Recently, the main discourse on crypto Twitter has centered on making general-purpose environments more performant.

• Base is aiming for “Gigagas” by leveraging Reth and blob upgrades on Ethereum.
• Solana is targeting 1M TPS with Firedancer, powered by mind-boggling optimizations in its C-based networking stack.
• MegaEth is abolishing the gas limit entirely, relying on a heavily optimized sequencer.

As a crypto enjoyooor, I can’t complain. Having paid generational wealth to Ethereum mainnet during DeFi summer and the bull market of 2021, I now enjoy cheap transactions on Solana. And I’ll enjoy even cheaper and quicker transactions on all these platforms.

But having been obsessed with making crypto mainstream since I first entered the industry around 2017, I want to stress an issue that’s recently been on my mind:

We’re quickly approaching the point of over-optimization.

By the end of 2025, blockspace will be abundant. And performance will be a commodity. Once near-instant and near-free transactions become the norm, raw speed alone won’t set you apart. As developers, we need to shift gears.

Post-Performance Era

We’re calling it the “post-performance era” because the performance battle is largely won. Most platforms can now achieve fast and cheap transactions, so differentiation must come from something else: unique features and experiences.

That’s where full-stack customization enters the picture. It’s 2025. Transactions are cheap and quick, yet most apps still look and feel the same. And the market premium for launching yet another EVM fork is gone. Just look at Unichain, which hasn’t managed to attract significant attention or liquidity:

Meanwhile, the winner of this cycle — Hyperliquid — took a bold approach. Built its entire stack from the ground up for a specific use case. Among the many interesting customizations they introduced, two stand out:

1. Prioritizing Cancels and Post-Only Orders By enforcing transaction ordering by type within blocks, Hyperliquid protects stale orders from being easily snatched by high-frequency traders. This reduces toxic order flow, makes it easier to market make, and in turn increases liquidity for everyone trading.
2. Vault-based Copy Trading Hyperliquid Vaults let anyone automatically to copy a vault builder’s trades. Because the vault logic runs as part of block creation, no external keepers are required. The Hyperliquidity Vault, which runs market making strategies, enables anyone to provide liquidity and share in the resulting PnL.

Combine these unique features with high performance, low latency, and a seamless UX, and it’s easy to see why Hyperliquid stands out as the go-to DEX for derivatives.

The results speak for themselves:

The True Bottleneck: VMs

One major culprit behind the lack of differentiation in most apps is the VMs. Much of our tooling is oriented around VMs (or are forks of Ethereum and Solana clients) that get in the way of customization.

There’s even been a recent push to make all rollups completely EVM-equivalent so they can be based and native. That’s cool for us tech nerds. But is that what the market really wants?

I don’t think so. The more you can differentiate on features that move the needle for your customers, the more likely you are to win.

But Isn’t Interoperability Crucial?

Yes, even with specialized blockchains, cross-chain communication is key. Standardization and shared tooling for liquidity and message passing remain crucial.

That’s why open-source message-passing libraries like @hyperlane and intent-based bridging frameworks like @RelayProtocol are well positioned to succeed. But beyond those interoperability components — which you can still integrate on a custom chain — builders should have the freedom to fully customize their applications.

Build What The Market Wants

The market wants fine-tuned, purpose-built applications with a seamless UX — not just another vanilla EVM fork. So build something truly custom, optimized for your use case.

That’s how we’ll create apps that bring crypto into the mainstream.

Disclaimer:

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