Why can't most public blockchains make money? The issue might not be with the technology.

An Industry Reality No One Wants to Admit: Many Public Chains Don’t Have a “Business Model”

If you strip away the emotions and the narrative, Web3 has an awkward fact: the vast majority of public chains do not have a real business model in any meaningful sense. They have technology, users, and trading volume, and even short-term prosperity—but once you stretch the timeline, you find a problem: value can’t be retained. Users come because of incentives; trading happens because of arbitrage; liquidity exists because of subsidies. Once these external factors weaken, the whole system starts to lose momentum. This isn’t an isolated issue—it’s a structural one.

We can break a healthy system into three steps: users enter → they generate usage → value is retained. But in many public-chain ecosystems, these three steps are actually disconnected. User entry is driven by airdrops or yields; usage behavior doesn’t correspond to real needs; and the “value” generated doesn’t flow back into the system itself. In other words, most public chains are only “traffic transfer stations,” not “value capture engines.” This is also why many projects look lively, but once the market cools down, they quickly hit zero.

The next stage of competition isn’t “who’s stronger,” but “who can make money”

In the past, the industry compared who had more advanced technology, who had higher TPS, and who had a bigger ecosystem. But these metrics are essentially “capability metrics,” not “outcome metrics.” There’s only one thing that truly determines a project’s long-term value: whether there’s a stable source of value. That’s why more and more capital is focusing on: real usage rates, sustained cash flow, and actual demand created by applications. The market is moving from “telling stories” to “measuring the structure.”

From this perspective, the structure of IDN Network is particularly interesting.

It’s not a single public chain, but a unified system that places the chain, wallet, cross-chain, trading, and app entry points together. If you look only at the functions, none of this is new—but the combination points to a more critical question: Can user behavior form a closed loop within the system?

For example, the wallet layer isn’t just about storing assets—it directly connects multiple scenarios like payments, trading, and application usage. That means every time users take an action, it’s possible they stay inside the system instead of leaking out to the outside world.

When asset flows, data flows, and usage scenarios are unified into the same structure, value may truly be “left behind.”

Whether a system can exist long-term doesn’t depend on how complex it is—it depends on whether it can keep itself running. Simply put, it comes down to whether three things hold: whether there are users who continuously enter, whether there is real usage that actually happens, and whether there is value that can be retained. If these three things hold, the system can self-circulate; if not, it can only rely on continuous external funding. And the market is rapidly eliminating the second kind.

Conclusion: In the next cycle, projects that only look “strong” won’t be rewarded anymore

A very real change is happening in the industry: moving from “capability competition” to “outcome competition.” In the past, you could talk about technology, talk about vision, talk about the future. Now you have to answer a more direct question: does this system actually make money?

The current path of IDN Network is essentially an attempt to answer this question. It may not be the most flashy technical solution, but if it can truly connect users, usage, and value, then its significance isn’t just “a project”—it’s a structural evolution.

What will truly remain in the next round won’t be only the set of projects with the strongest technology, but the systems that can turn technology into sustained value.