#1 - Is this the end of the Web3 era?

For more than a decade, Web3 has shaped how the blockchain industry described itself. It introduced an ambitious vision for a more open internet, where users could own digital assets, control personal data, and interact with applications without relying on centralized platforms. Regardless of whether that vision becomes reality in its original form, it changed how the market thinks about digital ownership and gave blockchain a purpose beyond cryptocurrencies.

The market has changed

Today, however, the conversation feels different.

The companies attracting the most attention are no longer trying to reinvent the internet through foundational blockchain protocols like Ethereum Institutional , or pioneering new financial primitives with projects such as Aave Labs , Pendle , and EigenLayer .

Instead, they are solving financial problems that already exist: payments, settlement, treasury management, tokenized assets, and capital markets have become the center of gravity. Blockchain is still the underlying technology, but it is no longer the story companies are telling.

Following the capital

One way to understand this shift is to look at where institutions are investing. Stablecoins have become a serious alternative for cross-border payments, led by issuers like Tether.io and Circle , while new infrastructure projects such as Plasma are emerging to support stablecoin-native financial systems. Asset managers are launching tokenized funds through platforms like Securitize and Ondo Finance, bringing traditional financial products onchain. Banks are experimenting with tokenized deposits, and governments and financial institutions are exploring faster settlement and more transparent financial infrastructure. Together, these initiatives point in the same direction: modernizing financial infrastructure.

Why “Web3” and “Crypto” are losing precision

They still describe an important technological movement, but they no longer capture where most economic value is being created. The term Web3, in particular, became closely associated with the promise of decentralization. Over the past few years, however, that narrative has been challenged by governance disputes, protocol hacks, DAO restructurings, and token redistributions, exposing the practical limits of decentralization at scale.

At the same time, financial institutions and regulated companies have little incentive to adopt fully decentralized models, where accountability and legal responsibility are difficult to define. Instead, they are embracing blockchain as infrastructure while keeping governance, compliance, and ownership within familiar regulatory frameworks.

As industries mature, they tend to move away from broad narratives and adopt language that reflects real use cases. Artificial intelligence is increasingly discussed in terms of productivity rather than machine learning, cloud computing eventually became enterprise infrastructure instead of a category on its own, and blockchain appears to be following a similar path.

In the end, practice won over theory. The technology proved valuable, but not necessarily in the way its earliest advocates imagined, rather than adopting decentralization as an ideology, companies are adopting blockchain because it solves real financial problems.

The next era: Onchain Finance

We believe the next phase of the industry is better described as Onchain Finance.

It changes the way companies position themselves: Web3 describes a technological vision, Onchain Finance describes an economic transformation.

This reflects the growing adoption of blockchain to improve how money moves, how assets are issued, capital is managed, and how ownership is recorded. The focus shifts from the technology itself to the financial systems being rebuilt on top of it.

What this means for the industry

This change is already visible across the market. Companies leading the next wave are building payment infrastructure, tokenization platforms, custody solutions, settlement networks, and financial products for institutions. Their customers are less interested in blockchain as a concept than in the operational improvements it delivers.

Why it matters to MOIC

For us, adopting the term Onchain Finance isn’t about replacing one buzzword with another, but using language that better reflects where the market is today and where we believe it’s heading.

In fact, this isn’t a new perspective for us, over the past year, our research has consistently explored themes like neobanks, onchain financial infrastructure, and the convergence between traditional finance and blockchain, well before they became the industry’s dominant narrative. What once looked like an emerging thesis is now becoming market reality.

Today, those ideas are moving from research to reality. Onchain finance is becoming the foundation for a new generation of financial services, powered by blockchain infrastructure and designed for faster, more transparent, and more efficient capital markets!