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Frankly speaking, blockchain does indeed bring more opportunities for growth and wealth, but social status and a sense of identity have always been absent.

What is even harder to accept is that, as the industry cools down, the once-proud high liquidity is also no longer present.

Aside from speculation, what else do we have left?

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Dominik Schiener (@DomSchiener), the founder of IOTA (@iota), recently released the "IOTA 2026 Declaration," which to some extent answers this question.

This is a transformation confession from a true OG Builder in our industry.

IOTA has officially announced its exit from the crowded general public chain competition, fully charging towards the global trade blue ocean valued at $35 trillion.

❚ From "Red Sea speculation" to "Blue Sea infrastructure"

The past decade of blockchain history has been filled with expensive gas fees, rug-pull coins, and empty talk that is hard to implement.

Dominik candidly stated in the declaration:

Blockchain should not just be a casino in the virtual world.

IOTA's new positioning is very clear: to become the digital nervous system of global trade.

- Background: Global trade still heavily relies on paper documents, with 4 billion documents circulating daily, resulting in an annual financing gap of $2.5 trillion.

- Goal: By 2026, IOTA aims to provide programmable trust for the global supply chain, just as AWS provides cloud services.

❚ What does it have to do with us? The deflationary and practical logic of $IOTA.

For investors most concerned about token value, the declaration provided a logic for the shift from "speculation" to "utility-driven."

- Monetizing traffic: As long as 1% of global freight is digitized, the mainnet will generate 650 million transactions per year.

- Deflationary model: With the surge in mainnet transaction volume, through a fee destruction mechanism, $IOTA will enter a natural deflationary state.

- Asset locking: The onboarding of trade financing and RWA will lock a large number of tokens, thereby reducing liquidity pressure in the market.

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Overall, Dominik believes that AI provides "intelligence" while blockchain provides "trust."

By 2030, funds operating on the blockchain will exceed $390 billion.

IOTA's gamble is that "the world will eventually go on-chain."

It has given up on attracting attention in the secondary market and instead is working on the dirtiest, hardest, but deepest moat in cross-border trade infrastructure.

In 2026, we hope to witness IOTA win this round.