An interesting phenomenon in the perpetual contract track: some infrastructure has spent years honing its underlying capabilities, only to be easily overlooked—until this year when it finally found the right use case.

Orderly is a typical example this year. It's not that the technology suddenly made a leap, but rather that the complex perpetual contract system was transformed into an out-of-the-box product form. From no-code building tools to the Vanguard trading system, it appears to be product iteration, but essentially it is turning professional-grade infrastructure into platform-level tools that anyone can operate.

This shift from black box to transparency, from high barriers to mass adoption, often tests product thinking more than the technology itself.