Original author: Mippo, Blockworks co-founder
Original translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
1. The United States will re-emerge as the global core center for cryptocurrencies.
An increasing number of entrepreneurs will return to the U.S. and set up offices in New York. The scale of cryptocurrency conferences in the U.S. will also surpass similar events in Asia.
2. More than 10 DeFi protocols will officially launch fee switches, including Uniswap.
3. DeFi protocols will gradually adopt customer asset rehypothecation as a new business model.
This trend will involve areas such as cross-chain bridges and liquid staking tokens (LSTs).
4. The Ethereum community's debate over the 'North Star' roadmap will reach a conclusion:
Attempts to scale the L1 mainnet will remain at a low level (e.g., raising the Gas target to 50M gwei, while discussions about shortening block times will heat up).
Ultimately, the Rollup-centered roadmap will be reaffirmed.
5. Max's scaling proposal will fail to gain enough support and will ultimately fail.
6. This outcome will bring much-needed cohesion to the Ethereum community and improve overall market sentiment.
Nevertheless, some dissenting developers and users may withdraw from the ecosystem as a result. The ETH token price is expected to perform strongly.
7. Rollup-based solutions will still struggle to achieve significant breakthroughs by 2025.
However, sufficient interoperability can be achieved through protocols like Across. There is currently no clear direction for achieving universal synchronous composability.
8. Trusted execution environments (TEEs) will gradually become an important part of L2 infrastructure and ultimately become its permanent feature.
9. Solana's development momentum will continue in this cycle, but by 2025, problems will gradually emerge:
Due to the decentralization of memecoins and challenges brought by MEV (maximum extractable value), Solana's REV will find it difficult to reach new highs. To address these issues, the extremism of the Solana community will rise.
10. The Firedancer client will officially launch in the fourth quarter, at which point Solana's network will achieve a processing capacity of 100,000 TPS.
11. Solana may adjust its token issuance policy to reduce inflation, while Ethereum will not make similar changes.
12. Base will emerge as a dark horse in the Rollup ecosystem and become a major competitor to Solana.
Total assets on Base are expected to exceed $40 billion. Base will also become the preferred chain for AI agents and other AI applications.
13. Stablecoins will gradually become the dominant asset on L2 networks, with their quantity expected to reach more than double that of ETH.
14. The stablecoin market will experience breakthrough growth in the coming year:
The market capitalization is expected to exceed $450 billion. Stablecoins will become one of the top three investment areas of focus for venture capitalists (VCs).
15. More than 5 large fintech companies or traditional financial institutions will launch their own stablecoins by 2025.
This will bring competitive pressure to existing stablecoins, causing their growth rate to slow.
16. More than 10 enterprises (including banks and Web2 giants) will launch their own L2 networks by 2025.
However, most of these networks will find it difficult to gain market recognition and achieve real results. The only possible exception is financial technology companies, such as Robinhood.
17. With its large user base and strong brand influence, Robinhood will become one of the dominant forces in the industry by 2025.
By the end of the year, Robinhood will be viewed alongside Coinbase as one of the two leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S.
18. Investment opportunities in L1 blockchains still exist and will not disappear in the short term.
The standout projects will be Sui and HyperLiquid.
19. The ICO model will return, but it will not dominate like it did in 2017.
Investor protection measures will be further improved, and ICOs will resemble crowdfunding activities more.
It is expected that 5 blue-chip protocols will raise funds through ICOs.
20. Venture capital will flow back into the crypto industry, but the scale of financing will not reach the levels of 2021.
In 2021, the total amount of venture capital in the crypto sector was $30 billion. By 2025, it is expected to be between $20 billion and $25 billion. The market will see more funding rounds of $50 million to $100 million.
21. Crypto companies will see a window for IPOs, but there will not be a large-scale listing frenzy.
More than 4 companies are expected to go public, but due to the valuation bubble of 2021 still not fully digested, more companies may delay their listing plans.
Growth equity investment will still not enter the crypto space.
22. The mainstream trend in 2025 will be the combination of AI and crypto.
The continuous advancement of foundational models will attract more attention and drive a surge in AI-related tokens.
23. AI application scenarios will become more diverse, not limited to agents.
Different types of agents will be experimented with, such as content creators, hedge fund traders, and artists.
But the vast majority of attempts will remain in the early stages and may not succeed.
24. TikTok's influence in the crypto space will reach unprecedented heights.
Crypto Twitter (CT) may become the main exit channel for certain TikTok tokens.
25. The United States will pass significant cryptocurrency legislation in 2025.
An updated market structure bill or stablecoin bill may be signed into law.
26. Bitcoin's L2 solutions will still struggle to make breakthroughs by 2025.
True zero-knowledge proof (ZK)-based Bitcoin L2 will still take longer to achieve.
27. Cryptocurrencies will be widely viewed as a long-term force in American politics.
Mainstream media's attitude will gradually shift, beginning to acknowledge that cryptocurrencies will not easily exit the historical stage.
Original link
