A clear pattern of how crypto grows has emerged, and it’s not that different from how other technologies have reached the mainstream.

https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/product-cycles-vs-financial-cycles/

Price cycles are driven by psychology and liquidity. Adoption cycles are driven by utility and infrastructure.

They are related, but they are not the same. Historically, prices led adoption. That is common in early technological revolutions. Now, adoption is leading and prices are lagging.

Source: https://obviously.substack.com/p/the-most-uncomfortable-phase-of-crypto

Crypto’s adoption playbook looks like this:

1. A new onchain primitive emerges
2. It starts as something only power users understand
3. The experience gets abstracted and packaged
4. Distribution explodes

We’ve already seen this sequence twice:

• 2014 → Smart Contracts: programmable rules + programmable ownership.
• 2017–2025 → Stablecoins: programmable dollars become the first truly global onchain product-market fit.
• 2026 → Onchain Vaults: programmable asset management becomes the next mainstream product layer in finance.

The thesis of this essay is simple:

Stablecoins proved onchain money. Onchain vaults will prove onchain asset management.