Original author: Haseeb ＞|＜, Dragonfly partner

Original article translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

These predictions may either make me look like a prophet or make me seem very ignorant, but one thing is certain: my views may not sit well with many 'holders'.

I will divide my predictions into six parts: L1 and L2, token issuance, stablecoins, regulation, 'AI Agent', and the combination of crypto and AI.

Future trends of L1 and L2

The boundary between L1 and L2 is becoming blurred. Users are no longer paying attention to the differences between the two (in fact, they may never have really cared). Today's blockchain ecosystem, including both L1 and L2, seems overly crowded, and a round of consolidation is expected in the future. The key to this consolidation is not technological superiority, but whether one can find a unique market position and establish user stickiness through effective go-to-market strategies (GTM).

Despite the strong performance of SVM and Move technologies, the market share of EVM 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 the writing of application code, and EVM has already accumulated a large number of verified crypto contract libraries, which will become its significant advantage.

The low-latency performance of Solana will encourage more blockchain optimizations for response speed. The blockchain industry will shift from a competition of 'transactions per second (TPS)' to a competition of 'latency time'—for example, infrastructure like @doublezero and ultra-low-latency L2s (like @megaeth_labs) will drive users' expectations for blockchain experiences to approach Web2 response speeds. We will see more trends in applications related to Optimistic UI, pre-confirmations, intent expressions, email registration, browser-internal wallets, and progressive security. Special thanks to @privy for their innovative advances in this field.

@HyperliquidX has already proven that focusing on specific applications for dedicated chains is a viable model, especially when user experience and cross-chain operational convenience are emphasized. 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 point programs has ended. In the future, there will be two main token distribution models:

For projects with clear core metrics (like exchanges or lending protocols), they will be completely based on token distribution through points. These types of projects do not mind being 'farmed' or 'gamed' because the token distribution is effectively a feedback or discount mechanism for the core metrics, and those doing airdrops are, in a sense, their true users.

For projects without clear core metrics (like L1 and L2), they will turn more towards crowdfunding sales. There may be small-scale airdrops to reward social contributions, but most tokens will be distributed through crowdfunding. Airdrops conducted for vanity metrics are outdated because these tokens do not actually flow to users, but rather to professional airdrop hunters.

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'.

The explosive growth of stablecoins

The usage of stablecoins is expected to experience explosive growth in 2025, especially among small and medium-sized businesses (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 the background of Lutnick serving as business minister, Tether will still maintain its dominant position in the market.

Meanwhile, @ethena_labs is expected to attract more capital, especially in the coming year as government bond 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 pass legislation related to stablecoins, while broader market infrastructure reforms (i.e., the FIT21 Act) may be delayed. The adoption rate of stablecoins will accelerate significantly, but Wall Street's crypto integration, asset tokenization, and related progress in traditional finance (TradFi) may lag behind.

Under the leadership of the Trump administration, Fortune 100 companies may be more proactive in offering crypto services to consumers, while tech companies and startups may show a higher risk tolerance. Trump's inauguration may bring a brief 'regulatory vacuum period', during which the market will have a more lenient attitude towards the integration of crypto technology due to a lack of clear rules and enforcement focus. It is expected that during this window, crypto technology will see large-scale application expansion within Web2 platforms.

AI Agent

(This part is longer because 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 due to its social attributes, making it the focus of the crypto community (CT).

Current 'AI Agents' are not truly autonomous agents in the real sense. They are essentially chatbots with Memecoins that have almost no other autonomous capabilities aside from posting on Twitter. Moreover, most existing 'AI Agents' are like the 'Wizard of Oz' model—controlled by real people behind the scenes to ensure that AI does not make mistakes. This situation will not change in the short term, as the current state of agent technology still has many issues (even Fortune 100 companies have yet to deploy agents in production environments). For example, these agents can easily be manipulated, may make inappropriate statements that damage brand reputation, or may be hacked to steal their resources. True autonomous AI can be referenced from 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 continue to accelerate. Chatbots indeed have the potential to replace many internet celebrities, as they do not need breaks, always maintain consistent messaging, and are 'more economical' than humans. Additionally, most internet celebrities themselves are not known for their originality. The real-time collection and dissemination of information can already be easily accomplished through algorithms (for example, @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 might not care how beautifully it is painted, because the process itself is astonishing. But after seeing it a thousand times, this 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 false information (i.e., 'hallucinations'), analyze more deeply, and provide more insightful opinions. However, for most users, these improvements may not seem particularly significant, and it may even feel very similar to now.

I believe that this freshness and market enthusiasm will last throughout 2025, as the crypto industry typically maintains a long-term interest in new things. However, by 2026, I expect a mutation: chatbots will become so ubiquitous that users will begin to grow tired 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 tend to support human KOLs, even if the quality and consistency of their content may not match that of chatbots.

To address this preference for human content, future chatbots may hide their AI identities, attempting to disguise themselves as humans to capture more market attention. Unlike the current reliance on Memecoins for monetization, future chatbots may adopt profit models similar to human KOLs, such as through sponsorships, affiliate links, and promoting their own held tokens. By then, incidents of KOLs being accused of being chatbots may occur frequently, and there may even be scandals revealing AI identities. This trend could become very complex and bizarre.

However, there is a darker trend behind this. Currently, large language models (LLMs) perform excellently in text processing, but have not matured in other areas. In the crypto space, one of the easiest ways to monetize text abilities is to become an influencer, while another is to become a scammer. In the future, with technological advancements, we may see a surge 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 be reflected at the social level.

Similarly, the long-term impact of AI will not manifest in the trading field. AI will not give everyone a 'trading agent' or mini hedge fund. While AI can indeed enhance personal capabilities, this enhancement is proportional to the user's capital, data, and infrastructure. Therefore, we can expect that AI will further strengthen existing large trading firms, as they have greater capital and data advantages. In other words, large trading firms will become even 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 markets extremely efficient—even including some niche markets. This will lead to ordinary traders having almost no advantage, even if they have their own assistant AI. The value of original research will thus decrease significantly. 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 bots, what else is worth looking forward to? Here are my core views, which few people are mentioning right now: the truly disruptive AI Agents will emerge in the field of software engineering.

Why is this so important? Ask yourself: what is the most important input in our industry? What expensive resources are limiting the emergence of more applications, wallets, and higher quality infrastructure? The answer is software. If AI Agents can significantly reduce the cost of software development, it will change the landscape of the entire industry.

In the post-AI era, seed-stage financing may no longer need to raise millions of dollars. You can start an application with just $10,000 for AI cloud computing costs. Self-funded projects like Hyperliquid and Jupiter will shift from rare exceptions to mainstream. On-chain application development and innovative attempts will experience explosive growth. For a software-driven industry, this cost reduction impact 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 widespread. These AIs will be optimized for codebases such as EVM/Solidity or Rust and will be trained based on a vast database of security audits and attack cases. They will also enhance their capabilities through reinforcement learning (RL) in simulated adversarial blockchain environments. I increasingly believe that in terms of security, AI tools will ultimately benefit defenders rather than attackers. AI will continue to perform 'red team testing' on smart contracts, while other AIs will focus on strengthening contracts, formally verifying their properties, and enhancing incident response and remediation capabilities.

Meanwhile, while you can continue trading those AI-themed Memecoins, true agents will be much more than just tweeting and hyping tokens, and their impact will be far more profound.

True Crypto x AI

Above, we mainly discussed the impact of AI on the cryptocurrency industry (which is the main direction of influence), but cryptographic technology will also have a reverse effect on AI.

In the future, true autonomous agents may use cryptocurrencies for mutual payments. Once the regulatory policies for stablecoins become more lenient, this trend will become even more apparent—even large companies running AI Agents may choose to use stablecoins for payments between agents, as this method is more convenient than traditional bank accounts.

In addition, we will see more large-scale experiments around decentralized training and inference. Some emerging projects, such as @exolabs, @NousResearch, and @PrimeIntellect, will provide real alternatives for centralized training and company-exclusive models. @NEARProtocol is also working hard to build a trusted, neutral, and permissionless full AI technology stack.

Another intersection of crypto and AI is user experience (UX). Wallets in the post-AI era will undergo a complete transformation—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 do all of this automatically. This transformation may take until 2026 to mature enough to fundamentally change the user experience in the crypto industry. But when all this is realized, what impact will it have on the network effects of blockchain? What happens when users no longer care about which chain an application runs on, or even no longer notice it?

This field is still in its early stages, but I am very optimistic about its future and hope to see it truly explode soon. In the long run (for instance, by mid-2026), I believe that most of the market value in the 'AI x Crypto' space will concentrate in this direction.

That's all my predictions. I promised to complete this article before reaching 100,000 followers. Although it's slightly late, I managed to finish 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 the position of Dragonfly; Dragonfly has investments in many 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.

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