Author: The Spartan Group; Translated by: 0xjs@Golden Finance
2024 is a pivotal year for Web3, with institutional capital driving the spotlight on Bitcoin ETFs, risk-weighted assets, and stablecoins. Meanwhile, AI becomes a transformative force across the industry, while the memecoin craze highlights a shift in user behavior. As we head into 2025, the Spartan team shares the trends and opportunities that will shape the next phase of growth.
1. BTC will become one of the Federal Reserve’s reserve assets; altcoins will reach all-time highs; AI agents will create their own currencies on the crypto track.
——Melody He, Co-founder and Partner of Spartan Group, Co-Head of Spartan Advisory
2. In 2025, we will see significant consolidation in the Web3 infrastructure business. As OG founders seek to exit, large industry players (and possibly some non-Web3 participants) will seek to rapidly expand their licensed coverage, geographic reach, and product portfolios, with small and medium-sized regional exchanges, staking providers, custodians, major brokers, data companies, media platforms, etc., all playing a role.
——Casper B. Johansen, Co-founder and Partner of Spartan Group, Co-Head of Spartan Advisory
3. Applications, applications, applications, applications, and more applications. Expanding the adoption of DeFi, AI, and stablecoins; the Web3 ecosystem will surpass growth in any other technology sector.
——Leeor Groen, Managing Director of Spartan Group
4. Cryptocurrency lays the foundation for the post-human digital economy (assets, tracks, liquidity), empowering humanity and AI. A significant leap in user experience: LLMs (@ TXT2TXN) will transform natural language into seamless machine interactions, powering intent-driven applications (@ Anoma). AI agents thrive through smarter oracles and arbitration, combining human judgment with AI outcomes (@ chaoslabs), and enabling scalable orchestration and verification through execution shards (@ KRNL). The future should be effortless.
——Yan Ma, Partner at Spartan Group
5. In 2025, what I look forward to most is the progress of decentralized science (DeSci). Blockchain is transforming research by making collaboration more transparent, data sharing more secure, and funding more equitable. DeSci leverages blockchain to address challenges in research, funding, and data sharing, supporting DAOs, tokenized intellectual property, and fostering decentralized data systems that promote transparency and collaboration. I look forward to seeing DeSci drive scientific discoveries that have a meaningful impact on human life through innovative funding and ownership models.
——Silver Ng, Analyst at Spartan Group
6. NFTs will make a comeback in 2025. It seems everyone thinks NFTs are dead, so this revival will catch everyone off guard, and the price volatility will be shocking.
——Kelvin Koh, Co-founder and Partner of Spartan Group, Chief Investment Officer of Spartan Capital
7. In 2025, I am excited about DePIN, as cryptocurrency is transitioning from products to solutions for real-world problems. We have already seen early successes—projects like Bittensor are revolutionizing open-source AI, while Grass and Render Network leverage consumer hardware to meet the growing demand for data and computation. DePIN is paving the way for a decentralized, accessible future that empowers global communities. Through token-based incentives, these innovations are driving breakthroughs in AI, telecommunications, energy, and more. I look forward to seeing cryptocurrency-driven products achieve mainstream application in 2025, seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.
——Ch etanya Khandelwal, Investment Associate at Spartan Group
8. In 2024, we witnessed significant growth in intent-based solutions, with the collaboration between Across and Uniswap on ERC-7683 (the universal standard for cross-chain intent) being a hallmark. What excites me about 2025 is seeing this infrastructure evolve into a unified network where intent can flow seamlessly between protocols. As capital efficiency improves between clearing opportunities and solvers, we are moving towards a future where users simply express what they want—'earn 5% on my ETH'—and experienced participants automatically handle the complex cross-chain execution and aggregation.
——Jose Sanchez, Investment Associate at Spartan Group
9. AI will further lower technical barriers, leading to a surge of temporary applications built by non-technical users to meet their specific needs. Many of these applications will exhibit agency. Conversational AI agents will evolve into on-chain AI agents, creating new use cases in gaming, entertainment, DeFi, and governance. A significant portion of blockchain transactions will be initiated by semi-autonomous agents acting on behalf of humans.
——Adrian Lai, Chief Creative Officer (Studio Head) of Spartan Labs
10. Agent software will upgrade to handle increasingly complex tasks for humans, rather than just simple automation. We will see truly decentralized open-source AI models emerge, profiting in creative new ways. With the growing demand for privacy, secure computing (TEE, MPC) will become mainstream. As people seek to escape a plethora of low-quality AI bots, watch for the rise of human-exclusive social platforms.
——Audrey Taylor-Akwenye, Chief Technology Officer of Spartan Labs
11. AI x Crypto seems poised to deliver its long-awaited prophecy, as 2025 will usher in a truly exciting era for crypto applications. As humanity glimpses a shared future with on-chain agents, AI responders will soon be forgotten, replaced by a plethora of high-quality domain experts (think AIXBT across countless niches). And I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. When Zerebro launches the top ten singles with Travis Scott, don’t forget to exit all markets.
——Jim Sexton, Software Engineer, Spartan Labs
12. In 2024, we saw the rise of AI agents, changing the way communities are managed. Looking ahead to 2025, I am particularly interested in the concept of 'agents as community managers.' These agents are redefining content strategies for Web3 communities, seamlessly blending engaging AI-driven content with authentic user-generated content created by the community. Projects like Higher on Farcaster showcase this potential through Aethernet, an AI agent capable of creating daily posts, engaging with community content, and even managing a wallet to invest, create, and sell NFT artworks. It also funds art and meme competitions, rewarding actions that add value to the community. As these agents continue to mature, they will become an essential part of nurturing a vibrant ecosystem within Web3.
——Jim Duivenvoorden, Community Manager at Spartan Labs