USD1: From 'Casino Chips' to the Ultimate Evolution of Parallel Dollars
We are always asking: When will Crypto be widely adopted? But when real adoption happens, many people turn a blind eye. Last week, a friend who helps with Amazon e-commerce remitted money to Southeast Asia and was charged an 8% fee by the bank, which also delayed the transfer for three days. At that moment, I realized: the blood vessels of traditional finance have hardened. That's why when you look at USD1, don't just see it as another stablecoin. It is digitalizing the hegemony of the dollar, extending this grand proposition, combining real pain points, and pushing it to a critical point. ▰▰▰
Last night's plunge in gold, I don't know how many brothers got buried again.
Looking at those liquidation data, I feel quite uncomfortable inside.
In this high-frequency, round-the-clock market, human reaction speed, memory capacity, and emotional control have all become "inferior assets."
The future of trading is destined to belong to AI.
But the question is: does the current AI deserve our assets?
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I looked at the recent discussions on @Vanarchain and found that they hit a very critical pain point:
The current AI agents are essentially "temporary workers."
Because public chains are stateless, AI is reset after each task.
They have no long-term memory and cannot accumulate experience. Letting these "temporary workers" manage your money is no different from giving it away.
What Vanar is doing now is providing these AIs with "long-term residency permits."
Through memory and reasoning at the protocol layer, it allows AI to "survive" on the chain and be able to "remember."
This doesn't sound sexy, and is even a bit dull. But this is the real "infrastructure."
The current coin price is still fluctuating at a low level, and there are quite a few FUD voices in the community (regarding the token model).
But I actually think this is a good thing.
Only when the bubble is squeezed out, and those who only look at price fluctuations have left the field, will the real value discovery begin.
We are betting on an inevitable trend in 2026:
When AI truly takes over trading, the "memory chain" provided by Vanar will be their only home.
Why is Wall Street's money willing to mold in Excel rather than go on chain?
Last month, I had drinks with a friend who works in traditional asset management, and I asked him: 'Now that RWA is so popular, when does your company plan to move those hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds up?'
He looked at me as if I were a fool: 'Move them up? Move them up so the whole world knows how much my bottom position is?' So that my opponents can monitor my wallet every day and short me?
I was just about to refute the statement that 'blockchain is transparent' when he interrupted me directly: 'Yeah, it's precisely because it's too transparent.' In our line of work, transparency is like running naked, and running naked means death. At that moment, I suddenly understood the meaning of existence.
Don't just focus on the US SEC; Europe's compliance revolution has already begun.
Recently, in studying the ecology of @Dusk , I discovered a very interesting phenomenon.
Its core partners are all formal troops from Europe: 21X, NPEX.
What does this indicate? It indicates that in the RWA track, Europe may be running faster than the US.
The logic in the US is "the regulators haven't figured it out yet, so don't move for now."
The logic in Europe is "the MiCA framework has already been outlined for you, just follow it."
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Dusk is a special force that has grown under this framework.
The core problem it solves is actually just one: Selective Transparency. Previous public chains were either fully transparent (Ethereum) or completely black box (Zcash).
Dusk says: Neither of these is correct.
The real commercial world is "invisible to the public, transparent to regulators."
This sounds like walking a tightrope, but this is the essence of finance.
I call this model gray finance.
It is not black or white; it is gray. It allows you to trade on-chain, but doesn't let you be fully exposed.
This ability of "wanting both" is what institutions find most scarce.
My thoughts:
The current market has not yet priced this ability. Everyone is still playing that "one-click token issuance" quick game, thinking compliance is too troublesome. But by 2026, when the regulatory net really tightens, and when large institutions truly want to move stocks and bonds on-chain, they will find:
Only Dusk, which has long "coded compliance" into its infrastructure, is the only safe haven. This is not an easy road; one could even say it is a very lonely road. But often, the loneliest road leads to the deepest gold mine.
Amid the AI frenzy, it chooses to be a cold observer.
I have a friend who is an investor (I can't reveal his real name here), he rarely posts.
But every time he shares news, as long as he adds a brief comment, everyone queues up to like it.
Why? Because he doesn't create noise; he only offers judgments at critical moments.
People like this may seem insignificant on a daily basis, but when it's time to make decisions, you'll want to hear their opinions first. That's how I feel about @Vanarchain now. Recently, its style on a certain platform has started to resemble this friend more and more. Tesla invested 2 billion in xAI, and instead of jumping on the bandwagon to promote it, they calmly replied: "Structural change."
Plasma: It understands the financial truth that wealthy people are more frugal.
A couple of days ago, I saw a very interesting piece of data:
The higher the net worth of the client, the more sensitive they are to fees.
Retail investors are willing to pay a fee of one thousandth at exchanges for convenience; but for market makers holding hundreds of millions in capital, a slippage of one ten-thousandth is enough to make them flip the table.
This is the cruel truth of the financial world: big money is 'pinched' out.
With this perspective, looking at @Plasma's recent actions, I suddenly feel that these people understand human nature too well. They have integrated StableFlow (1 million USD with zero slippage) and NEAR Intents, which on the surface appears to be a technical upgrade, but in reality is an invitation for large capital.
Don't treat Plasma as a chain, treat it as a 'financial lubricant'
Recently, while focusing on on-chain data, I discovered a severely overlooked detail:
@Plasma The proportion of large transactions on it is quietly rising. syrupUSDT pool has broken 1 billion, and the large orders from StableFlow have also started to run. What does this indicate? It indicates that smart money has caught a whiff of it.
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In this circle, there are two types of money. One is blind money, chasing trends and making panic decisions, enjoying the hustle and bustle, going where there are many people.
The other is smart money, extremely averse to risk and wear, going where efficiency is high.
Plasma clearly does not want to earn from the former (too tiring, too competitive), it wants to earn from the latter.
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By reducing friction to zero and slippage to zero, it has forcibly turned itself into a financial lubricant layer. This sounds unsexy, not as exciting as a hundredfold meme. But if you think carefully, lubricants are the most indispensable thing in the industrial system. The faster the machines run, the greater the demand for lubricants.
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Plasma is betting on a future: stablecoins will become the gears of global finance.
In this era of high-speed operation of gears, whoever can provide the best lubrication is in high demand.
Its current low coin price is actually a lag in the market's valuation of this 'ToB infrastructure'.
Once this lubrication system is adopted by global payment gateways and market makers, its value capture ability will far exceed those public chains that can only issue casino tokens.
This is a narrower, deeper, but also longer snow path.
If you have patience, you might as well stay at this position and slowly become rich with it.
If AI has to ask 'Who am I?' every time it wakes up, it will never grow up.
This morning, I was chatting with a friend who develops AI, and he complained to me about a very strange pain point.
He said that the current on-chain AI is like a patient suffering from severe amnesia. Every interaction, every transaction, is brand new. It cannot remember your preferences, cannot remember the last strategy, and cannot even remember who it is.
"This is not intelligence at all; it’s a deadlock." He slammed his glass down on the table, "If every time we have to start from scratch, then the evolution of AI is a false proposition." ————————————
Stop reinventing the wheel for AI, let's give it a brain
Recently, looking at the community feedback from @Vanarchain , I found a rare resonance
Many Builders are saying the same phrase: "No Resets (无重置)".
This actually exposes the biggest awkwardness in the current AI x Crypto arena: we have built a bunch of fast cars, but forgot to equip the driver with navigation.
The current public chain is a nightmare of constant resets for AI agents
Every time a task ends, the memory resets. The next time it comes back, it has to reload the context. This not only wastes computing power but more importantly, it locks the upper limit of AI.
How can an AI that is always in "initialization" help us manage complex assets?
Vanar's current positioning is more like an "external brain for AI" rather than a public chain.
It attempts to break this "reset curse" through the built-in persistent context at the protocol layer. This approach is very pragmatic, but also very "unsexy"
It doesn't have the hype of a hundredfold coin, no FOMO airdrop, only a precise response to developers' pain points.
This also explains why its coin price has been lukewarm.
Because solving such underlying problems takes time. It is not the kind of project that can make you rich overnight
It is more like a "slow variable"
When the market begins to realize that AI agents need to survive long-term and require complex decision-making, the true value of Vanar will emerge.
As an investor, my mindset is very calm right now.
I don't expect it to surge tomorrow, but I will always keep it at the top of my watchlist.
Because I know that in this noisy industry, there are not many willing to "give AI a brain".
Yesterday, I helped a friend handle a large amount of U, transferring from Tron to Ethereum.
Watching the estimated wear and tear of that cross-chain bridge, my friend's face turned green: several thousand U of slippage, plus transaction fees, and before the trade even started, the principal was already down a layer. He cursed, 'This is not a cross-chain, this is robbery.'
In that moment, I deeply realized the physical resistance of large funds flowing on the chain. For retail investors, a few U's of wear and tear are insignificant; but for funds in the million range, slippage is a deadly enemy. With this feeling of 'pain', looking at the 0xStableFlow integration announcement forwarded yesterday, I suddenly understood its ambition.
Plasma doesn't want to be a lake; it wants to be an ocean. Recently, while focusing on on-chain data, I noticed that @Plasma's strategy has changed. In the past, it was like a diligent farmer, meticulously cultivating its own small plot of land (optimizing DeFi depth, increasing APY). But now, it has started acting like an ambitious hydraulic engineer, trying to divert others' water into its own field. The move to connect with StableFlow is very cunning. It is targeting the stagnant billions of dollars on Tron. Through the 1M zero slippage channel, it is 'pulling' this water into its own ecosystem. This is a game at the level of 'hydraulic engineering.' As long as the channel is wide and flat enough (zero wear), the water will naturally flow to lower places (higher yield). Once funds get used to this 'frictionless flow,' Plasma will no longer be just a simple public chain; it will be the 'estuary' of the stablecoin world. I am also reflecting on why we didn't understand this step before. Because we always habitually focused on 'ecosystem prosperity,' thinking that there wasn’t much meme or rural dogs on Plasma. But for true 'capital flow,' those things are unimportant. What matters is 'resistance.' Whoever can minimize cross-chain resistance will be able to siphon off the liquidity of the entire network. The current price of $xpl is still fluctuating at a low level, and many people feel it lacks explosive power. But in my view, this kind of 'infrastructure-level penetration' is often irreversible. Once the path dependency of large funds is formed, it will be very difficult to move them again. Whoever controls the estuary controls the pricing power. In this war over the ownership of liquidity, Plasma has already quietly taken the lead. #plasma $XPL
If life can't be saved, then every day you are running naked.
I stayed up late playing games last night, and just when I was about to finish, the power went out and my save file was lost. The feeling of collapse in that moment is simply indescribable. Hours of effort, all reset to zero due to lack of memory. I slumped in my chair thinking: if this problem isn't solved, this game is unplayable. This makes me think of the current on-chain AI. Everyone is bragging about how amazing AI Agents are, but few realize how miserable they are on-chain.
For current public chains, AI is like an un-saveable deserted island. Every interaction, the AI starts from scratch. It can't remember your risk preferences from yesterday, nor the reasons for past failures. It can only keep resetting and doing repetitive work.
If life can't be saved, then every day you're running naked.
Last night I stayed up late gaming, and just when I was at the critical moment, the power went out and I lost my save. The sense of collapse in that moment is simply indescribable. Hours of effort, all reset due to lack of 'memory'. I slumped in my chair and thought: if this problem isn't solved, this game is unplayable. This reminds me of the current on-chain AI. Everyone is raving about how amazing AI Agents are, but few realize that: How miserable they are on the chain. The current public chain is like an unarchivable desert island for AI.
Every interaction starts from scratch for AI. It cannot remember your risk preferences from yesterday, nor the reasons for the last failure. It can only keep resetting and repeating tasks.