What is the underlying logic of the constant transformation of wealth waves in each round of blockchain?

Over the past decade, the blockchain industry has created one wealth myth after another.

Each wave of wealth transformation in blockchain seems elusive, yet it follows a basic principle: every wave of blockchain wealth is driven by a brand new "asset issuance paradigm."

From 2014 to 2017, the new asset issuance paradigm initiated by ETH—ICO—kicked off the first wave of wealth in the blockchain industry.

ICO (Initial Coin Offering) allowed project teams to bypass financing intermediaries like VCs, directly reaching retail investors with a white paper. ICOs created countless projects and made many "ICO millionaires." The renowned Hashkey made its name by investing in early ETH; BNB, which has increased over 10,000 times in eight years, was also financed through an ICO, and even Sun's Tron was launched through ICO financing.

In recent years, we have frequently seen some whales from the Ethereum ICO era selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ETH, but they may have only invested a few thousand dollars back then (the ICO price of Ethereum was about $0.3, meaning $6,000 could buy 20,000 ETH, currently worth about $80 million).

ICO is the first-generation asset issuance paradigm in the blockchain industry. It not only created leading projects like Ethereum, Binance, and Tron but also pioneered on-chain financing and asset issuance.

Of course, the problems with ICOs are also evident: no regulation, no constraints, and with just a white paper, one could raise tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to a surge of fraudulent and worthless projects. In December 2017, ICOs peaked, but after January 2018, the enthusiasm for ICOs plummeted, the market crashed, countless projects went to zero, and the blockchain industry entered a prolonged bear market lasting two years.

It wasn't until 2020 that the blockchain industry saw the emergence of a completely different asset issuance paradigm—ILO.

In early 2020, the decentralized lending protocol Compound was the first to launch liquidity mining. Users could mint $Comp tokens simply by providing liquidity to a smart contract. Compound's TVL quickly surged tenfold, and the price of $Comp skyrocketed from $60 to $900.

This model pioneered by Comp is called liquidity mining, where project tokens are minted through LP-injected liquidity mining, so we can refer to it as ILO (Initial Liquidity Offering).

LPs provide liquidity for DeFi projects through smart contracts in a pool, leading to the emergence of star projects like Compound (Comp 150x) and Yearn.finance (YFI, 1000x, with prices once exceeding BTC at the time). We can call the asset issuance paradigm that mints tokens through liquidity mining ILO (Initial Liquidity Offering).

ILO has created a large number of DeFi projects and directly propelled the arrival of DeFi Summer. We refer to ILO as the second-generation asset issuance paradigm.

In fact, during the period from 2019 to 2021, the blockchain industry also saw a brief emergence of ICO variants—IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) and IDO (Initial DEX Offering). Although IEO/IDO were merely improved versions of ICOs, they also sparked a wave of wealth opportunities.

IEOs are asset issuances on centralized exchanges like Binance, while IDOs are fundraising and asset issuance on decentralized platforms. Typical examples of the IEO paradigm include Axie Infinity (AXS) and Polygon (MATIC), which created returns of 1600x and 1100x, respectively; a typical IDO project is Bloktopia (BLOK), which achieved a maximum increase of 550x.

IEOs and IDOs are variants of ICOs and improvements on the ICO model, but they do not deviate from the essence of ICOs. ILO directly brought about DeFi Summer, providing strong momentum for the launch and development of the DeFi sector. However, the ILO craze also spawned countless low-quality liquidity mining projects, and ultimately, the DeFi bubble burst at the end of 2021, leading the blockchain industry into another prolonged bear market.

By 2024, the blockchain industry birthed the third-generation asset issuance paradigm—Meme Launch based on Pump.fun, which we tentatively call IMO (Initial Meme Offering).

IMO integrates asset issuance and instant trading, creating a steep Bonding Curve design that generates a huge price difference during the minting process. Once the basic financing scale is completed in the internal market, it directly enters external DEX for larger-scale trading and circulation.

The IMO represented by Pump.fun is a combinatorial innovation in the blockchain asset issuance paradigm, combining Bonding Curve and DEX trading, while modularizing and batching the token issuance process through pre-existing tools. IMO pushes blockchain asset issuance to extreme popularization and forms viral dissemination based on huge price differences, making this model very suitable for meme-shaped asset issuance.

IMO not only led to the explosive rise of SOL (which surged from $60 to $290) but also birthed meme tokens like Fartcoin, Punt, Aura, which increased over 1000 times, along with countless new crypto elites whose net worth soared past $100 million due to IMO.

From ICO, ILO, IDO/IEO to IMO, we can clearly see that each round of blockchain wealth feasts is driven by innovative asset issuance paradigms.

Therefore, when we want to lay out the next round of wealth opportunities in advance, we must closely monitor the changes in asset issuance paradigms.

So, how can we grasp the evolving trends of blockchain wealth over the next 5-10 years?

First, let's look at what institutional changes have occurred in the blockchain industry since 2025.

First, the blockchain industry as a whole is beginning to move towards compliance, with regulations gradually improving. The United States is leading the way in legislating industry compliance standards. Secondly, the participants in the industry have shifted from being primarily crypto-native users and retail investors to being dominated by Wall Street and traditional institutions. Mainstream projects are also gradually shifting from past Crypto Native projects to RWA assets anchored by USD, US stocks, bonds, and energy as underlying assets. Meanwhile, the underlying public chains and various mainstream DeFi protocols are evolving into on-chain financial infrastructures that accommodate these RWA assets.

By 2025, the tokenization scale of RWA has exceeded $30 billion, and the world's largest asset management firm, BlackRock, predicts that in five years (by 2030), the scale of on-chain circulating RWA assets will reach $10 trillion. The growth potential from $30 billion to $10 trillion is over 30 times.

Therefore, we can basically predict that in the next 5-10 years, the blockchain industry will be driven by large institutions pushing asset on-chain (RWA) under a compliant environment, which will become mainstream, and RWA will be the fastest-growing asset type in the future blockchain industry.

Continuing our previous thought, chasing the flow of blockchain wealth means closely monitoring the changes in asset issuance paradigms.

Since RWA is the main asset type in the blockchain for the next 5-10 years, will a brand new asset issuance paradigm emerge based on RWA assets?

The answer is yes!

RWA assets are different from crypto-native assets, memes, and other assets; they are on-chain assets anchored to real-world assets and rights off-chain. Therefore, the issuance method for RWA will definitely differ completely from previous asset issuance paradigms.

Thus, as long as we can identify and lock in asset issuance paradigms that fit RWA, we can firmly grasp the wave of blockchain wealth in the next 5-10 years.

So, what might an asset issuance paradigm suitable for RWA look like?

We have researched a large number of platforms focused on RWA asset issuance and trading in the market, such as IX Swap, Rooster Protocol, PicWe, Bitverse, etc. From this, we have roughly summarized the basic principles and core design mechanisms (financing unlocking mechanism, dividend mechanism, RWA value capture mechanism) of asset issuance paradigms that fit RWA, among which the IRO paradigm proposed by PicWe is the most representative.

In the following text, we will break down the RWA asset issuance paradigm around IRO, helping everyone gain insight into potential asset issuance paradigms suitable for RWA, and thus foresee possible trends in blockchain wealth evolution over the next five years.

PicWe is a comprehensive RWA liquidity infrastructure that has launched RWA issuance and trading functions. Recently, PicWe launched the [Isfayram Hydropower Station Project in Kyrgyzstan](https://iro.picwe.org/%EF%BC%89%E6%8F%90%E4%BA%A4%E8%AF%A6%E5%B0%BD%E8%B5%84%E6%96%99%EF%BC%8C%E5%8C%85%E6%8B%AC%E5%85%AC%E5%8F%B8%E6%B3%A8%E5%86%8C%E8%AF%81%E6%98%8E%E3%80%81%E8%B5%84%E4%BA%A7%E5%AE%A1%E8%AE%A1%E6%8A%A5%E5%91%8A%E3%80%81%E8%B5%84%E9%87%91%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8%E8%AE%A1%E5%88%92%E3%80%81%E9%A2%84%E6%9C%9FAPY%E5%8F%8A%E6%B4%BE%E6%81%AF%E6%97%B6%E9%97%B4%E8%A1%A8%E3%80%82%E4%BE%8B%E5%A6%82%EF%BC%8CIsfayram%E6%B0%B4%E7%94%B5%E7%AB%99IRO%E6%8A%AB%E9%9C%B2%E4%BA%86%E5%90%89%E5%B0%94%E5%90%89%E6%96%AF%E6%96%AF%E5%9D%A6%E5%A4%A9%E5%B1%B1%E9%A1%B9%E7%9B%AE%E7%9A%844.02MW%E9%A6%96%E9%98%B6%E6%AE%B5%E4%BA%A7%E8%83%BD%E3%80%81%E5%B9%B4%E5%8F%91%E7%94%B52290%E4%B8%87kWh%E5%8F%8A115%E4%B8%87%E7%BE%8E%E5%85%83%E6%94%B6%E5%85%A5%E6%A8%A1%E5%9E%8B%E3%80%82%E8%BF%99%E4%B8%80%E6%AD%A5%E5%86%85%E7%BD%AEAI%E5%AE%A1%E6%A0%B8%E4%B8%8E%E7%A4%BE%E5%8C%BA%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8%EF%BC%8C%E9%98%B2%E6%AD%A2%E2%80%9C%E7%A9