The Big Dump of TIA Token: The Disillusionment of Traditional Narratives in the Encryption Industry

The once glorious TIA Token has now fallen below its initial launch price, with the current quote at only $1.62, a big dump of over 90% from its peak of around $20. As a former leader in the modular blockchain sector, TIA is now mired in negative public opinion regarding founder sell-offs and internal management issues.

The fall of this former star not only represents the decline of the modular blockchain track but also serves as a microcosm of the traditional narratives in the entire encryption industry gradually being disproven. Currently, while we see the stock market celebrating new highs in the Nasdaq index, on the other hand, the once-booming narratives within the cryptocurrency circle are shattering one after another, with coin prices continuously falling. This indicates that traditional encryption narratives are becoming unsustainable, and the industry has entered a true test of practical applications.

From Glory to Fall

TIA, short for Celestia, is one of the most anticipated modular blockchain projects from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024. In the early 2024 bull market, the TIA Token surged from single digits after the airdrop to a high of 20 dollars. Its vision is to combine the sovereign interoperability of Cosmos with a summary-centric Ethereum that has shared security.

However, starting in the second half of 2024, as market enthusiasm declines and project ecology progresses slowly, the governance and team issues of Celestia gradually come to light. The most controversial is the suspicion of executives collectively cashing out. Some users revealed that as early as the beginning of October 2024, all executives of Celestia completed their unlocking and began to sell Tokens on a large scale. One co-founder was even pointed out to have sold over 25 million dollars' worth of Tokens off the market, and then quietly moved overseas.

At the same time, Celestia's marketing operations also faced backlash. Opinion leaders who once supported TIA were exposed for receiving significant promotional fees. Meanwhile, a co-founder of a certain media platform, despite frequently recommending TIA, contradicted himself on the key issue of "whether to hold coins," further raising community concerns about whether the project is merely a marketing product manipulated by capital.

The deeper rift internally comes from the management, as the former head of developer relations was fired due to alleged misconduct, leading to a public relations storm. Celestia was reported to have bought out a competitor for seven figures in USD, forcing it to withdraw from collaborations with other projects. Such "exclusive mergers and acquisitions" have sparked considerable controversy, while also exposing the team's anxiety regarding their expansion path.

At a time when the coin price is experiencing a big dump and the community's trust is on the verge of collapse, a co-founder proposed a radical governance model of "governance is proof" in early 2025, advocating for off-chain governance voting to replace the traditional proof of stake mechanism to address ongoing inflationary pressures. However, before this disruptive proposal could be implemented, the fact that team executives were cashing out was gradually exposed, leading the community to generally believe that this was a governance facade aimed at "stabilizing prices and covering up issues." As of now, its coin price has fallen more than 90% from its peak. Furthermore, on-chain activity is also dismal; according to data, its on-chain Gas revenue in the past 24 hours was only $231.

The Collapse of the Narrative in the Encryption Industry Behind TIA's Fall

The collapse of TIA is not just the failure of a project and a Token; it reflects a microcosm of the disillusionment of the new narrative in the entire encryption industry.

In the past cycles, fields such as modularization, AI Agent, DePIN, GameFi, and NFT have all sparked wave after wave of excitement, welcoming a collective frenzy of capital and retail investors. However, by 2025, we witnessed the collective collapse of the once-prominent narratives, with altcoins facing widespread despair.

Similar to TIA, various leading projects in different tracks that were once favored by capital quickly accumulated a large amount of traffic and achieved a big dump in coin price in a short period of time, thanks to the narrative tailwind. However, this heat is often just a fleeting moment and will soon cool down.

The fall of these star tokens reflects a deeper crisis in the encryption industry: the lack of genuine technological innovation and user implementation will continuously consume and dilute narratives and trust. After modularization, new narratives are also hard to see at the public chain level. Additionally, there are other voices in the current industry on different tracks, such as AI and blockchain combined projects, which mostly remain at the conceptual level. RWA not only faces regulatory issues but also needs to answer the fundamental question of "whether there is real demand."

The once-popular trends are being debunked one by one and quickly forgotten by people. Meanwhile, the traditional financial markets continue to receive good news. Whether it is U.S. stocks or Hong Kong stocks related to compliance with encryption currency, such as stablecoins, compliant exchanges, etc., they have all welcomed a continuous rise.

On one side is the lack of native innovation in encryption and the big dump of coin prices, while on the other side, compliant encryption projects in the traditional market are being favored by capital and the market. Some believe this is a signal that "the industry is already done for," but in reality, it is more like a warning to all project parties: only true technological innovation and practical application can create real value. The old ways of the traditional cryptocurrency circle—telling stories, competing for traffic, pumping and then dumping—are no longer viable. Today's Web3 projects, just like Web2 projects, will ultimately be judged by their ability to land effectively.