In retrospect, day 1 was the fun part.
We had no idea what we were doing. Just a vague belief that blockchains could change the world and a bunch of half-working apps to prove it. We built, broke things, rebuilt them - the stakes were just not that high. We argued about forks, tweeted through crashes, and tried to convince people this wasn’t all just a scam.
Somehow, we made it through. And now, things are changing. Can you feel it, anon?
- Banks no longer hate us
- People claiming “Bitcoin is dead” are increasingly rare
- TradFi is set on pushing finance onto crypto rails
- US President is signing crypto-friendly laws and has his owns $2Bn memecoin
- Hundreds of millions own crypto across the world. Tens of millions use stablecoins.
Finally, the world believes and the tech seems ready. It’s no longer “can it work?”, but “what impact will crypto have?”
Tokens are compared based on revenue, Pumpfun wants to challenge incumbent social media, Stripe is launching stablecoin products, the US is creating regulatory clarity. All sides of the same coin: crypto is now judged on impact, while the industry continues to accelerate. This is crypto’s day 2.
Crypto teams, small and large, are now riding the tiger of an increasingly ambitious industry that no longer wants to reward small experiments but is looking for bigger and bigger outcomes. For some teams working on the current meta, it’s very clear how they plan to deliver these big outcomes: memecoin launchpads are building the world’s best casinos, stablecoin teams are fixing finance’s most critical plumbing. For many other teams, like ‘consumer crypto’ and parts of DeFi, the answer is not clear yet.
We don’t have answers either, but we do have a hunch.
Onchain natives have been early every cycle. They’ve been paying in stablecoins long before Stripe or Visa caught on. They’ve been deploying their assets productively in DeFi while battling the challenges of self-custody from day 1. Punting on Polymarkets before it became liquid enough to predict presidencies.
What they love to do onchain today, the rest of the world will do tomorrow.
And more than that, they’re the ones who understand why crypto matters. They can help make sure that as crypto scales, we don’t forget what made it special in the first place: real digital ownership through self-custody, code and protocols over legacy middlemen, global and permissionless markets built on top of credibly neutral, hard blockchains.
So if you’re building, start there. Focus on the users who are already here. The ones who live and breathe onchain not for headlines, but because they need better tools today and are tired of waiting.
That’s why we chose to start with onchain natives at Lighthouse. They are not many, but their patterns are worth chasing. Their use cases are worth refining. What they do today might seem niche, but it won't be for long.
The message for builders is clear: day 2 is here, time to keep up or sit down.