As 2024 comes to a close, this round of the crypto market has finally experienced a long-awaited bull market cycle. In the new year, various investment institutions and analysts have provided predictions for the crypto market in 2025. According to Blockworks, the venture capital firm Lightspeed also released five predictions specifically for Solana yesterday.
Prediction 1: Elon Musk's X platform will launch a native Solana token.
Lightspeed stated that when Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, the cryptocurrency community was speculating that this Dogecoin enthusiast would integrate cryptocurrencies into the social platform, but as of now, Musk has not taken any further actions regarding Dogecoin or other cryptocurrencies.
However, with Trump set to take office, it is expected that the U.S. will loosen regulations on cryptocurrencies. In this regard, Lightspeed predicts:
I believe the native token of the X platform is about to arrive.
Lightspeed further mentioned that Solana's high throughput and low transaction fee characteristics may become the preferred chain for X tokens.
The X platform can leverage Solana's high throughput and low transaction fees to allow X Premium subscribers to pay subscription fees with tokens, and achieve quick capital flow through stablecoin partners like Bridge.
In addition, with Solana's Blinks feature, the X platform can also implement in-app e-commerce, similar to the recently successful model of TikTok. If X really wants to become an 'all-in-one application,' its role should extend into the payment sector.
Prediction 2: The market value of Solana stablecoins will grow fourfold.
Lightspeed noted that Solana's trading volume and demand have seen significant growth in 2024, but the stablecoin sector is still relatively lagging. Currently, the total market value of Solana stablecoins is about $5 billion, ranking fifth, behind Ethereum, Tron, BSC, and Arbitrum.
However, stablecoins play an important role in payments and DePIN applications. As multiple issuers and startups drive the growth of the stablecoin ecosystem, Lightspeed predicts that the market value of Solana stablecoins may exceed $20 billion by the end of 2025.
Stablecoins play an important role in payments and decentralized infrastructure networks (DePIN) applications. With issuers like PayPal and Sky joining Solana, and startups like Perena and Lulo driving the growth of the stablecoin ecosystem, the market value of Solana's stablecoins could exceed $20 billion by the end of 2025, a fourfold increase from the current value, although it will still lag behind Ethereum's $110 billion.
Prediction 3: Solana spot ETF will be approved, but performance will lag behind Ethereum.
Lightspeed then stated that he is not optimistic about the Solana spot ETF. Although he believes that the Solana spot ETF will be approved this year, the demand for the SOL spot ETF may not be that high, as Solana holders may prefer to purchase through on-chain wallets or crypto exchanges.
Solana exhibits more characteristics of 'degen' (enthusiastic players) compared to BTC or ETH, and attracts fewer 'steady investors.' Many SOL buyers seem more likely to come through Phantom or Coinbase rather than through their retirement accounts.
Additionally, Bloomberg analyst Jame Seyffart has also tweeted that before the approval of the SOL spot ETF, tokens like LTC, XRP, and HBAR may have already received SEC approval for their spot ETFs. In this regard, Lightspeed predicts that the capital inflow for the Solana ETF will be lower than the $35 billion for the ETH ETF in its initial listing.
Prediction 4: Pump.fun will no longer be the highest-earning application among meme coin platforms.
Lightspeed also mentioned that one of the most anticipated narratives for Solana in 2024 is the rise of the meme token launch platform Pump.fun.
Since its launch in early 2024, pump.fun has generated over $330 million in revenue. Although several supposedly better competing platforms have emerged during this period, none have been able to shake pump.fun's leadership position in the MemeCoin space.
But he predicts that Pump.fun will be surpassed by another application this year, as speculative applications in the crypto space typically have a short lifespan, such as OpenSea, which was valued at $13.3 billion in 2022.
Lightspeed then mentioned that he believes meme coins will continue to be one of the main sources of trading volume for Solana this year, but most transactions may no longer be concentrated on Pump.fun. He speculates that AI-related applications are likely to become the mainstream platforms for meme coin trading and issuance.
Prediction 5: Solana will not experience major outages this year.
Lightspeed finally mentioned that Solana has experienced multiple outages during its four-year lifecycle, but he predicts that there will be no major outages in 2025.
Lightspeed states that this prediction is quite bold because Firedancer, as a brand new Solana client, will exit the testing phase this year, which will introduce many potential risk factors that pose a certain threat to network stability. However, considering Jump Trading's multi-phase stability testing of the Firedancer client and the network stress testing team launched by Solana Labs, the technical stability of Solana has significantly improved.
