I've been thinking about a question repeatedly recently —
In this extremely differentiated market in 2025, what type of protocol can withstand the cycles?
Relying on trends? On incentives? On big players? On narratives?
These can certainly bring growth, but none can truly define 'resilience'.
Where does true resilience come from?
Whether it can become part of someone else's ecosystem.
It's not about 'being followed' but rather 'being relied upon'.
It's not about 'participating' but rather 'being compelled to'.
And when I applied this logic back to @falcon_finance, I discovered something very crucial:
Falcon is evolving from 'being seen' to 'being relied upon.'
It is not a decline after a fall but has entered a stage that only infrastructure will experience—
Shifting from incremental market to deep market.
In this article, I want to take 'ecological depth' as the core and explain it from the user's perspective:
Why did Falcon not dissipate after the heat wave receded?
Why is it forming a new ecological gravity?
Why has its growth method never been linear, but rather layered?
So why is this stage more worthy of attention than any rise?
First, when liquidity switches from 'chasing hotspots' back to 'selecting underlying infrastructure,' Falcon's users begin to layer.
The biggest changes on-chain in the past few weeks are not prices but behaviors:
The vast majority of users have begun to shift from 'chasing activities,' 'chasing rewards,' 'chasing topics,'
Turn to 'chasing tools,' 'chasing stability,' 'chasing structural returns.'
When the market begins to calm down, the true infrastructure will be re-examined.
And Falcon's user structure presents a very rare distribution at this stage:
1. Active arbitrageurs still maintain retention.
This means that the stability of USDf and the risk exposure on the strategy side are still considered 'reliable.'
Arbitrageurs never care about emotions; they stay because it is useful.
2. Cross-chain strategy accounts are still constructing dollar positions in Falcon.
It shows that USDf's function as a 'unified entry currency' is still enhancing.
3. A portion of high-net-worth and institutional accounts treat Falcon as a 'fund transfer layer.'
They do not care about FF's short-term ups and downs, only care about:
• Can the funds enter quickly?
• Can collateral stabilize?
• Is scalability sufficient?
• Will the strategy experience extreme drawdowns?
The answers to these questions are currently given by Falcon are stable enough.
This point is very critical because it indicates:
Falcon does not rely on hotspots for existence; it relies on real structural demand to maintain itself.
Only when the on-chain switches from 'emotional' to 'rational' can Falcon's true position be seen.
Second, past growth came from speed; now growth comes from depth.
The growth during the peak period is linear:
Collateral ↑ → Mint USDf ↑ → Strategy Funds ↑ → Attention ↑ → FF Trading Volume ↑
But the growth during the sedimentation period is layered:
Some users leave (mostly active types)
Some users stay (demand-driven).
Some users expand participation (institutional types)
Some ecosystems are starting to access USDf (scenario-driven).
This growth method does not seem 'explosive,' but it has an essential characteristic:
It does not rely on emotions, nor does it depend on external forces.
All protocols that can traverse cycles on-chain have this in common:
uniswap, aave, maker, Lido
Their growth has never been a straight line; instead, it is layered accumulation.
Falcon is currently in its accumulation phase.
Third, when the ecosystem begins to revolve around Falcon, you know it has the 'infrastructure qualification.'
There have been two very obvious changes during this period:
1. More and more protocols are starting to treat USDf as 'composable assets.'
LPs, lending pools, cross-chain aggregators, routers, liquidation modules,
All start to treat USDf as 'assets of the same level.'
This is Falcon's biggest moat:
When your assets are treated as 'base currency' by others' ecosystems,
Your status is determined not by yourself, but by the ecosystem.
2. Users start to see Falcon as a 'collateral and asset standardization tool,' rather than an 'opportunity entry.'
This indicates that Falcon's positioning is shifting from 'project' to 'tool,'
The lifecycle of tools is much longer than that of projects.
Once this trend starts, it will not easily reverse.
Fourth, the price pressure of FF is not Falcon's weakness, but rather 'the governance value has not been fully realized.'
Many people misunderstood the decline of FF, treating it as a retreat of Falcon itself.
But the fact is just the opposite:
The only issue that price pressure exposes is:
FF's value capture structure has not yet entered its final form.
In other words:
Falcon's products are mature.
Falcon's demand is stable
Falcon's ecosystem is expanding.
But FF's value return mechanism is still under construction.
This leads to the short term:
Protocol strong → Token weak
Strong demand → Weak capture
Strong ecosystem → Weak distribution
This is a typical transitional phase where 'infrastructure does not equal tokens.'
As long as Falcon completes its value capture mechanism (buybacks, yield binding, governance strengthening),
FF's price will naturally return to the track of the protocol itself.
Fifth, the true long-term value of Falcon can only be understood from one sentence:
In the future, who will be responsible for 'standardizing collateral → outputting dollars → connecting to the financial layer,'
Who can become the irreplaceable infrastructure at the bottom of the entire ecosystem.
but Falcon's development path—
Collateral unified layer
Strategy yield layer
Risk management layer
Dollar standardization layer
It is becoming increasingly clear in this direction.
It is not a protocol 'based on stimulus,'
It is a protocol 'based on logic.'
The lifecycle of such protocols often far exceeds that of emotional projects.
Sixth, my judgment on Falcon is very clear:
Currently, Falcon is at the most critical stage of its entire lifecycle—
‘Heat exit, value reveal, structural reconstruction.’
This stage has the following characteristics:
Low sentiment
Slow growth
Ecosystem stable
User depth
Low risk
Path is clear
Real demand
Value is not fully reflected
If Falcon completes the following three things in the next 3-9 months:
1. USDf becomes the standard dollar across chains and ecosystems.
2. Strategy yields are fully transparent and engineered.
3. FF's value capture mechanism enters automation.
Then FF's reassessment will not be a 'rebound,'
Rather, it is 'rewriting.'
Seventh, the summary is simple enough:
Falcon is not declining; Falcon is 'settling.'
FF is not weak, but 'unfinished.'
The ecosystem is not cold but is 'filtering noise.'
Users are not few, but 'concentrated.'
The growth rate is not slow; rather, it is 'entering a real growth stage.'
This is what infrastructure should look like.
When the next wave of demand arrives,
Protocols that can be truly used are qualified to stand at the forefront.
And Falcon is getting closer to this position.
