The success of the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or platform but in building an inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving industry ecosystem.
In 2024, amidst the turbulent changes in the global financial landscape, the crypto industry underwent profound ups and downs and reconstruction. After six months of consolidation and repair, the total market capitalization of the industry exceeded $3.8 trillion at the end of the year, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high of $100,000, declaring its core position in the global asset system. This is not only a price increase but also the beginning of structural transformation: a dollar liquidity circulation chain centered around Bitcoin, bridged by ETFs and U.S. stocks, and carried by publicly listed companies has taken shape.
Bitcoin is rising to become the largest dollar-denominated financial asset globally, becoming a key tool to hedge against the U.S. fiscal deficit and the U.S. debt crisis. This financial revolution 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, with OKX Ventures actively participating in this transformative wave and continuously optimistic about the changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world over the next decade.
I. Review of 2024: 60+ project layout, wide multi-track layout.
This year, OKX Ventures actively increased its investment in the industry, dedicated to accelerating innovation and development in the crypto sector. The total investment for the year exceeded $100 million, covering more than 60 projects and funds, with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and BTC ecosystems, deeply exploring quality projects. In terms of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects, and the BTC ecosystem accounted for the highest proportion, while there was also extensive layout in multi-chain ecosystems, DeFi, and various ecological funds.
Moreover, OKX Ventures is also actively collaborating with funds and accelerator ecosystem partners like TON Ventures, Ankaa, and TGH to jointly build a thriving innovation ecosystem. By providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs, helping them transform their ideas into reality more quickly and steadily. Whether in the incubation stage for startups or acceleration in the growth phase, OKX Ventures always focuses on 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 just about capital investment but about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises on this basis. While capital acts as a driving force, it also relies on strategic vision and systematic layout to promote the industry continuously forward in multi-dimensional technological innovation, ecological development, and market expansion. Each investment decision is not merely a flow of funds but also a profound insight into the industry's prospects and a support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion and exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures is continuously laying the groundwork for the widespread application and profound transformation of blockchain over the next decade.
At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot solely rely on the drive of capital markets; it more depend on visionary entrepreneurship and the continuous exploration of technical teams. The mission of OKX Ventures is to help those entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies, driving breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This support is not just for individual projects or teams, but also lays the foundation for the future ecology of the entire industry.
OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or platform, but in building an inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving industry ecosystem. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to maintain foresight amid the tide of this era's transformation and to promote the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future amid continuous evolution.
II. 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 see 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 first cryptocurrency trading platform in the world to obtain a comprehensive operational license in the UAE.
Compliance innovations will emerge in the custody wallet sector, addressing the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custody wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including features like KYC transaction monitoring. This innovation not only enhances user experience but also meets increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new development directions to the industry.
The macro regulatory environment will become more favorable, creating conditions conducive to industry development. The UK government plans to consult on the 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. National strategic Bitcoin reserves may also become a reality in 2025.
The participation of institutional investors will significantly increase. As of December 17, the scale of Bitcoin spot ETFs 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 reach or even exceed those of traditional finance. OKX's three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple cover a broad 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.
In 2025, the blockchain industry will present a more mature, standardized, and innovative appearance. As Star stated, crypto finance is entering a new stage, which 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 important entities in the market, participating in asset creation, asset issuance, and asset trading.
With the rapid development of large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important entities in the market. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is expected to reach $18.11 trillion by 2030, contributing about $16 trillion to global GDP. The future of agent AI is not just a traditional tool; they will become major players in the blockchain world, possessing the ability to make autonomous decisions and take actions.
We expect more innovative AI agent application scenarios to emerge in 2025. For example, interactions between agents will become an important area, with blockchain's transparency and composability providing an ideal foundation for this. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, and even creating new social scenarios. Furthermore, decentralized agent organizations (DAOs) could also become a hotspot, with multi-agent systems working collaboratively to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.
AI agents possess high adaptability, clear goal setting, and self-correction abilities, allowing them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, actively creating and publishing content, engaging in asset transactions to maximize profits, and automatically issuing assets based on market demand. This shift suggests that AI agents will play a more important role in market and social platforms, similar to the emergence of the AI agent framework represented by Eliza, combined with platforms like Myshell representing agents, which will drive the development of this trend.
Finally, we expect to see 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. As these technologies develop, the idea of 'wallet as a browser' may eventually be realized, fundamentally changing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.
Outlook 3: Security projects will aid in addressing AI security issues.
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed become an important solution to AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, cybersecurity issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in areas such as counterfeiting and deep forgery. Therefore, establishing a 'human identity verification' mechanism is particularly crucial to ensure interaction between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations reported an increase in deep forgery attacks over the past year, with an expected increase of 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly manifests in two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. Rapid iterations of AI models mean that new vulnerabilities emerge constantly. For example, different versions of a model may exhibit vastly 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 encrypted signatures, combating deep forgery and fake news generated by AI while ensuring data transparency and traceability.
2. Protecting training data: Safeguarding the datasets required for AI model training to prevent tampering or attacks, thus ensuring data integrity and security, and reducing the risk of single point failures.
3. Recording and monitoring AI model usage: Preventing unauthorized misuse, enabling secure sharing of models or data on a safe platform without concerns of information leakage or tampering. Users can audit and verify AI behavior, thereby enhancing trust.
OKX Ventures believes that more AI security projects are likely to emerge in the blockchain field, enhancing user trust in AI systems.
Outlook 4: AI infiltrates existing track projects, changing industry paradigms.
In 2025, the deep application of AI technology will significantly change various industries, including gaming, NFT, DeFi, and social sectors.
The gaming industry is likely the most affected by AI. By 2025, global AI spending in gaming is expected to reach approximately $1.1 billion, indicating the industry's emphasis on AI's potential. This includes:
1) Generative design: Using algorithms to generate game content, improving development efficiency.
2) Personalized experience: AI will analyze player behaviors to provide tailored game suggestions and challenges.
3) Enhancing interactivity: Smart NPCs will become more realistic, increasing the immersion for gamers.
4) Smarter AI agents will improve the interaction experience for gamers, reducing the burden of experience for players themselves.
Social projects are also experiencing many innovations; AI is playing a crucial 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 such as Clanker and Larry introduced new asset issuance methods, demonstrating certain community engagement and economic potential, with Clanker’s market cap surpassing $100 million and LUM reaching $70 million. In the future, AI will:
1) Realizing social monetization: Users can earn crypto rewards through content creation and interaction.
2) Building community economy: Leveraging blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and profit distribution.
3) Enhancing security: Protecting user privacy through decentralized identity verification.
DeFi benefits from the efficiency improvements and interaction model transformations brought by AI.
1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem. These autonomous software entities can automatically execute complex trading tasks, optimize investment strategies, and monitor 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, reducing the barrier for users to participate in DeFi and improving asset management efficiency.
3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in detecting and optimizing smart contract vulnerabilities. Through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish a baseline of normal trading behaviors and issue alerts upon detecting anomalies, thereby enhancing the security of DeFi platforms. It is expected that by 2025, the trading volume of decentralized exchanges (DEX) will reach $4 trillion, with a total locked value (TVL) exceeding $200 billion. OKX Ventures believes that there could be over 1 million AI agents active on-chain, which will further drive 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 welcome 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. Taking the data market as an example, the demand for data by AI is growing at a pace far behind supply. ChatGPT used 300 billion words for training, while the latest model DBRX used 12 trillion data points. The demand for publicly available human text data for AI training may exceed total supply 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 for efficient indexing and querying of 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 behavioral data for AI. 0G can also significantly enhance the blockchain's ability to process data in the AI era. These projects improve the efficiency of AI data acquisition, processing, and utilization.
In other fields, solutions like io.net can optimize the allocation of large-scale distributed computing resources needed for AI. The AI chip market is expected to maintain steady growth, with sales of data center AI chips reaching $154 billion in 2023 and expected to grow 41% in 2025-2026. Edge computing AI will become an important trend, supporting faster data processing and better privacy protection.
OKX Ventures anticipates that more excellent AI entrepreneurial projects will enhance the matching efficiency of AI elements in various aspects such as data sharing, computing power distribution, and model collaboration, providing strong support for the further development of AI. This synergistic effect will drive AI to achieve breakthrough applications in more fields, bringing far-reaching impacts to various industries.
Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 welcome BTC's DeFi Summer.
Looking ahead to 2025, the Bitcoin ecosystem's TVL and DeFi activity levels will see breakthroughs. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked more than 57,288 Bitcoin, with a total value of 6 billion dollars. Babylon, as a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin and various PoS chains. Projects like SatLayer and Lombard, as part of the Babylon ecosystem, will further unlock Bitcoin's potential by deploying 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 also dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin's smart contract capabilities. These innovations will significantly improve transaction throughput, lower fees, and pave the way for building more complex DeFi applications.
The Bitcoin DeFi sector will see a richer variety of application scenarios. Projects like BounceBit, Corn, and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms like Solv Protocol and Bedrock will offer Bitcoin holders more diversified yield generation pathways. Zeus and Lombard are also exploring how to integrate Bitcoin's value deeper into the DeFi ecosystem. By 2025, trading volume on Bitcoin DEX could exceed $4 trillion, accounting for 20% of centralized exchange spot trading volume.
Improvement in 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, allowing users to more conveniently transfer and use assets across different blockchain ecosystems.
Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will present a more diversified and interconnected landscape. Innovations from infrastructure to application layers will drive Bitcoin's transformation from a mere value storage to a comprehensive financial infrastructure, providing users with a richer and more efficient selection of financial services.
Outlook 7: The diversification and deep development of Bitcoin's native innovations.
On the 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 such as OP_GROUP, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV), and OP_TLUV. These new opcodes will greatly 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 achieve 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, greatly reducing activation costs. Improvements in the two-way funding injection mechanism will enhance the capital utilization efficiency of channels. Additionally, the integration of Taproot assets is expected to achieve more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the application scope of the Lightning Network.
Enhancing privacy is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is key to future development. Technologies like Confidential Transactions may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, while optimizations in CoinJoin mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. At the same time, the application of zero-knowledge proof technologies such as zk-SNARKs on Bitcoin is also being actively explored, which could bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.
At the application level, the Bitcoin network is fostering diverse 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 the social media and gaming industries, while enhancing transparency and credibility in scientific research through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms. These diverse applications demonstrate Bitcoin's immense potential as a decentralized infrastructure, far exceeding traditional finance, laying a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.
Outlook 8: Ethereum ecological technology and ecological dual breakthroughs.
In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to undergo significant development, with notable breakthroughs in both technology and ecology. In terms of scaling, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, enabling Ethereum to truly achieve a 200-fold increase in scalability. After the Pectra upgrade, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce the cost of rollups, driving daily transactions beyond 100 million. These improvements will provide Ethereum's network with stronger processing capabilities, laying the foundation for supporting a large-scale user base.
The popularization of account abstraction technology will also become an important advancement. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 has led to over 25% of on-chain transactions adopting account abstraction, allowing users to pay gas fees using any token. After 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. Meanwhile, permissionless staking pools are realized through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, making the total amount of Ethereum staked likely to exceed 30 million ETH, with annualized returns stabilizing between 3%-4%. This mechanism not only enhances network security but also attracts more users to participate in staking.
Zero-knowledge proof technology will be widely applied in the Ethereum ecosystem. A universal zkVM can generate block proofs within 30 seconds and is integrated into mainstream L2 networks, supporting privacy computing features 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, through Verkle Trees, EOF optimizations, and PeerDAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade, the storage burden on Ethereum validators will be reduced, and EVM execution efficiency will be enhanced. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than ten times, and these technical updates will significantly enhance Ethereum's performance, supporting the development of future modular blockchain architectures.
Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. The native interoperability ZK stack becomes the standard configuration for new rollups, and efficient validity proof clusters are gradually forming. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 stopping services for specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the groundwork for modular blockchain networks and promote Ethereum's transition from technology-driven to application-driven.
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 not only enhance network performance but also increase decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.
Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Outlook
The Ethereum ecosystem is entering a new round of leap forward, with improvements in network performance, technological innovations, and ecological expansion complementing the explosion of the RWA market, pushing Ethereum to a new height. As more real-world assets are tokenized and migrated on-chain, Ethereum not only solidifies its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contract platforms but also plays a crucial role in connecting traditional finance and decentralized finance. By the end of 2024, the total market value of on-chain tokenized assets has exceeded $14 billion, with Ethereum holding nearly 80% market share, becoming the core driving force behind the development of this field.
The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, with Ethereum becoming the preferred underlying infrastructure platform for institutions due to its mature technological architecture, security, decentralization, and stability. The tokenized treasury market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with its locked volume exceeding $3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the total value of the RWA market. This market is providing low-risk, high-liquidity collateral for DeFi, driving 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 can achieve faster and lower-cost transactions and settlements on-chain, significantly improving the operational efficiency of financial markets. As Ethereum's infrastructure continues to upgrade, network transaction costs are further declining, providing stronger support for RWA applications.
The impact of Ethereum's economic model. The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of ecological scale but also injects new momentum into Ethereum's economic model. On-chain activities and transaction fees will become significant revenue sources 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 revenue of Ethereum, significantly enhancing ETH's value capture ability and becoming an important pillar of Ethereum's economic system.
Data at the end of 2024 shows that the TVL of RWA has increased by 25% year-on-year, reaching $8.4 billion, among which Ethereum contributed $1.7 billion in a single month, marking the highest growth rate in the year. Stablecoins play a crucial role in this trend, with a total market capitalization exceeding $200 billion, while synthetic dollar classes have seen particularly remarkable growth, with a monthly growth rate of 60%, achieving a TVL of $1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. The deep integration of innovative stablecoins like Ethena and Usual with RWA not only drives innovation in on-chain lending and liquidity markets but further reinforces Ethereum's dominant position in high-value transactions.
The driving forces of policies and market developments will further clarify regulations, providing strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to take a more crypto-friendly stance in 2025. Additionally, regions such as Singapore and Europe are actively advancing regulatory frameworks for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market, removing obstacles 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 transaction volumes.
Outlook 10: Solana's continued leadership.
Solana is continuously consolidating its leading position in the high-performance public chain field with its technological advantages. By upgrading Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 by 2025, while the application of state compression technology has lowered the hardware threshold for validator nodes, reducing the cost burden by 30%.
The activity level of the Solana ecosystem reached a new peak in 2024, with daily on-chain transaction volumes nearing $200 million and the total number of active wallets around 250 million, with daily active addresses reaching a record high of 8.8 million. Its unique state rent mechanism and validator voting fees have provided value support for SOL tokens beyond transaction fees, generating weekly fee revenues of $36.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among them, Jito contributed over 55% of the fee revenue through MEV activities, further promoting the growth of the Solana ecosystem.
The developer ecosystem of Solana is impressive, with the number of active developers reaching 2,500-3,000 monthly, and the three-month retention rate for developers improving from 31% to over 50%. In terms of the tech stack, more than half of the developers have at least 3 years of blockchain development experience, ensuring higher quality application output in the ecosystem. Leading protocols like Jupiter and Raydium are expected to see their TVL exceed $20 billion by 2025, capturing over 35% of the entire network's DEX trading volume.
Solana is gradually being seen as a chip in AI-driven casinos, and its applications combined with agents may deepen further, especially in speculative trading, DeFi, and more innovative dApps, becoming a core driving force for user growth and technological application.
Outlook 11: The Rise of Move-based Public Chains 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 application scenarios through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, Sui's TVL has exceeded $2 billion, with a year-to-date growth of 2,700%, ranking eighth in blockchain network TVL. On-chain transaction volume reached nearly 8 billion, with total accounts at 68 million, showcasing strong ecological vitality, primarily driven by protocols like Navi Protocol and Cetus. With Circle introducing native USDC and over $400 million in stablecoins being injected, Sui's liquidity has significantly improved. Sui's zkLogin feature lowers the entry barrier for Web3 users, allowing users to log into dApps using online credentials like Google or Facebook, showing great potential in DeFi and chain games. Meanwhile, the launch of the SuiPlay 0x1 game console further expands into the hardware realm, supporting on-chain gaming and compatible with traditional platforms (like Steam and Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional gamers to Web3.
Aptos, with its improved version of the Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, has built a complete ecosystem in the DeFi field, with daily active users expected to exceed 1 million. Aptos will experience explosive growth in 2024, with a TVL increase of 19 times year-on-year, reaching nearly $2 billion, while the on-chain stablecoin ecosystem continues to expand, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC, further enhancing liquidity. Meanwhile, Aptos has also gained widespread recognition from institutional investors, with BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin's FOBXX deploying on the Aptos chain, and a 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 developers on Aptos has increased by 96% year-on-year, and the number of on-chain contract deployments has reached 3,000, showcasing the vitality of the ecosystem.
The native token market capitalization of the two public chains is expected to enter the global top ten, with the total locked value (TVL) expected to reach more than five times its current scale.
Outlook 12: Emerging Public Chains, Monad and Berachain Bring Hope.
Monad, as a new generation of parallel EVM, is rapidly rising, and its ecological development and technological innovations are attracting attention. During the Devnet phase, Monad achieved authentic performance testing of over 10,000 TPS, with block time of only 1 second and 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 the MonadDB database optimized for the EVM storage model. These technological breakthroughs significantly enhance throughput and transaction speed while also greatly reducing 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 a validator-led governance model and supporting community-driven improvement proposals. The Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources, and market support to promote dApp building and ecosystem cooperation. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have pledged to build on Monad, with the ecosystem expected to double by the time of the mainnet launch.
Berachain is rapidly rising, attracting over 270 projects, mostly consumer application types, covering DeFi, GameFi, social, and DePIN, showcasing diversity and vitality. In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved over 14 million transactions and active addresses exceeding 600,000, with unique addresses reaching 1 million. Its core innovation lies in a unique Proof of Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism, significantly enhancing TVL through liquidity collateral while providing strong growth momentum for ecological projects.
Berachain's modular design further enhances scalability, supports chain abstraction, and, combined with infrastructure like Particle Network, provides developers with flexibility and efficient tools. Additionally, its economic model deeply integrates the interests of users, developers, and validators through a staking mechanism and built-in incentives, ensuring the sustainable development of the ecosystem.
By 2025, the Layer 1 market will form a multi-layered competitive landscape. Ethereum will continue to hold the top spot in market capitalization, while the market shares of new-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, bringing more possibilities.
Outlook 13: The demonstration effect of TON and Kaia will bring in more internet companies.
The success paths of TON and Kaia represent the core model of the next generation of Web3 applications: 'user traffic-centered super-financial innovation' and 'seamless integration of Web2.5 experience'. Relying on Telegram's global user base of 900 million, TON achieves seamless migration of on-chain functionalities through a mini-program ecosystem and TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of large-scale blockchain applications. In 2024, TON's market capitalization exceeded $25 billion, with on-chain transaction volume reaching $300 million/day, active wallets exceeding 36 million, and even daily active address numbers temporarily surpassing Ethereum, paving the way for large-scale adoption of on-chain services. TON's mini-programs are driving geometric growth in user engagement while laying the foundation for broader Web3 application scenarios by supporting stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.
Kaia, a blockchain platform launched through a deep integration of Kakao and Line, is rapidly attracting users and developers by focusing on the mobile super app ecosystem in Asia. Kaia has already accumulated 30 million independent wallet addresses, processed over 1.3 billion transactions, and reached a peak daily transaction volume of tens of millions of dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFT, payments, and AI services, boasting over 420 dApps and active users reaching 7 million. Kaia's on-chain DEX Swap transaction volume has surpassed $400 million and is introducing more DeFi infrastructure to enhance liquidity support.
The success of TON and Kaia not only indicates the potential of Web3 applications to rapidly expand from social platforms to financial and practical scenarios but also demonstrates how, under the Web2.5 logic, projects with a hundred billion-dollar level can be incubated through existing traffic platforms. The mini-program model not only effectively lowers the entry barrier for Web3 but also promotes the high frequency and diversity of on-chain transactions through the traffic advantages of super apps. We predict that this type of ecology, relying on a high user base and traffic conversion capability, will spawn more hundred billion-dollar market cap projects 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 for reshaping the scientific economy.
For a long time, the traditional research system has faced issues such as concentrated resource allocation, data opacity, and stifled innovation. Decentralized science (DeSci), through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, is reshaping scientific funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management, injecting new vitality into the scientific economy.
The core innovation of DeSci lies in funding allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFT not only provides legal protection for research results but also allows researchers, communities, and investors to participate together in funding and profit distribution. For example, Molecule has allocated $2 million through the IP-NFT protocol to support multiple biomedical research projects, while its ecosystem's TVL has reached $30 million and continues to grow.
In the field of medical data, DeSci projects are also showing great potential. AminoChain is developing a decentralized biological sample market with $5 million in funding, helping patients gain control over their data usage rights and benefit from it, while also lowering the sample acquisition costs for research institutions. Similarly, GenomesDAO is utilizing a decentralized genomic database to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.
In terms of scientific publishing, ResearchHub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, reducing the average turnaround time to 9 days, far superior to the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly enhancing transparency and efficiency in research.
Moreover, research DAOs like VitaDAO are implementing community-driven scientific funding through governance tokens, reducing intermediaries and minimizing fund waste. As the policy environment becomes clearer and institutional participation increases, it is expected that the scale of on-chain scientific funding will further expand, driving the commercialization of intellectual property, open publishing, and the development of medical data management.
The rise of decentralized science is driving scientific research from closed to open, from centralized to democratic. The transparent mechanism, efficient collaboration, and data-sharing model of DeSci will have a profound impact on global scientific innovation.
At the end, regarding OKX Ventures.
OKX Ventures firmly embraces the future of decentralized development, far beyond mere financial returns. We believe that decentralization is not just the direction of technological innovation; it is a force that disrupts tradition and reshapes industry order, carrying profound reflections on individual freedom, value distribution, and social structure. We are well aware that the true driving force behind decentralization is not just financial support but the comprehensive empowerment of resources, strategic cooperation, and technological innovation to truly realize the landing of decentralization concepts. OKX Ventures is long-term oriented, always placing the service of decentralized innovation at the core of its investment philosophy rather than pursuing short-term financial returns.
We are not traditional financial investors. We are not just 'money givers'; we are partners who provide 'services', resources, and empower entrepreneurs. In this regard, OKX Ventures is committed to being a long-term supporter and promoter of projects, accompanying every entrepreneurial partner through each step of their growth. We are not only dedicated to discovering excellent teams, products, and technologies, but more importantly, we aim to help these innovative projects establish a foothold in the market and truly unleash their potential through resource integration and deep empowerment.
At the same time, OKX Ventures also plays the role of a connector, becoming an important link between projects and the OKX Group. Through in-depth cooperation with the OKX ecosystem, OKX Ventures provides a multi-dimensional support platform for projects, including OKX Web3 Wallet, NFT Marketplace, XLayer, etc., helping projects gain strategic support in technology, market, users, and ecosystems. OKX Ventures leverages OKX's years of accumulation and deep cultivation in the industry to provide platform resources and industrial chain support for the rapid development of blockchain projects, helping them stand out in fierce competition.
We focus on the intrinsic development of the industry itself rather than short-term market fluctuations. OKX Ventures places more importance on genuine innovation within the industry—not just theoretical breakthroughs, but also practical new applications, visible user inflows, and steady growth in the overall industry scale. We believe that as blockchain technology matures and application scenarios continue to expand, the decentralized industry will enter a profound period of dividends within the next 3 to 5 years, creating tremendous market opportunities. OKX Ventures will continue to be at the forefront of this trend, leveraging profound industry insights, strong resource advantages, and long-term strategic vision to support industry innovation and promote the widespread application and profound impact of blockchain technology globally.
Disclaimer.
This article is for reference only and represents the author's views, not OKX's position. This article is not intended to provide (i) trading advice or recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may fluctuate significantly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. For your specific situation, please consult your legal/tax/trading professionals. You are responsible for understanding and complying with applicable laws and regulations in your locality.
