Original Title: Big Ideas from a16z: Top Projects to Watch in 2025
Author: Stacy Muur
Compiled by: Scof, ChainCatcher
The end of the year is one of my favorite times because top minds in the Web3 industry begin to share their high confidence ideas and predictions for 2025. This is an exciting time to sketch out the potential of the crypto industry for the upcoming year. Earlier this month, a16z crypto published the 2025 big ideas list. Which protocols have already established themselves in these key areas? Let's explore this new publication.
This time, I want to focus on the article published by a16z crypto: (A16Z Outlook on 2025 Crypto Trends).
Core Idea #1: AI Agents for Managing Wallets
In short, AI agents have demonstrated the ability to trade independently and with full autonomy. There are many emerging application scenarios in this field where AI agents can become new roles in Web3, participating in trading, investment, bridging, and other intent realizations.
In this field, several projects I am paying attention to include:
NEAR Protocol: NEAR is positioning itself as the 'AI Blockchain'. Recently, they launched several important projects, including Near AI and Near Intents. NEAR has already gained significant influence in the industry and is expected to become a leader in this field by 2025.
Fetch.ai: Fetch.ai is a platform built for the AI economy, providing tools for building, deploying, and monetizing AI services. Its ASI wallet can integrate the best features and advancements of Fetch in the AI space, potentially becoming the first implementation case of AI combined with wallets.
Armor Wallet: Armor Wallet is an AI-driven crypto wallet and trading assistant that supports transactions across multiple blockchains and executes complex trades quickly. It is important to note that Armor Wallet is still in the early stages of development.
Coin98 Super Wallet: Coin98 launched their AI wallet at the end of November, equipped with an AI assistant capable of recommending tools and simplifying complex tasks while supporting natural human interactions.
Core Idea #2: Enhanced Information Aggregation
This concept revolves around new mechanisms based on prediction markets, aimed at aggregating information more effectively and enhancing the decision-making processes across various fields.
This is a relatively new idea, and regarding this field, I recommend reading Delphi Digital's report (Markets Will Save the World).
My watchlist:
MetaDAO: MetaDAO is the first project to implement future governance (Futarchy) at scale within a DAO. Futarchy is a governance system that combines prediction markets and democratic voting, aimed at driving decisions through the market's trading outcomes.
Futarchy: The concept of Futarchy is similar to MetaDAO, emphasizing governance through markets and reflecting how various policy options may impact token value.
Core Idea #3: Mass Adoption of Stablecoins
This idea focuses on the increasing adoption of stablecoins, as the trading volume of stablecoins has surpassed that of Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal. This shift will benefit many market participants, including stablecoin issuers, crypto card companies, and crypto acquiring services.
To better showcase the stablecoin ecosystem, here is an ecological map from the above research. Consider adding these projects to your watchlist.
In my view, it is particularly important in this field to emphasize the infrastructure that can facilitate the growing transaction volume, which will become the main beneficiaries of the widespread adoption of stablecoins.
Apart from TRON (as a well-known USDT transfer engine), a noteworthy protocol is Noble. This emerging project aims to develop liquidity infrastructure to help asset issuers participate in the cross-chain economy.
Core Idea #4: Modular Everything
Modularity is not new, but a16z believes that more modular solutions will gain mainstream adoption next year. The following areas are worth paying attention to:
RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service): Gelato, Caldera, AltLayer, Conduit, Bison Labs.
Interoperability: Hyperlane, Polyhedra, Omni.
Shared Ordering: Espresso, Radius, Zellular.
Privacy: Nillion, Brevis, Automata, Fhenix, zkMe.
Intent: Anoma, Aori, Native.
Storage: Arweave, Storj, Filecoin, Zus.
Oracles: Pyth, RedStone, Supra, Chainlink.
Focus on infrastructure solutions remains crucial in 2025.
Core Idea #5: Seamless User Experience
This is one of the strongest trends that I see. Chain Abstraction has become a hot topic this year, and we are finally approaching the moment of turning the abstract user experience into reality, rather than just a concept.
Here is a great Chain Abstraction diagram from The Defiant:
These projects are all worth noting, but I particularly want to highlight Particle, which is one of my most promising projects. Their newly launched 'Universal Accounts' allows users to seamlessly trade assets on any chain through UniversalX.
In this field, another noteworthy project is Everclear, which is the primary clearing layer for Web3. As the resolver economy required for chain abstraction expands, resolvers need to rebalance assets across different chains, and Everclear is the most cost-effective driver of this process.
Core Idea #6: Crypto App Stores
The original report from a16z mentioned several notable crypto app store developers, including Telegram app on TON, Alchemy, Solana's mobile dApp store (Seeker), and Worldcoin's mobile app.
I would also like to recommend a few more projects: Glue, DeFi App, and VeBetter.
Core Idea #7: Tokenization of Everything
Tokenization is a broad topic, especially concerning the tokenization of 'unconventional' assets. Here are some noteworthy projects:
Kaito AI: Tokenized Influence (Attention Economy).
GAIB: Providing an economic layer for an AI-driven future through the tokenization of enterprise-level GPUs.
Compute Labs: Competing directly with GAIB through GPU fragmentation ownership.
ShopX: Tokenized goods and products (RWA in the e-commerce sector).
Eaas: Tokenized carbon footprint.
AI Agents and DeSci: Dolz (tokenized adult film stars), PsyDAO (tokenized psychedelic science and art), Molecule (biopharmaceutical IP tokenization protocol) and other high-risk, peak hype projects.
These projects bring more innovative possibilities to the crypto world and are worth watching.
