Written by: DWF Ventures
Compiled by: Fu Ruo, Odaily Planet Daily
In 2024, the crypto industry will attract more attention from institutional-level investors, with ETFs and stablecoins also showing steady growth. Therefore, DWF Ventures holds an optimistic view of the overall crypto industry in 2025 and predicts that capital inflows will shift to on-chain. DWF Ventures' focus on trends for 2025:
Stablecoin
DeFi
Consumer-facing applications
AI
Stablecoin
Tether and Circle have long dominated the growth of stablecoins. While stablecoins are primarily used as a medium for trading and payments, we believe their role as assets is gradually strengthening. The profitability of Tether and Circle has attracted more traditional fintech companies into the stablecoin space.
Stripe's acquisition of Stablecoin further proves the strong interest of traditional fintech companies in this market.
PayPal focuses on PYUSD and promotes its application on Solana by offering yields of up to 20%.
USDtb, launched in collaboration with BlackRock, provides exposure to RWA yields through the Usual platform, while the launch of iUSDe marks a further integration—bringing regulated high DeFi yields into traditional finance for the first time.
Additionally, DWF Labs is incubating a high-yield stablecoin project called Falcoin Stable, which is planned to launch this year.
Thus, we believe that with the acceleration of institutional entry, the application of stablecoins will experience explosive growth in 2025, benefiting all users with increased yields.
DeFi
With the growth of stablecoins, DeFi has also seen significant advancements. The usage of many DeFi protocols has rapidly climbed, with protocol revenues for Aave and Pendle hitting new highs.
The trading volume of DEX/CEX spot and perpetual contracts has also doubled since the beginning of the year, mainly driven by platforms like Uniswap, Raydium Protocol, and Hyperliquid.
As more liquidity flows into the ecosystem, we will see more innovation, particularly in yield layers and lending mechanisms.
With advancements in throughput, latency, and execution technologies, along with upcoming projects like Monad, MegaETH, and Hyperliquid's HyperEVM, the momentum for DeFi innovation will further enhance.
Consumer-facing applications
Consumer-facing applications aim to lower the entry barriers for non-crypto-native users.
TON's mini-apps are an example, allowing users to quickly get started on the Telegram platform without needing to create a wallet or backup seed phrases, ultimately guiding users into the on-chain world.
Mobile-centric experiences are on the rise, with well-known protocols like Jupiter, as well as trading tools like Moonshot, Photon, BONKbot, and ApePro being highly sought after. Thus, this will be a trend in 2025, and protocols that can enhance user experience and introduce more retention mechanisms will capture a larger market share.
Artificial Intelligence
In recent months, AI Agents have exploded within the crypto community, with aixbt consistently topping the trending charts. These bots process information and generate content at astonishing speeds, operating around the clock without rest, far exceeding human capabilities.
Currently, AI Agents are involved in multiple fields, including discovering security vulnerabilities, assessing code, no-code frameworks, data analysis, and fund investment. We believe that as OpenAI's o1 achieves more human-like behaviors, the next wave of innovation will bring more interesting application scenarios, especially in terms of commercialization.
The number of AI Agents will continue to grow, and competition will become increasingly fierce; finding the right market fit (PMF) will be key to standing out. With the widespread application of AI Agents, decentralized AI infrastructure will rapidly develop across all levels of the crypto field.
