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 market cycles, many crypto builders seem to have reached a “consensus”: no matter what you initially set out to do, it often ends up being better to just focus on trading.

Take the former NFT leader OpenSea as an example; its transformation path is quite typical. When the NFT market cooled and revenue shrank to around $3 million per month, OpenSea pivoted in October 2025, becoming a “what can be traded” comprehensive platform 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 trading. 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 shifted or is shifting toward trading activities.

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

As Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently pointed out in a discussion on decentralized social: if the industry merely packs 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 truly leave for this era?

Fortunately, as the collective begins to reflect, divergences are emerging. Amid the trend of “everyone moving toward 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 considered unfeasible? Friend.tech and Pump.fun, two former star products, might provide some answers.

Friend.tech, once a top SocialFi platform, succeeded and failed through trading. It aimed to turn social relationships into tradable assets, with prices determined by buy and sell actions, and platform commissions earning profits. This model led to rapid growth, soaring fees, and a record daily revenue surpassing Ethereum’s within just over a month. But once speculation faded, the social relationships had no intrinsic value left, and no users remained. Friend.tech ultimately had to shut down.

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

How to find a more sustainable long-term scenario or a second growth curve remains an open question.

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

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

Some different attempts are beginning to emerge. This path does not deny trading but redefines its role: making trading not the end goal, but an entry point into a richer participation ecosystem. In other words, users shouldn’t only be speculating on platforms; they should also generate value through more “consumption” and participation scenarios.

This approach is quite understandable when looking at traditional sectors. Any sustainable business model must allow users to naturally generate value through daily use, participation, or consumption, enabling platforms to build long-term relationships and ecological resources.

However, this path is likely to be difficult. It requires platforms to have sufficient capital and patience—first to survive, then to develop those slow-to-yield initiatives 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 established projects with a solid user base and stable operations. For example, CoinW, an old exchange with millions of users and steady daily trading volume, has enough capital flow to support building a long-term, valuable ecosystem that may take time to show results.

What is 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 steadily, why bother with slower-yielding activities? 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 communications, he has mentioned that this kind of trading frenzy and homogenized competition is the old way of traditional finance: when all players chase the same metrics, what remains is often just trivial. It may seem prosperous, but it is actually draining long-term value.

For platforms like CoinW, driven by a stable existing foundation, promoting ecosystem development is not only about maintaining current capabilities but also a strategic “long-term view”: relying solely on trading will be hard to create advantages in the next cycle. The earlier they expand into value scenarios beyond trading, the more likely they are to gain a first-mover advantage amid industry segmentation.

So how to implement value scenarios beyond trading? CoinW announced a full-stack upgrade at its eighth anniversary, which can be summarized as focusing on two strategies: “internal circulation” and “external circulation.”

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

Internal circulation means redesigning the user’s “stay path” within the platform: 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 to participate in other on-chain activities beyond market movements. CoinW doesn’t cut off this demand but captures it.

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” and supported with funding 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 just because market conditions cool down. 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 increases, 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 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 one-off trading targets.

This approach is reflected in their 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 events 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 ongoing relationships, moving participation forward in time.

CoinW is also 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 quick 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 eighth anniversary theme, “Trot On To Infinity,” is less a slogan and more an attitude: it doesn’t specify a fixed endpoint but assumes this is a long-distance race 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.

Disclaimer:

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment or legal advice. The services or products mentioned may not be available in all regions. Crypto asset trading involves high risks; please fully understand the risks before participating.