Original author: Haseeb ＞|＜
Original article translated: Deep Tide TechFlow
These predictions will either make me look like a prophet or make me seem ignorant, but one thing is for sure: my views may not sit well with many 'holders'.
I have divided the predictions into six parts: L1 and L2, token issuance, stablecoins, regulation, 'AI Agents', and the combination of crypto and AI.
Future trends of L1 and L2
The boundaries between L1 and L2 are becoming blurred. Users no longer care about the difference between the two (in fact, they may never have truly cared). Today's blockchain ecosystem, including L1 and L2, has become overly crowded, and a wave of consolidation is expected in the future. The key to this consolidation is not technical superiority, but whether a unique market positioning can be found and whether effective go-to-market strategies (GTM) can establish user stickiness.
Despite the strong performance of SVM and Move technologies, EVM's market share will continue to grow in 2025. This is mainly driven by projects like @base, @monad_xyz, and @berachain. This growth is no longer due to compatibility but because EVM and Solidity have rich training data. In 2025, large language models (LLMs) will dominate application code writing, and EVM has already accumulated a vast library of verified crypto contracts, which will be a significant advantage.
Solana's low-latency performance will drive more blockchain optimizations for response speed. The blockchain industry will shift from competition over 'transactions per second (TPS)' to competition over 'latency time'—for example, infrastructure like @doublezero and ultra-low-latency L2s (like @megaeth_labs) will drive user expectations for blockchain experiences to approach Web2 response speeds. We will see more application trends around Optimistic UI, pre-confirmation, intent expression, email registration, in-browser wallets, and progressive security. Special thanks to @privy for their innovative contributions in this area.
@HyperliquidX has proven that especially in valuing user experience and the convenience of cross-chain operations, focusing on dedicated chains for specific applications is a viable model. In the future, more projects will emulate this model, and the idea of 'one chain ruling them all' has become a thing of the past.
New trends in token issuance
The current model of large-scale airdrops through points programs has come to an end. In the future, two main token distribution models will emerge:
For projects with clear core metrics (like exchanges or lending protocols), they will be entirely based on points distribution tokens. These projects do not mind whether they will be 'farmed' or 'gamified,' as the distribution of tokens is actually a feedback or discount mechanism based on core metrics, and those who claim to do airdrops are, in a sense, their real users.
For projects without clear core metrics (like L1 and L2), they will lean more towards crowdfunding sales. There may be small-scale airdrops to reward social contributions, but most tokens will be distributed through crowdfunding. Airdrops done for vanity metrics are already outdated, as these tokens do not genuinely flow to users but rather to professional airdrop participants.
Additionally, the market share of Memecoins will gradually be replaced by 'AI Agent'-themed tokens. This change can be seen as a shift from 'financial nihilism' to 'financial over-optimism.'
Explosive growth of stablecoins
The usage of stablecoins is expected to see explosive growth in 2025, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs). Their application scenarios will no longer be limited to trading and speculation; more businesses will use on-chain dollars for instant settlement.
Banks are also beginning to pay attention to this trend: it is expected that by the end of 2025, some banks will announce the issuance of their own stablecoins to avoid being left behind by the industry. However, under Lutnick's tenure as Commerce Secretary, Tether will maintain its dominant position in the market.
Meanwhile, @ethena_labs is expected to attract more capital, especially in the coming year when Treasury yields continue to decline. When the opportunity cost of capital decreases, the returns from basis trading will become more attractive.
Regulation
In 2025, the U.S. is expected to see legislation related to stablecoins, while broader market infrastructure reforms (i.e., the FIT21 Act) may be delayed. The adoption speed of stablecoins will significantly accelerate, but Wall Street's integration of crypto, asset tokenization, and relevant advancements in traditional finance (TradFi) may lag behind.
Under Trump's administration, Fortune 100 companies may be more aggressive in offering crypto services to consumers, while tech companies and startups will show a higher risk tolerance. Trump's inauguration may bring about a brief 'regulatory vacuum,' during which the market will adopt a more lenient attitude towards the integration of crypto technology due to the lack of clear rules and enforcement focus. During this window, crypto technology is expected to see massive application expansion within Web2 platforms.
AI Agent
(This section is longer, as my views may provoke controversy—please read patiently!)
The craze for 'AI Agents' is expected to last throughout 2025 but will eventually gradually fade. This is not the true long-term disruption brought by AI, but rather its social attributes that make it a focal point in the crypto community (CT).
Current 'AI Agents' are not truly intelligent agents in the real sense. They are essentially chatbots with Memecoins, with almost no other autonomous capabilities apart from posting on Twitter. Furthermore, the existing 'AI Agents' are largely 'Wizard of Oz' models—controlled by real people behind the scenes to ensure that the AI does not make mistakes. This situation will not change in the short term, as the current agent technology still has many issues (even Fortune 100 companies have not deployed agents in production environments). For example, these agents can easily be manipulated, potentially making inappropriate statements that harm brand image or be hacked to steal their resources. True autonomous AIs can refer to the case of @freysa_ai—if an AI has not been hacked, it is likely because there is human intervention behind it.
Nevertheless, I believe this trend will accelerate. Chatbots indeed have the potential to replace many internet celebrities, as they do not need breaks, consistently convey messages, and are more 'cost-effective' than humans. Moreover, most internet celebrities are not particularly known for their originality. The collection and dissemination of real-time information can already be easily achieved through algorithms (e.g., @aixbt_agent).
Currently, these chatbots feel novel because their concept is very unique; it feels like seeing an elephant painting. The first time you see it, you may not care whether it is beautifully painted, because the process itself is astonishing. But after seeing it a thousand times, that novelty will gradually fade. I believe this will happen when the technology of chatbots stabilizes.
Take aixbt as an example; it is now very adept at aggregating data from different projects. By next year, with the emergence of the next generation of agents, aixbt may reduce the generation of misinformation (i.e., 'hallucinations'), analyze more deeply, and provide more insightful opinions. However, for most users, these improvements may not seem particularly significant and might even feel not much different from now.
I believe that this freshness and market enthusiasm will last throughout 2025, as the crypto industry typically maintains interest in new things for a long time. However, by 2026, I expect a mutation: chatbots will become so ubiquitous that users will start to tire of them. Public opinion may reverse. When users see their favorite human key opinion leaders (KOLs) losing their livelihoods due to competition from chatbots, a sense of 'class consciousness' may be triggered. Users will gradually lean towards supporting human KOLs, even if the quality and consistency of this content may not match that of chatbots.
To cope with this preference for human content, future chatbots may hide their AI identities, attempting to masquerade as humans to capture more attention market share. Unlike today’s reliance on Memecoin monetization methods, future chatbots may adopt profit models similar to human KOLs, such as through sponsorships, affiliate links, and promoting their owned tokens. By then, incidents of KOLs being accused of being chatbots may occur frequently, and scandals involving the revelation of AI identities may arise. This trend could become very complex and bizarre.
However, there is a darker trend behind this. Currently, large language models (LLMs) excel in text processing, but they are not mature in other areas. In the crypto space, one of the easiest ways to monetize text abilities is to become an influencer, and another is to become a scammer. In the future, as technology advances, we may see a large emergence of autonomous scam bots (scambots). This situation could become a serious social issue, similar to the outbreak of ransomware and cryptojacking after 2017.
Although chatbots may still be the focus in 2025, the long-term disruptive impact of AI will not manifest itself at the social level.
Similarly, the long-term impact of AI will not appear in the trading field. AI will not give everyone their own 'trading agent' or mini hedge fund. While AI can indeed enhance individual capabilities, this enhancement is proportional to the user's capital, data, and infrastructure. Therefore, we can expect AI to further strengthen existing large trading firms, as they have greater capital and data advantages. In other words, large trading firms will become better at making profits. Furthermore, AI will narrow the technological gap between trading firms, as all companies can use 'cloud-based advanced quantitative analysis tools.'
Over time, AI will make the market extremely efficient—even including some niche markets. This will result in ordinary traders having almost no advantage, even if they have homemade assistant AIs. The value of original research will significantly decline. However, for ordinary users, increased market competition and liquidity may be good news, meaning more trading opportunities and a more active market. (For example, @Polymarket may achieve higher liquidity across all domains!)
If the future hot topic is neither chatbots nor trading robots, then what else is worth looking forward to? Here are my core points, although almost no one is mentioning them right now: truly disruptive AI Agents will appear in the field of software engineering.
Why is this so important? Ask yourself: what is the most important input in our industry? What expensive resource limits the emergence of more applications, wallets, and better infrastructure? The answer is software. If AI Agents can significantly lower the cost of software development, it will change the entire industry landscape.
In the post-AI era, seed round financing may no longer require raising millions of dollars. With just $10,000 in AI cloud computing costs, you can launch an application. Self-funded projects like Hyperliquid and Jupiter will shift from rare exceptions to the mainstream. On-chain application development and innovative attempts will see explosive growth. For a software-driven industry, this drop in costs will trigger a wave of innovation in the blockchain space.
The impact of this change on security will also be profound. AI-driven static analysis and monitoring tools will become ubiquitous, making security more accessible. These AIs will be optimized for codebases like EVM/Solidity or Rust and trained on large databases of security audits and attack cases. They will also improve their capabilities through reinforcement learning (RL) in simulated adversarial blockchain environments. I increasingly believe that in terms of security, AI tools will ultimately favor defenders rather than attackers. AI will continuously perform 'red team testing' on smart contracts, while other AIs will focus on strengthening contracts, formally verifying their attributes, and enhancing incident response and repair capabilities.
Meanwhile, while you can continue to trade those AI-themed Memecoins, true agents will be much more than tweeting and hyping tokens; their impact will be far more profound.
Real Crypto x AI
Above, we mainly discussed the impact of AI on the crypto industry (which is the primary direction of impact), but crypto technology will also have a reverse effect on AI.
In the future, true autonomous agents may use cryptocurrency for mutual payments. Once regulatory policies for stablecoins become more relaxed, this trend will become more apparent—large companies running AI Agents may also choose to use stablecoins for payments between agents, as it is more convenient than traditional bank accounts.
Additionally, we will see more large-scale experiments around decentralized training and inference. Emerging projects like @exolabs, @NousResearch, and @PrimeIntellect will provide real alternatives to centralized training and corporate-exclusive models. @NEARProtocol is also working hard to create a trustworthy, neutral, and permissionless complete AI tech stack.
Another intersection of crypto and AI is user experience (UX). Wallets in the post-AI era will undergo a complete revolution—an AI-driven wallet will be able to automatically handle cross-chain bridging, optimize transaction paths, minimize fees, solve interoperability issues or front-end vulnerabilities, and help users avoid obvious scams or rug pulls. Users will no longer need to switch between multiple wallets, change RPCs, or rebalance stablecoins—AI will handle all of this automatically. This transformation may not mature enough until 2026, fundamentally changing the user experience in the crypto industry. But when all this is achieved, what will it mean for the network effects of blockchain? What will happen when users no longer care about which chain an application runs on, or even become unaware of it?
This field is still in its early stages, but I am full of hope for its future and hope to see it truly explode soon. In the long run (say by mid-2026), I believe that most of the market value in the 'AI x Crypto' field will be concentrated in this direction.
That's all my predictions. I promised to finish this article before reaching 100,000 followers; although it's a bit late, I managed to complete it before the New Year!
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope by this time next year, I will have been replaced by AI and officially 'unemployed'!
Disclaimer: The content of this article is solely my personal opinion and does not represent Dragonfly's position; Dragonfly has investments in many of the projects mentioned in the article. This article is not financial advice; please do your own research (DYOR). As for whether I am an AI? I'll leave that question for you to judge.
