Paul Cafiero, a partner at a16z Crypto, reports that the sector has transitioned into a 'Show Me' era where grand visions and minimum viable products no longer guarantee market recognition.

This shift is driven by traditional financial institutions such as BlackRock launching tokenized money market funds and Fidelity applying for crypto ETFs, which have permanently elevated industry benchmarks.

Concurrently, JPMorgan’s use of internal blockchain technologies for transaction settlement underscores the new reality. Projects must now demonstrate real-world deployment, public partnership support, and hard metrics like mainnet transaction volumes and user retention. The previous logic that 'the vision is the product' has been replaced by a demand for organic community growth established prior to launch.