Speed is easy to market. Ownership structure is where you find out if a network actually survives.
I’ve watched enough Layer 1s launch fast and die slow to know the difference. The chains that last aren’t always the fastest. They’re the ones where the people building on them actually have skin in the game.
Incentives Shape Everything
When builders and early testers receive real network ownership, their behavior changes completely. They care about uptime. They build better tooling. They stick around when things get hard instead of rotating to the next shiny chain.
When token distribution favors short-term speculators, you get the opposite. Great launch numbers, empty ecosystem six months later.
This Is What Most People Miss About Fogo
Everyone in the $FOGO conversation is focused on 40ms slot times and SVM performance. That stuff matters. But token distribution quietly determines whether those technical achievements translate into a lasting ecosystem or just an impressive demo.
A fast chain with misaligned ownership is just an expensive ghost town waiting to happen.
The Hidden Layer Nobody Tweets About
Who holds the network shapes how the network behaves. That’s not a soft take. It’s the actual mechanism behind every blockchain that’s built lasting developer loyalty versus the ones that burned bright and disappeared.
I’m watching Fogo’s ownership layer as closely as I’m watching their block times. Because if the right people own meaningful stakes here, the speed story actually has a foundation to stand on.