The "counter-consensus" choice of an eight-year-old exchange: Why give up easy profits and not treat trading as the end goal?

Author: momo, ChainCatcher

After experiencing several cycles, many crypto builders seem to have reached a “consensus”: no matter what you initially intend to do, ultimately it’s better to focus on trading.

Take the former NFT leader OpenSea as an example; its transformation path is very typical. When the NFT market cooled and revenue shrank to around $3 million per month, OpenSea decisively shifted in October 2025, becoming a comprehensive platform where “anything can be traded,” supporting tokens and memecoins across 22 chains.

As a result, in the first month after the pivot, trading volume surged to $2.6 billion, with nearly 90% coming from token trades. CEO Devin Finzer’s remark that “you can’t fight the trend” sounds like going with the flow, but also reveals a sense of helplessness in having to compromise.

OpenSea is not an exception. Looking back at this bull cycle, memecoin trading has become a “lifeline” for many projects. In a16z’s January report, “2 notes for crypto builders in 2026,” partner Arianna Simpson explicitly states that this trend is accelerating: almost every successful crypto company has already shifted or is shifting towards trading.

While focusing on trading for revenue is understandable, then what? This has evolved into a “marshmallow experiment” for the crypto industry: pursuing short-term satisfaction often comes at the cost of product depth.

As Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently pointed out in a discussion on decentralized social: if the industry merely stuffs a speculative token into a product and claims to be “innovative,” it’s just creating corporate garbage.

If all innovation ends up just to increase turnover rate, what can individuals, projects, and the industry really leave for this era?

Fortunately, as the collective begins to reflect, divergences are emerging. Amid the trend of “everyone moving towards trading,” some veteran platforms like CoinW are exploring whether there is a longer-term, more effective path.

Divergence in Industry Dilemmas

Why is early entry into trading and solely doing trading unsustainable? Friend.tech and Pump.fun, two former star products, might answer this.

Friend.tech, once a top SocialFi platform, succeeded and failed through trading. It aimed to create social assets that are tradable, with prices determined by buy/sell activity and platform commissions earning profits. This model led to rapid growth, soaring fees, and within just over a month, it set a record for daily revenue surpassing Ethereum. But once speculation faded, the social relationships had no intrinsic value, leaving no lasting user base, and Friend.tech ultimately failed.

Pump.fun pushed the trading-centric model to the extreme. The rise of memecoins allowed platforms like Pump.fun to make huge profits. However, most trades are zero-sum, and in a bear market, trading volume can drop by 90% compared to peak levels.

How to find a more sustainable scenario or second growth curve? Currently, no clear answer has emerged.

For the entire industry, this “trade-first” approach only leads to over-reliance on short-term gambling, resulting in homogenized competition and a lack of genuine long-term value. This is a key reason why this cycle’s crypto industry is criticized for lacking innovation.

But if trading alone isn’t the only path, where are new opportunities?

Some different attempts are beginning to appear. This path’s starting point isn’t to deny trading but to redefine its role: making trading not the end goal, but an entry point to a richer participation ecosystem. In other words, users shouldn’t only speculate on the platform; they should also generate value through more “consumption” and participation scenarios.

This approach is not hard to understand. Looking at traditional sectors, sustainable business models require users to naturally generate value through daily use, participation, or consumption, enabling platforms to build long-term relationships and ecological resources.

However, this path may be difficult. It requires platforms to have enough capital and patience—first to survive, then to develop slow-to-show-results activities like developer cultivation, community management, or connecting to real-world scenarios.

Currently, you can see that such adjustments are not mainstream but are being attempted mainly by veteran projects with a stable user base and solid business foundation. For example, CoinW, an established exchange with millions of users and stable daily trading volume, has enough capital flow to support building a long-term, slow-to-yield ecosystem.

What’s the logic behind the “counter-consensus” choice?

For some crypto projects, solely focusing on trading poses long-term survival issues. But for a platform like CoinW, which can earn passively, why insist on doing things with slower results? Looking into CoinW’s public discussions and strategy offers some clues.

It may relate to the background of the CoinW team. Its board member Omar Al Yousif has extensive experience in traditional finance and investment. He is currently Vice Chairman of 7-E Emirates Holding and a partner at 10X Capital.

In multiple internal and public exchanges, he has mentioned that aggressive trading and homogenous competition are old tricks of traditional finance: when all players chase the same metrics, only trivial results remain. It may seem prosperous but actually erodes long-term value.

For platforms like CoinW, promoting ecosystem development is not just about leveraging a stable existing base but also a strategic “long-term thinking” move: in the next cycle of competition, relying solely on trading will be insufficient to gain advantage. The earlier they expand into value scenarios beyond trading, the more likely they are to secure a first-mover advantage amid industry segmentation.

How to implement value scenarios beyond trading? CoinW announced a full-stack upgrade at its 8th anniversary, which can be summarized as mainly using two strategies: “internal circulation” and “external circulation.”

1. Internal Circulation: Making it easier for users to stay

Internal circulation refers to redesign the user “stay path” within CoinW: no longer assuming users will repeatedly trade the same assets, but extending their effective engagement time on the platform.

For example, as a trader, we usually start with spot and futures trading. But many users don’t just want to “place more orders”; they also want other on-chain participation outside market movements. CoinW accommodates this need rather than cutting it off.

Under a unified account system, users no longer need separate wallets or Gas management to try more features:

• On GemW, users can directly explore on-chain assets with low costs and barriers;
• On DeriW, which also offers perpetual trading, the on-chain structure is more transparent, and zero Gas design makes trying different strategies more appealing;
• On PropW, trading is no longer just about profit and loss; users’ trading skills can be regarded as a “skill” that can be supported with funds within platform rules, changing the way they participate.

In the short term, this design may not immediately boost trading volume, but an obvious change is: users won’t leave the platform immediately when market activity cools. When trading opportunities decrease, other participation methods can retain attention; when new assets or features emerge, they can naturally be integrated into existing pathways.

The result is that users’ psychological barriers to exploring new things are lowered, their time spent on the platform is extended, and engagement becomes stickier. From this perspective, internal circulation isn’t about forcing users to “trade more,” but about making it easier for them to stay.

2. External Circulation: Moving beyond pure trading and crypto scenarios

External circulation essentially means CoinW actively expands the platform from a single “trading venue” into a broader industry ecosystem. By connecting externally, CoinW involves users and the platform in project growth and resource allocation, rather than just competing at the trading layer.

Practically, CoinW doesn’t equate ecosystem cooperation with coin listings or traffic swaps but builds deeper partnerships with projects with long-term potential. The platform offers real user access, liquidity, and infrastructure support, integrating projects into a long-term ecosystem rather than treating them as one-off trading targets.

This approach is reflected in its industry collaboration methods, such as the flagship event WConnect, which facilitates cross-ecosystem dialogue between exchanges, developer communities, and project teams; and ongoing participation in regional industry conferences like Coinfest Asia, embedding the platform into a broader global crypto collaboration network—not just trading infrastructure.

For users, the participation logic shifts. Instead of repeatedly trading around existing assets, they can get involved early in projects, using products and mechanisms to build more sustained relationships, moving participation earlier in time.

Additionally, CoinW is trying to bring crypto assets out of purely financial contexts. In sports, through partnerships with La Liga and East Asian Football Championships; in culture, sponsoring events like TAIWAN GQ Style Fest, making crypto more tangible in public scenarios.

These external circulation efforts don’t aim for immediate trading volume growth but change the platform’s role—from a simple matchmaker to a hub connecting projects, users, and real-world scenes. In an industry long dominated by trading logic, this choice may not show short-term results but provides a foundation for long-term competitiveness.

Conclusion

Looking back, this industry divergence is hard to judge with just a few data points. But it at least reflects different understandings of the industry’s long-term future.

As trading capabilities become more standardized, true differentiation may not come from higher-frequency matching efficiency but from whether platforms are willing to reserve space for value beyond trading. CoinW’s approach is an attempt based on this judgment.

CoinW’s 8th anniversary theme “Trot On To Infinity” is less a slogan and more an attitude: it doesn’t specify a final destination but assumes this is a long-distance run requiring patience and continuous course correction.

In a highly utilitarian market environment, this path may not be the most clever, but it offers a possibility: when the tide recedes, what supports a platform’s continued growth might not be greater “fee extraction” but whether it is truly rooted in a long-term valuable ecosystem.