The Evolution of Blockchain Technology: A Trust and Value Experiment from Concept to Reality

The development history of Blockchain technology is essentially an experiment about trust and value. Its core lies in achieving decentralized consensus and the efficient circulation of value. As this technology transitions from theoretical concepts to practical applications, moving from the laboratory into daily life, we witness the rise and fall of numerous projects. When the promises of technology face real-world challenges and ecological visions encounter execution barriers, some choose to wait patiently, some decide to innovate actively, while others embrace diverse possibilities with an open attitude.

The development process of Fifth City Vcity (hereinafter referred to as Fifth City) has also gone through many complex challenges and opportunities. Recently, Fifth City published an open letter to its community, reviewing the exploration journey from its establishment to the present and detailing the future development direction and vision. The letter emphasizes that Fifth City is committed to building a self-circulating ecosystem, while optimizing underlying technology, with the core concept of "user value first," exploring how to break through traditional frameworks in blockchain ecosystem construction, achieve sustainable development of the ecosystem, and maximize user rights.

Challenges and Breakthroughs in the Early Stages of Entrepreneurship

Fifth City originated from an important component of a certain ecosystem. According to reports, the project was initiated by founder Xie Zhang on November 3, 2022, and is headquartered in Vancouver. In the early stages of the project, the team invested a large amount of resources, including dozens of servers running around the clock, but fell into difficulties as the mainnet was delayed in launching. At that time, hundreds of related ecological projects chose to shut down due to unsustainability, and only a few ecological projects that persisted were struggling. However, Xie Zhang did not choose to give up or continue waiting, but actively sought a way out of the predicament, ultimately launching Fifth City on August 25, 2023, as an upgraded and transformed product of the original project.

Despite the original project's servers still being operational, Fifth City has evolved into an independent platform, achieving breakthroughs in technical architecture and ecological design. On February 20, 2025, Fifth City invested heavily in creating a well-crafted and grand metaverse city, paying tribute to the original ecology while showcasing its technical strength and innovative capabilities. This virtual city is seen as a symbol of gratitude for the past and marks Fifth City's gradual discovery of its own development path in exploration.

Over the past six years, a certain project has attracted tens of millions of users and thousands of ecological projects through the low-threshold method of mobile mining. Fifth City has drawn lessons from this and continues to grow through imitation and innovation. The open letter states that Fifth City has not chosen to completely separate from the original ecology, but hopes to coexist with it and make progress together on the path of public chain construction.

User Value First, Reverse Design Thinking of the Fifth City

In the letter, Fifth City analyzed the industry pain points of public chain construction: the value of a public chain lies not merely in the "ritual" of the mainnet launch, but in whether the mainnet can support the real operation of the ecosystem, whether it can achieve a final balance of ecological development, node incentives, and market circulation, while also realizing the possibility of sustainable development; a true public chain ecosystem should not stop at the symbolic narrative of "mining," but should build practical application scenarios, verifiable economic models, and sustainable community governance mechanisms. These challenges are essentially the difficulty of balancing technological implementation and user rights.

First of all, the mainnet is not equivalent to a value network: if the mainnet cannot support smart contracts, cannot realize asset circulation and ecological collaboration, and key infrastructure has long been closed off, its essence is still a closed experiment. Secondly, users should not be seen as data laborers: when contributors cannot obtain their rightful benefits through transparent and relatively fair rules, the consensus that was established will eventually collapse. Furthermore, ecology should not merely be a pile of functions: if the application scenarios are only at the construction stage, lacking viable economic models and user value capture mechanisms, and lacking an application matrix with an economic closed loop, it may degenerate into a showcase of technical demonstrations.

These industry pain points reveal the most easily overlooked truth in public chain construction: the difficulty in integrating technological idealism with practical implementation capabilities and the spirit of community governance, which may lead to projects struggling to survive in the rapidly changing market cycles.

In this context, Fifth City has explored a unique path through adversity. Its team consists of blockchain protocol layer developers, financial architects, security engineers, metaverse developers, and an international art team. From the very beginning, they adopted a "reverse design thinking" approach — first constructing a self-circulating ecological scenario, and then optimizing the underlying technology to address the two core issues of sustainability and user value attribution.

Based on the path of "user value first", the ecological matrix of the Fifth City consists of 12 major sectors, which form multiple independent ecosystems that are linked by the same computing power system, creating a collaborative architecture that supports and complements each other. This architecture lays a solid underlying foundation for it and nurtures an infinite value system of possibilities.

1. Innovative "Attention Mining"

Unlike traditional mining models, "Attention Mining" in Fifth City redefines the value of user participation. Every moment of attention contributed by users in social, creative, and consumption scenarios will be quantified through a credit value system and a points system, and secured as true digital assets through Blockchain.

2. The mainnet is a commitment, but not the destination.

Since the launch of the Fifth City mainnet, it has fully opened wallet interfaces and smart contract functions, ensuring seamless access for ecosystem developers and users. At the same time, the tokens held by the project party will be strictly unlocked in accordance with the user release ratio, rejecting "pre-mining" and "hidden harvesting," allowing profit distribution to truly return to community consensus. In addition, the Fifth City will achieve a 1:1 binding of the testnet and mainnet through innovative mechanisms, adopting a dynamic unlocking algorithm to optimize the token release cycle, and providing stable support for ecological development through a series of measures such as a deflationary economic model and a brand new staking mechanism, enhancing the project's sustainability.

It is worth noting that, unlike traditional single public chain projects, the mainnet is not the ultimate goal of the Fifth City, but rather a phased objective in its development process. The economic system and ecological matrix of the Fifth City will enable its potential and explosive power to far exceed that of the mainnet itself.

3. Unique Dual Asset Model

The Fifth City adopts a dual asset model, including internal circulation assets and external circulation assets. Internal circulation assets can fully connect the internal ecosystem of the Fifth City, covering the entire NFT system, points system, and ecological system, with each link in the internal circulation forming a stable value system; external circulation assets generate value in trading and cross-chain liquidity. The interaction between internal and external circulation promotes each other, creating more possibilities for token appreciation.

4. Powerful Ecological Matrix

The 12 major sectors of the Fifth City are not simply a simple overlay of single functions, but each sector can form an independent economic closed loop, with each sector being independent yet mutually empowering. At the same time, the Fifth City has established a core philosophy of "user value first" and "user sovereignty," creating a three-dimensional growth flywheel of "technology-scenario-user" that can motivate the community to form strong cohesion and self-drive, thereby promoting the formation and steady development of a robust closed-loop economic system in the Fifth City.

Advocating a non-zero-sum game, a development philosophy of symbiosis and co-construction

In addition, Fifth City expressed understanding and respect for the relevant ecological users in the letter, pointing out that the persistence during the six-year wait and the pursuit of the decentralized ideal are worth cherishing. At the same time, it advocates a "non-zero-sum game" mindset, suggesting that users diversify their layout to spread risks—continuing to pay attention to the development of the original project while also exploring the potential of Fifth City, just like the coexistence of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the complementarity between Layer1 and Layer2.

Fifth City emphasizes that it does not attempt to replace any projects, but rather provides users with a more certain possibility and dimension. It commits to not abandoning the original projects, forming a symbiotic relationship with them, and invites users to participate in ecological co-construction and share in the growth dividends.

In the final part of the open letter, Fifth City emphasizes fulfilling commitments through actions. Since its inception in 2023, its technological iterations and application scenarios have never ceased, winning the trust of 1.6 million users. It states that only the efficient circulation of sincerity and strength, consensus and value can win long-lasting trust. Because the essence of blockchain is, after all, an encounter between "trust" and "value."