TIA big dump and the disillusionment of the encryption industry narrative

Jessy, Golden Finance

TIA, which once soared with a tenfold increase after being listed on exchanges during the small bull market in early 2024, has now fallen below its listing price. As of the time of writing, the price is 1.62U, having dropped over 90% from its peak of around 20U. Once a leader in modular blockchain, TIA is now mired in negative publicity due to founder sell-offs and internal management issues.

The fall from grace of the former star TIA token is not just a symbol of the decline of the modular blockchain sector. The collapse of a once-prominent leading project from last year is merely superficial. The deeper truth is that the once lively narratives in the crypto world are gradually being debunked.

On one side is the stock market carnival with the Nasdaq hitting new highs, while on the other side, the once-popular narratives in the crypto world are collapsing, leading to a sharp decline in coin prices. The traditional narratives in the crypto space can no longer operate; the industry has reached a true moment of focusing on practical implementation and application.

From Glory to Fall

TIA, short for Celestia, is one of the most anticipated modular blockchain projects from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024. During the early 2024 mini bull market, the TIA token soared from single digits after its airdrop to a peak of $20, with the vision of combining the sovereign interoperation zone of Cosmos with a summary-centric Ethereum that has shared security.

However, starting in the second half of 2024, as market enthusiasm waned and project ecosystems progressed slowly, the governance and team issues of CelesTIA gradually came to light. The most controversial is the suspicion of the senior management collectively cashing out. Twitter user @0xCircusLover revealed that as early as the beginning of October 2024, all C-level executives of CelesTIA completed their unlocks and began to sell tokens on a large scale, with co-founder Mustafa being pointed out for selling more than $25 million worth of tokens off-exchange, and then quietly moving to Dubai.

At the same time, CelesTIA's marketing operations have also faced backlash. The KOL @ayyyeandy, who once promoted TIA, was revealed to have received a substantial promotional fee. Although David Hoffman, co-founder of the media platform Bankless, frequently recommends TIA, he has been inconsistent on the key question of "whether to hold the token," further raising community doubts about whether the project is just a marketing product manipulated by capital.

The deeper rifts within are due to the management, as the former head of developer relations, Yaz Khoury, was fired for alleged sexual harassment, causing a public relations crisis. CelesTIA was reported to have purchased the competitor Abstract for a seven-figure sum in USD, forcing them to withdraw from cooperation with EigenLayer. Such "exclusive mergers and acquisitions" have sparked considerable controversy, while also exposing the team's anxiety regarding their expansion path.

As the price of the currency plummeted and community trust was on the brink of collapse, co-founder John Adler proposed a radical governance model of "governance as proof" in early 2025, advocating for off-chain governance voting to replace the traditional proof-of-stake mechanism to address ongoing inflationary pressures. However, before this disruptive proposal could be implemented, the fact that team executives had cashed out was gradually exposed, leading the community to generally believe that this was a guise for governance aimed at "stabilizing prices and covering up problems." As of the time of publication, its price has dropped over 90% from its peak. The on-chain activity is also dismal; according to defillama data, its on-chain Gas revenue in the past 24 hours was only $231.

The Collapse of the Narrative in the Crypto Industry Behind the Fall of TIA

However, the collapse of TIA is not just the failure of a project and a token; it is a glimpse into the disillusionment of a new narrative in the entire crypto industry.

In the past cycles, modularization, AI Agent, DePIN, GameFi, NFTs, and so on have all created one huge bubble after another, leading to rounds of collective euphoria among capital and retail investors. By 2025, however, we will witness the collective collapse of the once-popular narratives, with altcoins in a state of despair.

Similar to TIA, various leading players in the fields that once became extremely popular and were highly sought after by capital, such as WorldCoin and Helium, quickly accumulated a large amount of traffic and saw a surge in coin prices by riding the wave of narrative. However, this was just a temporary heat, and they quickly cooled down after the initial enthusiasm.

The fall of these star tokens, including TIA, reflects a deeper crisis in the cryptocurrency industry: the lack of genuine technological innovation and user adoption leads to the repeated consumption and dilution of narratives and trust. After modularization, there are no new narratives at the public chain level. Looking at the current state of the industry, there are other voices in different tracks: most projects combining AI and blockchain remain at the conceptual level, while RWA is not just a regulatory issue, but also raises a profound question of whether there is a real demand.

The once-promising trends are being debunked one by one and quickly forgotten by people. Meanwhile, positive news continues to come from traditional financial markets, with stocks related to crypto compliance in both the US and Hong Kong markets, such as stablecoins and compliant exchanges, experiencing continuous growth.

On one side, there is a lack of native innovation in crypto and a crash in coin prices; on the other side, compliant crypto projects in Hong Kong and the US are being highly favored by capital and the market. Some believe this is a sign that "the industry is doomed," but I believe it actually serves as a warning to all project parties that true technological innovation and practical applications are what create real value. The old ways of the traditional crypto circle, which involve storytelling, competing for traffic, pumping, and then dumping, can no longer be sustained. Just like Web2 projects, current Web3 projects are all about practical implementation.