In 2024, amidst the dramatic changes in the global financial landscape, the crypto industry experienced profound ups and downs and reconstruction. After half a year of adjustment and repair, the total market capitalization of the industry surpassed $3.8 trillion by the end of the year, with Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of $100,000, signaling its core position in the global asset system. This is not just a price rise, but the beginning of structural changes: a liquidity circulation chain centered on Bitcoin as a core asset, with ETFs and U.S. stocks as the funding bridge and publicly traded companies as the carriers, has already formed.
Bitcoin is rising to become the world's largest dollar-denominated financial asset and a key tool for hedging against the U.S. fiscal deficit and the U.S. debt crisis. This financial transformation not only shapes a new asset value system but also injects lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry. The entire blockchain industry benefits from this, and OKX Ventures is actively engaged in this transformative wave, maintaining a positive outlook on the quiet yet profound changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world over the next decade.
1. Review of 2024: Over 60 project layouts, extensive multi-track layouts
This year, OKX Ventures has actively increased investment in the industry, aiming to accelerate innovation and development in the crypto industry. The total investment amount exceeded $100 million throughout the year, covering over 60 projects and funds, with a focus on innovations and entrepreneurship in Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and the BTC ecosystem, deeply exploring high-quality projects. In terms of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects, and the BTC ecosystem account for the highest proportion, while there is also a broad layout in multi-chain ecosystems, DeFi, and various ecological funds.
Moreover, OKX Ventures actively collaborates with ecosystem partners like TON Ventures, Ankaa, and TGH, jointly building a prosperous innovative ecosystem. By providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs, helping them turn ideas into reality more quickly and steadily. Whether in the incubation stage or the acceleration phase, OKX Ventures always centers around innovation, committed to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology, injecting more vitality and possibilities into the industry.
OKX Ventures deeply recognizes that the future of the blockchain industry is not merely a matter of capital investment but concerns how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises on this basis. While capital serves as a driving force, it also needs to rely on strategic vision and systemic layouts to propel the industry forward through multidimensional technological innovation, ecological development, and market expansion. Each investment decision is not just a flow of funds but a profound insight into the industry's prospects and support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion and exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures continues to layout for the industry's evolution over the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and ample space for the widespread application and profound transformation of blockchain.
At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot solely rely on the drive of capital markets; it depends more on visionary entrepreneurship and the continuous exploration of technical teams. OKX Ventures' mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies, promoting breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This is not just support for individual projects or teams but is also laying the foundation for the future ecology of the entire industry.
OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry does not rely on the success of a single technology or platform, but on building an inclusive, rich in innovation, and self-evolving industry ecosystem. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to maintain foresight amidst the tide of this era's transformation, driving the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future through continuous evolution.
2. Outlook 2025: 14 Predictions, Insights into the Future
Outlook 1: Global blockchain further compliance, industry more standardized
In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will witness significant progress, laying a solid foundation for the healthy development of the industry. The number of licensed institutions will increase significantly, providing users with safer and more reliable services. OKX CEO Star pointed out that OKX has become the world's first cryptocurrency trading platform to obtain a comprehensive operating license in the UAE.
Compliance innovations will emerge in the custodial wallet space, addressing the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custodial wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including KYC transaction monitoring and other features. This innovation can not only enhance user experience but also meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new development directions for the industry.
The macro regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for industry development. The UK government plans to consult on a regulatory framework for stablecoins and crypto assets in early 2025, indicating that the global regulatory environment is moving towards a clearer and more supportive direction. The national strategy of Bitcoin reserves may also become a reality in 2025.
The participation of institutional investors will significantly increase. As of December 17, the Bitcoin spot ETF scale exceeded $114.97 billion, and the number of Bitcoins held by MicroStrategy reached 439,000, with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the crypto industry.
The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights, raising the standards across the industry. Star predicts that by 2025, many crypto companies' compliance standards will meet or even exceed those of traditional finance. OKX's three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple encompass a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This comprehensive service model will become the industry standard, promoting the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.
The blockchain industry in 2025 will present a more mature, standardized, and innovative appearance. As Star stated, crypto finance is entering a new phase that will witness the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.
Outlook 2: AI Agents will become an important subject in the market, participating in asset creation, asset issuance, and asset trading
With the rapid development of super-large language models (XLLMs) and multi-modal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important subjects in the market. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is expected to reach $1.811 trillion by 2030 and contribute approximately $16 trillion to global GDP. The future of AI agents is not just traditional tools; they will become major players in the blockchain world with the ability to make autonomous decisions and actions.
We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios emerge in 2025. For example, interactions between agents will become an important area, with the transparency and composability provided by blockchain offering an ideal foundation. We may witness agents sending funds to each other, issuing tokens together, or even creating new social scenarios. Furthermore, decentralized agent organizations (DAOs) may also become a hotspot, with multiple agent systems working collaboratively to accomplish tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.
AI agents possess high adaptability, clear goal-setting, and self-correction capabilities, enabling them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, actively create and publish content, participate in asset trading to maximize returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This shift indicates that AI agents will play an increasingly important role in markets and social platforms, with the emergence of frameworks like eliza's AI agent and platforms represented by Myshell driving the development of this trend.
Finally, we anticipate more innovations regarding AI Agent trading intentions and next-generation user trading interfaces. This may include trading using natural language or developing new trading systems and tools specifically for AI agents. With the development of these technologies, the concept of 'wallet as a browser' may ultimately be realized, fundamentally changing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.
Outlook 3: Security projects assist in solving AI security issues
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed be an important solution to AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, cybersecurity issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially regarding counterfeiting and deep fakes. Therefore, establishing a 'human identity proof' mechanism is particularly important to ensure interactions between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations report an increase in deep fake attacks over the past year, and it is expected to rise by 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly reflects two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means new vulnerabilities are constantly emerging. For instance, different versions of models might exhibit completely different behaviors, leading to continuously changing attack methods.
Blockchain projects can effectively address these challenges due to their decentralized and immutable characteristics:
1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and track data sources, ensuring the authenticity of content generation through cryptographic signatures, combating AI-generated deep fakes and fake news while ensuring data transparency and traceability.
2. Protect training data: Safeguarding datasets required for AI model training to prevent tampering or attacks, ensuring data integrity and security, and reducing the risk of single points of failure.
3. Recording and monitoring the use of AI models: Prevent unauthorized misuse, securely share models or data on a platform without worrying about information leakage or tampering. Users can audit and verify AI behavior, thus improving trust.
OKX Ventures believes that more excellent AI startup projects will emerge in the blockchain field, enhancing the matching efficiency of AI elements in various dimensions such as data sharing, computing power allocation, and model collaboration, providing strong support for the further development of AI.
Outlook 4: AI infiltrates existing track projects, changing industry paradigms
In 2025, the in-depth application of AI technology will significantly change multiple industries, including gaming, NFT, DeFi, and social sectors.
The gaming industry may be the most affected by AI. It is expected that by 2025, global AI spending in gaming will reach approximately $1.1 billion, reflecting the industry's recognition of AI's potential. This includes: 1) Generative design: using algorithms to generate game content and improve development efficiency. 2) Personalized experiences: AI will analyze player behavior to provide tailored game recommendations and challenges. 3) Enhanced interactivity: intelligent NPCs will become more realistic, increasing the immersion of the game. 4) More intelligent AI agents will improve the way players interact with games, alleviating the burden of the gaming experience itself.
Social projects are also seeing many innovations, where AI plays an important role not only in content generation and community interaction but also in driving innovations in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In 2024, we saw platforms like Farcaster where AI agents like Clanker and Larry introduced new asset issuance methods, demonstrating a certain level of community engagement and economic potential, with Clanker's market cap breaking $100 million and LUM reaching $70 million. In the future, AI will: 1) achieve social monetization: users can earn crypto rewards through content creation and interaction. 2) build community economies: utilizing blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and profit distribution. 3) enhance security: protecting user privacy through decentralized identity verification.
DeFi will benefit from the efficiency improvements and interaction model changes brought by AI. 1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem, capable of automatically executing complex trading tasks, optimizing investment strategies, and monitoring market dynamics in real-time. 2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can also lower the participation threshold for users, integrating DeFi protocols across multiple chains to provide users with automated liquidity investment strategies, improving asset management efficiency. 3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in detecting and optimizing vulnerabilities in smart contracts; through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish a baseline for normal trading behavior, triggering alerts upon detecting abnormal behavior, thereby enhancing the security of DeFi platforms. It is expected that by 2025, the trading volume of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) will reach $4 trillion, with total locked value (TVL) exceeding $200 billion. OKX Ventures believes that there could be over 1 million AI agents operating on-chain, further driving the development of the DeFi ecosystem.
OKX Ventures predicts that 2025 will be a year of deep integration between AI and various industries. With the development of technology and the improvement of infrastructure, these fields will usher in new opportunities and challenges, providing users with richer and safer experiences.
Outlook 5: Blockchain enhances the matching efficiency of AI elements
Blockchain technology is enhancing the matching efficiency of AI elements across multiple dimensions, mainly including: data elements, computing power elements, model elements, and funding elements. For instance, in the data market, the demand for data by AI is growing much slower than the supply. ChatGPT trained on 300 billion words, while the latest model DBRX used 12 trillion data points. The demand for publicly available human text data for AI training may exceed the total stock as early as 2026.
OKX Ventures is optimistic about better matching of data element resources, investing in projects like Space and Time, Privasea, 0G, and CARV. Space and Time provides a decentralized data warehouse, efficiently indexing and querying on-chain and off-chain data. Privasea conducts AI computational analysis through FHE encryption to protect privacy. CARV offers a modular data layer, providing high-quality user profiles and behavior data for AI. 0G can also significantly enhance the capability of blockchain in processing data in the AI era. These projects all improve the efficiency of AI data acquisition, processing, and utilization.
In other fields, such as computing power, io.net can optimize the allocation of large-scale distributed computing resources required for AI. The AI chip market is expected to maintain steady growth, with data center AI chip sales reaching $154 billion in 2023, and projected to grow by 41% in 2025-2026. Edge computing AI will become an important trend, supporting faster data processing and better privacy protection.
OKX Ventures is optimistic about more excellent AI startup projects enhancing the matching efficiency of AI elements across various levels, such as data sharing, computing power allocation, and model collaboration, providing strong support for further development of AI. This synergistic effect will drive breakthrough applications of AI in more fields, bringing profound impacts to various industries.
Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 usher in BTC's DeFi Summer
Looking ahead to 2025, the TVL and DeFi activity of the Bitcoin ecosystem will experience breakthroughs. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked over 57,288 Bitcoins, with a total value of $6 billion. As a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, Babylon has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin with various PoS chains. Projects like SatLayer and Lombard, as part of the Babylon ecosystem, will further unlock Bitcoin's potential through the deployment of smart contracts. Projects like Bitlayer, Merlin, Bsquared Network, and Arch Network are exploring innovative scaling solutions to provide stronger infrastructure support for Bitcoin DeFi.
Technologies like UTXO Stack are dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities. These innovations will significantly improve transaction throughput, lower fees, and pave the way for more complex DeFi applications.
A richer and more diverse range of application scenarios will emerge in the Bitcoin DeFi sector. Projects like BounceBit, Corn, and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms like Solv Protocol and Bedrock will provide Bitcoin holders with more diverse income generation paths. Zeus and Lombard are exploring how to integrate Bitcoin's value more deeply into the DeFi ecosystem. It is expected that by 2025, the trading volume of Bitcoin DEXs may exceed $4 trillion, accounting for 20% of the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges.
Improving user experience will be another focus. Wallet projects like Unisat are dedicated to simplifying user interactions with Bitcoin DeFi. Projects like Arch Network and SatLayer are developing innovative cross-chain solutions to enhance cross-chain interoperability, enabling users to more conveniently transfer and utilize assets across different blockchain ecosystems.
Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will present a more diversified and interconnected appearance. Innovations from the infrastructure to the application layer will drive Bitcoin's transformation from a mere store of value to a comprehensive financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.
Outlook 7: Diversification and in-depth development of Bitcoin's native innovations
On a technical level, the expansion of Bitcoin's scripting language is an important direction. In addition to the widely discussed OP_CAT, Bitcoin core developers are also actively exploring the introduction of opcodes like OP_GROUP, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV), and OP_TLUV. These new opcodes will significantly enhance Bitcoin's programmability, laying the groundwork for more complex smart contracts and application scenarios. For example, OP_GROUP may allow the creation of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, while CTV is expected to enable pre-signed transactions, significantly improving transaction efficiency.
The Lightning Network, as a second-layer scaling solution for Bitcoin, is expected to undergo significant upgrades in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow for the bulk creation of payment channels, significantly reducing initiation costs. Improvements to the bi-directional funding injection mechanism will enhance the capital utilization efficiency of channels. Moreover, the integration of Taproot assets is expected to achieve more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the application range of the Lightning Network.
Enhanced privacy is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is key to future development. Confidential Transactions technology may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, while the optimization of CoinJoin mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. At the same time, zero-knowledge proof technologies like zk-SNARKs are also being actively explored for application on Bitcoin, which could bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.
At the application level, the Bitcoin network is giving rise to diversified innovations, covering decentralized social networks, gaming and the metaverse, as well as open scientific research. These applications integrate technologies such as micropayments, decentralized identity, content notarization, Ordinals, and the RGB protocol, bringing new business models to social media and the gaming industry, while enhancing the transparency and credibility of scientific research through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms. These diverse applications demonstrate Bitcoin's tremendous potential as a decentralized infrastructure, far exceeding the traditional financial realm, laying a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.
Outlook 8: Dual breakthroughs in Ethereum ecological technology and ecosystem
In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to undergo significant development, with notable breakthroughs in both technical and ecological aspects. In terms of scalability, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, allowing Ethereum to truly achieve 200 times scalability. After the Pectra upgrade, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce the cost of rollups, pushing daily transaction volume beyond 100 million. These improvements will provide Ethereum network with stronger processing capabilities, laying the groundwork for supporting large-scale users.
The popularization of account abstraction technology will also be an important advancement. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 has led to over 25% of on-chain transactions adopting account abstraction methods, allowing users to pay gas fees with any token. Once EIP-5003 achieves complete account abstraction, it will change the way users interact with smart contracts, improving the usability of Web3 applications. This change will make it easier for ordinary users to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem, promoting the popularization of decentralized applications.
In terms of optimizing staking mechanisms, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH for additional rewards. At the same time, permissionless staking pools are achieved through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, making it possible for the total amount of staked Ethereum to exceed 30 million, with annualized returns stabilizing between 3% and 4%. This mechanism not only enhances network security but also attracts more users to participate in staking.
Zero-knowledge proof technology will find widespread application in the Ethereum ecosystem. General zkVM can generate block proofs within 30 seconds and be integrated into mainstream L2 networks, supporting privacy computing functions and achieving 'privacy as a service.' These technologies enhance privacy protection while maintaining security synchronization with the Ethereum mainnet, providing users with more choices.
In terms of network efficiency, the introduction of Verkle Trees, EOF optimizations, and PeerDAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade will reduce the storage burden on Ethereum validators and enhance EVM execution efficiency. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than tenfold; these technological updates will significantly enhance Ethereum's performance, providing support for the future development of modular blockchain architecture.
Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. The natively interoperable ZK stack becomes a standard feature of new rollups, with efficient validity proof clusters gradually forming. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 stopping service for specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the foundation for modular blockchain networks and promote Ethereum's shift from a technology-driven to an application-driven approach.
The Beam Chain upgrade will bring significant changes to the Ethereum consensus layer, including reducing block production time to 4 seconds, lowering the staking threshold to 1 ETH, and introducing zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes will not only enhance network performance but also increase decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.
Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Prospects
The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new leap, with improvements in network performance, technological innovations, and ecosystem expansion complementing the explosion of the RWA market, propelling Ethereum to a new height. As more real-world assets are tokenized and migrated on-chain, Ethereum not only solidifies its leadership position as a decentralized application and smart contract platform but also plays a key role in connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance. As of the end of 2024, the total market capitalization of on-chain tokenized assets has exceeded $14 billion, with Ethereum holding nearly 80% of the market share, becoming the driving force behind the development of this field.
The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, with Ethereum emerging as the preferred underlying infrastructure platform for institutions due to its mature technology architecture, security, decentralization, and stability. The tokenized government bond market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with a locked value exceeding $3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the total RWA market value. This market is providing low-risk, highly liquid collateral for the rapid development of decentralized lending and derivatives markets.
Ethereum provides a secure, efficient, and transparent migration path for traditional financial assets through its smart contract platform and distributed validator network. Tokenized assets enable faster and lower-cost trading and settlement on-chain, significantly enhancing the operational efficiency of financial markets. As Ethereum's infrastructure continues to upgrade, network transaction costs are further decreasing, providing stronger support for RWA applications.
The impact of Ethereum's economic model. The expansion of RWA is not just an ecological scale expansion but also injects new momentum into Ethereum's economic model. On-chain activities and transaction fees are expected to become significant sources of income for Ethereum in the future. According to market data predictions, on-chain activities related to RWA are expected to generate fees exceeding $100 billion annually, which is 40 times the current annual income of Ethereum, significantly enhancing ETH's value capture capability and becoming an important pillar of Ethereum's economic system.
Data from the end of 2024 shows that the TVL of RWA has increased by 25% year-on-year, reaching $8.4 billion, with Ethereum contributing $1.7 billion in a single month, marking the highest growth during the year. Stablecoins played an important role in this trend, with a total market cap exceeding $200 billion, and the growth of synthetic dollar types particularly notable, with monthly growth rates reaching 60% and a TVL of $1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. Innovative stablecoins like Ethena and Usual, deeply integrated with RWA, not only promote innovation in on-chain lending and liquidity markets but also further strengthen Ethereum's dominant position in high-value transactions.
The driving forces of policy and market. Further clarification of regulations will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to adopt a more crypto-friendly stance in 2025. Additionally, regions like Singapore and Europe are also actively advancing regulatory frameworks for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market and clearing barriers for institutional capital to enter the RWA field. This policy shift will attract more institutional participation in the Ethereum ecosystem, driving explosive growth in on-chain assets and trading volume.
Outlook 10: Continued leadership of Solana
Solana is continuously consolidating its leading position in the high-performance public chain field, leveraging its technical advantages. Through the upgrade of Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 in 2025, while the application of state compression technology has lowered the hardware threshold for validating nodes, reducing costs by 30%.
The activity level of the Solana ecosystem reached new heights in 2024, with a daily on-chain transaction volume of nearly $200 million, a total of approximately 250 million active wallets, and daily active addresses reaching a record high of 8.8 million. Its unique state rent mechanism and validator voting fees provide SOL with value support beyond transaction fees, generating weekly fee income of $36.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among them, Jito contributed over 55% of the fee income through MEV activities, further driving the growth of the Solana ecosystem.
The performance of Solana's developer ecosystem is remarkable, with the number of active developers reaching 2,500-3,000 per month, and the three-month retention rate of developers increasing from 31% to over 50%. In terms of the tech stack, more than half of the developers have at least three years of blockchain development experience, ensuring a higher quality of application output within the ecosystem. Leading protocols like Jupiter and Raydium are expected to exceed $20 billion in TVL by 2025, accounting for over 35% of the total DEX trading volume across the network.
Solana is gradually being viewed as a chip in AI-driven casinos, and its application scenarios combined with Agents may deepen further, especially in speculative trading, DeFi, and more dApp innovations, becoming a core driving force for user growth and technological application.
Outlook 11: The rise of Move-based public chains and diversification
Sui and Aptos, as representative public chains of the Move language, are expected to achieve significant breakthroughs in 2025. Sui demonstrates clear advantages in gaming, social, and especially financial applications through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, Sui's TVL has surpassed $2 billion, growing 2700% year-to-date, ranking eighth among blockchain networks in TVL. The on-chain transaction volume approaches 8 billion, with a total of 68 million accounts, showing strong ecosystem activity primarily driven by protocols like Navi Protocol and Cetus. With Circle introducing native USDC and an injection of over $400 million in stablecoins, Sui's liquidity has significantly improved. The launch of SuiPlay 0x1 gaming console further expands into the hardware domain, supporting on-chain games and being compatible with traditional gaming platforms (such as Steam, Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional gamers into Web3.
Aptos, with its improved version of the Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, has built a complete ecosystem in the DeFi sector, with daily active users expected to exceed 1 million. Aptos is expected to experience explosive growth in 2024, with a year-on-year increase in TVL of 19 times, reaching nearly $2 billion, and its on-chain stablecoin ecosystem continuously expanding, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC further enhancing liquidity. Meanwhile, Aptos has also received widespread recognition from institutional investors, with BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin's FOBXX deploying on the Aptos chain, and one Spanish bank even allocating 2% of its fund to the Bitwise Aptos Staking ETP listed on SIX in Switzerland. In terms of the developer ecosystem, the number of Aptos developers has grown by 96% year-on-year, with on-chain contract deployments reaching 3,000, showcasing the vibrancy of the ecosystem.
The market capitalization of the native tokens of two major public chains is expected to enter the global top ten, with the total locked value (TVL) projected to exceed five times the current scale.
Outlook 12: Emerging public chains, Monad and Berachain bring hope
Monad, as a representative of the new generation of parallel EVM, is rapidly rising, with its ecological development and technological innovation attracting attention. In the Devnet phase, Monad achieved over 10,000 TPS in authentic performance tests, with a block time of only 1 second, featuring single-slot finality, fully demonstrating the potential of its efficient architecture. Monad's core optimizations include the MonadBFT consensus mechanism, optimistic parallel execution, asynchronous execution (delayed execution), and a MonadDB database optimized for EVM storage models. These technological breakthroughs not only significantly enhance throughput and transaction speed but also substantially reduce network costs. Additionally, Monad's integration with cross-chain protocols like LayerZero and Wormhole enhances cross-chain interoperability, further enriching its ecosystem.
The recently established Monad Foundation focuses on decentralized governance and ecological development, promoting validator-led governance models and supporting community-driven improvement proposals. The Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources, and market support, fostering dApp construction and ecosystem collaboration. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have committed to building on Monad, and the ecological scale is expected to double by the time the mainnet goes live.
Berachain is rapidly rising, with its ecosystem attracting over 270 projects, mostly consumer applications, covering DeFi, GameFi, social, and DePIN, showcasing diversity and vitality. In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved over 14 million transactions, with active addresses exceeding 600,000 and unique addresses reaching 1 million. Its core innovation lies in its unique PoL (Proof of Liquidity) consensus mechanism, significantly enhancing TVL through liquidity collateral and providing strong growth momentum for ecosystem projects.
The modular design of Berachain further enhances scalability, supporting chain abstraction and combining with infrastructure like Particle Network to provide developers with flexibility and efficient tools. Additionally, its economic model integrates the interests of users, developers, and validators through staking mechanisms and built-in incentives, ensuring the sustainable development of the ecosystem.
In 2025, the Layer 1 market will form a multi-layered competitive landscape. Ethereum will continue to top the market cap list, while market shares of next-generation public chains like Solana, Sui, and Aptos will continue to grow. Emerging public chains like Monad and Berachain will inject new vitality into the industry with technological innovations and unique ecosystems.
Outlook 13: The demonstration effect of TON and Kaia will introduce more internet companies
The successful paths of TON and Kaia represent the core model of next-generation Web3 applications: "user traffic-centric hyper-financialized innovation" and "seamless integration of Web2.5 experience." TON leverages Telegram's global user base of 900 million, achieving seamless migration of on-chain functionalities through a mini-program ecosystem and the TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of scalable blockchain applications. In 2024, TON's market cap surpassed $25 billion, with on-chain transaction volume reaching $300 million/day, active wallets exceeding 36 million, and even daily active addresses temporarily surpassing Ethereum, paving the way for new models of large-scale adoption of on-chain services. TON's mini-programs are driving geometric growth in user participation while laying the groundwork for a broader range of Web3 application scenarios by supporting stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.
Kaia, a blockchain platform deeply integrated with Kakao and Line, has rapidly attracted users and developers by delving into the mobile super application ecosystem in the Asian market. Kaia has already accumulated 30 million independent wallet addresses, processed over 1.3 billion transactions, with peak daily on-chain transaction volume reaching tens of millions of dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFT, payment, and AI services, boasting over 420 dApps, with active user numbers reaching 7 million. Kaia's on-chain DEX swap trading volume has exceeded $400 million and is actively introducing more DeFi infrastructure to enhance liquidity support.
The success of TON and Kaia not only indicates that Web3 applications have the potential to rapidly expand from social platforms to financial and practical scenarios but also demonstrates how to incubate billion-dollar projects through existing traffic platforms under the Web2.5 logic. The mini-program model not only effectively lowers the entry threshold for Web3 but also promotes high-frequency on-chain transactions and diverse scenarios through the traffic advantages of super applications. We predict that these ecosystems, relying on a high user base and traffic conversion capabilities, will foster more projects with a market value of over a billion dollars in the future—from on-chain payments, decentralized e-commerce to asset management and RWA (real-world assets), new application innovations combined with liquidity will become the next growth engine.
Outlook 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): A new driving force reshaping the research economy
For a long time, traditional scientific research systems have faced issues such as resource allocation concentration, data opacity, and innovation obstacles. Decentralized science (DeSci) is reshaping scientific funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, injecting new vitality into the research economy.
The core innovation of DeSci lies in funding allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFTs not only provide legal protection for scientific research outcomes but also allow researchers, communities, and investors to jointly participate in funding and profit distribution. For example, Molecule has allocated $2 million through the IP-NFT protocol to support multiple biomedical research projects, with its ecosystem's TVL reaching $30 million and continuing to grow.
In the field of medical data, DeSci projects are also showing great potential. AminoChain has developed a decentralized biological sample market through $5 million in funding, helping patients control the usage of their data and benefit from it while reducing the sample acquisition costs for research institutions. Similar projects like GenomesDAO utilize decentralized genomic databases to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.
In scientific publishing, ResearchHub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, shortening the average turnaround time to 9 days, far superior to the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly improving transparency and efficiency in scientific research.
Additionally, research DAOs like VitaDAO are achieving community-driven scientific funding through governance tokens, reducing intermediaries and minimizing funding waste. With the policy environment gradually clarifying and institutional participation increasing, the scale of on-chain scientific funding is expected to further expand and promote the commercialization of intellectual property, open publishing, and the management of medical data.
The rise of decentralized science is driving scientific research from closed to open, from centralized to democratic. The transparent mechanisms, efficient collaboration, and data-sharing models of DeSci will have a profound impact on global scientific innovation.
