it is also focused on lowering participation barriers through the GasFree feature, ensuring that users can deeply engage with the ecosystem. Currently, the number of GasFree partners has expanded to 9, with a total transaction number of 423,173 in November, averaging 14,105 transactions per day, and a total transaction amount exceeding $7.5 billion. This innovation significantly benefits small and medium users and promotes the continuous healthy growth of the ecosystem.

Secondly, at the forefront of innovative applications and asset paradigm exploration, AINFT and SunPump have played the role of ecological pioneers. In 2025, AINFT successfully completed its brand strategic upgrade from a digital art platform to "AI + Web3" infrastructure, aiming to empower the TRON ecosystem with layers of capabilities from smart interactive tools to decentralized AI models. Its platform token NFT successfully landed on Binance Alpha in September 2025, gaining liquidity support and market exposure from top global trading platforms.

SunPump has become the core hub connecting cultural creation and asset flow within the TRON network by building an active Meme trading ecosystem. Its launched AI one-click token issuance tool, SunGenX, significantly lowers the barriers to creation and issuance, seamlessly converting cultural creativity into tradable assets. Driven by this innovative tool, the platform has created over 100,000 Meme tokens. Meanwhile, the SUN.io ecosystem collaborates deeply with SunPump, establishing a CEX alliance, upgrading the AI assistant SunAgent, and launching a decentralized perpetual contract platform SunX, creating a complete ecological closed loop from issuance and trading to derivative services.

Finally, the expansion of oracle and cross-chain infrastructure has opened channels for the ecosystem to connect the real world with diverse blockchain networks. The decentralized oracle WINkLink, with its reliable data services, has penetrated key areas such as payments, trading, wallets, and privacy computing, becoming a secure cornerstone driving innovations in DeFi and RWA. Over the past year, WINkLink has established strategic partnerships with 17 new projects, bringing the total number of ecological partners to 36.

At the same time, BitTorrent Chain (BTTC) has completed a leap to version 2.0, with the total cross-chain amount exceeding $1.63 billion. Notably, its BitTorrent File System (BTFS) has surpassed 2 million global nodes, with annual storage capacity exceeding 800PB. The synergy between WINkLink and BitTorrent has jointly constructed the underlying network for data and asset circulation within the TRON ecosystem, providing solid guarantees for the interconnectivity and value expansion of the ecosystem.

As the market examines the intrinsic value of projects amidst macro fluctuations, the TRON ecosystem has demonstrated through its solid accumulation in technological infrastructure, economic models, and community operations over the past year that it can not only withstand storms but also possesses the potential to continuously lead waves of innovation.

Looking Ahead to 2026: Pragmatic Development and Value Signals in the Web3 Market

In the second half of this New Year's roundtable, the focus of the discussion shifted from reviewing the past to looking ahead to the future. Based on their profound insights from 2025, guests shared their expectations for 2026 and the market signals they are most optimistic about. Their discussions collectively painted a picture of industry consensus: the market is bidding farewell to the expectation of a broad bull market and entering a new phase that demands higher standards, with opportunities and challenges becoming more structured, where individual success will increasingly depend on building systemic capabilities and grasping core trends.

Regarding the overall market in 2026, Peter from the crypto circle maintains an "optimistic" attitude towards the bottoming power of mainstream assets based on the continuous accumulation of institutional funds and the influx of traditional capital from a macro perspective, but he also keenly points out that capital will become more selective, and the Matthew effect of "the strong getting stronger" will exacerbate the market differentiation between mainstream coins and altcoins.

This judgment aligns with the current trend of capital flow in the market, namely capital is shifting from assets that solely rely on narratives to those with real utility, stable cash flows, and substantial ecological support. For example, the TRON ecosystem has built a "digital financial infrastructure" that does not rely on short-term subsidies and possesses endogenous circulation capabilities, thanks to its absolute dominance in the stablecoin settlement field (carrying over half of the global USDT on-chain circulation) and the powerful DeFi ecosystem derived from it. This ecosystem, driven by real payment and lending demands, showcases the resilience and sustainability that the market seeks.

Regarding "which market signals are most worth bringing into 2026," guests' analyses focused on the triangular framework of liquidity, innovation, and compliance. Firstly, innovative application scenarios with real utility such as AI, prediction markets, and RWA are highly anticipated, reflecting the market's demand for high-level on-chain native applications. These are not just "narratives," but pragmatic explorations attempting to create new demands and business models.

Secondly, profound changes in the capital structure are a fundamental signal of market maturation. This is reflected in two irreversible trends: first, the continuous and large-scale inflow of institutional funds through transparent and compliant channels like ETFs, which not only brings in incremental capital but also raises higher demands for risk management, custody services, and fundamental analysis, elevating the professional threshold and stability of the market. Second, the structural growth and multi-scenario penetration of stablecoins on-chain have enabled them to transcend their role as transaction mediums and become the foundational assets of on-chain finance, with their scale and reliability directly determining the ability of DeFi and the crypto ecosystem to absorb incremental capital.

Finally, the weight of compliance and fundamentals will continue to increase. With the rapid evolution of global regulatory frameworks and institutional investors becoming important participants in the market, "regulatory friendliness" and "audit readiness" will shift from being bonuses to entry tickets. This means that a project's compliance progress (such as obtaining licenses and operational transparency), actual utility (user activity and revenue generation capability), and token economic fundamentals (value capture mechanisms and inflation/deflation models) will completely replace vague visions and marketing narratives as the core basis for capital decision-making. As guests have insightfully noted, those projects that can navigate future cycles will undoubtedly be those that have built transparent, robust, and genuinely value-capturing economic systems, with their growth relying more on endogenous value creation within the ecosystem rather than external liquidity speculation.

In transforming compliance potential into capital momentum, the TRON ecosystem's practices in 2025 serve as a landmark example. Tron Inc. not only listed on NASDAQ but also launched the "TRX Micro Strategy" plan, listing TRX as a reserve asset on the balance sheet of the listed company, opening up a core channel for the entire ecosystem towards mainstream compliant capital. The strong confidence and transparency dividends released by this move directly drove the simultaneous rise of its DeFi ecosystem's total locked value (TVL) and network revenue, powerfully demonstrating the systemic value that compliance construction can bring.

Overall, the crypto market in 2026 will reward those ecosystems and projects that can establish advantages across the "triangular framework": those that can open new horizons in innovation, attract and accommodate institutional-level liquidity, and build solid fundamentals within a compliant framework. This indicates that the Web3 market is transitioning from a speculative market chasing hot trends to a mature ecosystem based on value discovery and sustainable construction. The TRON ecosystem's advances in 2025 are a pioneering response to this future.