Dr. Han Charts Web3's Path to Everyday Mainstream Adoption

As 2025 drew to a close, Gate founder Dr. Han released a comprehensive vision letter that reframes the blockchain industry’s trajectory. Rather than viewing Web3 as a niche technology, Dr. Han positions it as an imminent fundamental shift in how billions of people will manage assets, make payments, and interact with digital finance. The letter outlines both Gate’s concrete 2025 achievements and a strategic roadmap for cementing Web3 into daily life—a shift Dr. Han believes will define 2026 and beyond.

Gate’s 2025: From Second-Place Spot Trading to $11.6B Reserve Milestone

The past year saw Gate solidify its position as a global trading powerhouse. The exchange ranked second worldwide in spot trading volume and liquidity, while maintaining a top-three position in derivatives. More significantly, Gate published transparency data revealing $11.676 billion in total reserves with a reserve ratio of 124%—covering nearly 500 user assets. This metric represents the industry’s most comprehensive public disclosure, according to Dr. Han, outpacing competing platforms in transparency and user protection.

Beyond trading metrics, Gate expanded its brand footprint through two major sponsorships: becoming an official partner of the F1 Red Bull Racing team and securing the official armband sponsorship with Inter Milan Football Club. These collaborations signal a deliberate strategy to elevate blockchain’s professional perception and bring Web3 visibility to mainstream sports audiences.

Web3’s Reality Check: Why This Year Marked a Turning Point for Blockchain

Dr. Han identifies 2025 as a watershed moment where Web3 transitioned from theoretical promise to practical deployment. The shift manifests across three critical dimensions: technological maturity, market refocus, and cross-industry integration.

On the technical front, longstanding pain points—sluggish on-chain performance, fragmented cross-chain transfers, and poor user experience—have substantially improved. Dr. Han emphasizes that what once seemed insurmountable barriers are now gradually dissolving, positioning Web3 for large-scale deployment rather than remaining confined to tech enthusiasts.

Market dynamics shifted noticeably as well. While Bitcoin reached new price peaks multiple times throughout 2025 (currently trading around $89.65K), the capital influx reflected a fundamental change in investor mentality. According to Dr. Han’s analysis, new capital is no longer chasing short-term speculation but instead prioritizing platform stability, asset transparency, and long-term ecosystem health. On-chain data corroborates this trend: value creation and actual trading activity are gradually returning to on-chain protocols, moving beyond purely speculative trading mechanics.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Web3 began integrating with adjacent technology sectors. AI is no longer a peripheral tool but an active participant in transactions and risk management. Encrypted payments are entering real-world merchant scenarios. Digital asset management has evolved from simple holdings into sophisticated, long-term allocation strategies. These convergences suggest Web3 is becoming an essential infrastructure layer for the next-generation digital economy.

Infrastructure as the Foundation: Gate’s Layer 2 Strategy for On-Chain Growth

At the core of Gate’s strategy lies a recognition that mainstream adoption requires robust foundational infrastructure. Dr. Han emphasizes this is not cosmetic feature-building but fundamental architectural restructuring.

Gate’s investment in its Layer 2 network—Gate Layer—exemplifies this commitment. The system aims to bridge on-chain and off-chain operations seamlessly, enabling cross-chain asset transfers with minimal friction and lowering barriers to on-chain participation. Internal backend data reflects growing user engagement following these deployments, though Dr. Han acknowledges that external observers may not yet perceive the significance of these technical advances.

Simultaneously, Gate accelerated its compliance expansion across Dubai, Europe, and Australia. Dr. Han articulates a deliberate philosophy: platforms pursuing genuine long-term viability must embrace regulatory frameworks rather than circumvent them. As global compliance standards crystallize, Gate is positioning itself to serve a broader geographic user base from a compliant foundation—a competitive advantage many competitors have overlooked.

Dr. Han’s “All in Web3” Vision: Making Blockchain Invisible to Users

The letter’s most provocative argument centers on a counterintuitive thesis: Web3’s true success will manifest when users stop thinking about blockchain entirely. Dr. Han contends that current Web3 implementations remain too complex, requiring users to learn new concepts before participation. True mass adoption demands the inverse: technology should adapt to human behavior, not vice versa.

Under the “All in Web3” mission, Gate envisions an experience where digital asset management, payments, and DeFi function as intuitively as utilities like water and electricity. Users should execute investments, on-chain wealth management, cross-border transfers, and decentralized finance through a unified interface—the Gate App—without navigating fragmented systems or relying on traditional finance’s complex intermediary structures.

This philosophy extends to Gate’s sports and cultural partnerships. Rather than technical conferences, Dr. Han prioritizes offline events, sports sponsorships, and cultural activities that allow potential users to experience Web3 intuitively without first mastering blockchain mechanics. The reasoning is psychological: users encountering intuitive Web3 applications through mainstream channels will gradually adopt these tools without requiring technical education.

Scaling Global Talent to Sustain Long-Term Resilience

Dr. Han identifies human capital as one of an exchange’s most critical risk-management assets. Gate’s approach prioritizes deliberate, measured international team expansion over aggressive scaling. The company has cultivated a diverse, multilingual workforce with deep technical capabilities and long-term industry perspectives.

For 2026, Gate plans to intensify global talent recruitment and establish itself as a preferred employer brand within blockchain. Dr. Han signals that core positions and strategic roles will carry “highly competitive incentive mechanisms”—a signal that talent acquisition has become a central strategic lever. This investment philosophy reflects confidence in Web3’s long-term trajectory; sustainable competitive advantage derives from organizational depth, not short-term market positioning.

2026 Roadmap: From Talent Recruitment to Real-World Adoption

Looking ahead, Dr. Han articulates 2026 as a pivotal year—the inflection point where blockchain transitions from niche technology to everyday necessity. The roadmap encompasses three interconnected priorities: continued infrastructural development, talent acquisition, and industry-wide collaboration to accelerate real-world application integration.

Dr. Han explicitly rejects the premise that rapid growth is desirable. Instead, Gate will “move more steadily and reliably, accompanying more users into the next phase of Web3.” This language reflects a deliberate positioning against competitors pursuing aggressive expansion at the expense of stability. The implication: in a maturing market, methodical resilience outperforms velocity.

The letter concludes with an industry-wide invitation. Dr. Han calls for “like-minded partners” to collaborate in transitioning Web3 from conceptual framework to practical infrastructure embedded in daily life. The framing suggests Gate views 2026 less as a competitive race and more as a collective industry maturation moment—one where winners will be defined by credibility, stability, and user trust rather than market share growth alone.

For users and observers, Dr. Han’s vision inverts conventional blockchain narratives. Web3’s breakthrough will not stem from technical innovation alone but from making technology sufficiently seamless that users remain unaware they are using blockchain at all. If this thesis proves accurate, 2026 may indeed mark the beginning of Web3’s transition from speculative asset class to prosaic financial infrastructure.