Crypto does have its own tragedy of the commons.
The shared resource is a finite pool of active users, attention, and onchain liquidity. Every team looks at that liquidity and rationally asks: how do we capture our piece of it?
So we launch another token, another product, another incentive program, all competing for the same users and the same capital.
Same users → new token → liquidity migrates → previous ecosystem weakens → another token launches → repeat.
We’ve become extremely good at redistributing liquidity and not nearly good enough at creating it.
That’s the final boss
The sustainable loop is different:
Better products → new users → new capital and activity → protocol revenue → better infrastructure → better products → more users.
The goal shouldn’t be capturing a larger percentage of crypto’s existing liquidity. It should be collectively increasing the amount of liquidity and users entering crypto.