Shanzhai season is not coming back — once this statement is made, someone is bound to feel a sense of frustration.

But behind this lies a more realistic problem: what you're waiting for is not a delayed Shanzhai market trend, but a market landscape that has been completely transformed.

Looking at the changes over the past two years makes it clear. The macro environment has become unprecedentedly friendly, regulatory attitudes have done a 180-degree turn, spot ETFs have been launched one after another, stablecoin trading volumes have hit new highs, the RWA ecosystem is accelerating its implementation, and on-chain data has continuously broken records… In theory, all these are prerequisites for the significant performance of altcoins.

But what’s the result? Mainstream coins perform exceptionally well, second-tier coins perform moderately, and smaller tokens are completely ignored. Many people are still looking forward to the era of "as long as you issue tokens, they will rise," unaware that this approach has become completely ineffective.

The problem isn’t whether the market is good or not, but that the game rules have changed entirely. Institutional involvement, increased compliance requirements, changes in information dissemination efficiency — these factors have reshaped the entire logic of value discovery. The once-profitable opportunities created by information asymmetry and emotional trading have long been dulled.