Original title: (5 narratives to watch in 2025.)
Author: nairolf
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
I won't waste time writing a lengthy introduction — 2024 is indeed an exciting year. Let's get straight to the point and see the changes I look forward to most in 2025:
Alternative Virtual Machines (altVMs)
2024 is a year for alternative virtual machines (Alternative Virtual Machines, altVMs) to shine.
@fuel_network has successfully launched its mainnet.
@cartesiproject continues to progress steadily, while MoveVM has gained more applications driven by @Aptos, @SuiNetwork, and @movementlabsxyz.
2025 may become a breakthrough year for these alternative virtual machines, sparking the next wave of on-chain applications.
It is worth mentioning that @fluentxyz's hybrid execution model will play a key role in this field. It integrates EVM, SVM, and Wasm into a single execution environment, providing developers with the most comprehensive and flexible application building methods. Even more exciting is that this design is scalable, meaning that any virtual machine can be added to this system in the future. Perhaps it will become the 'ultimate solution' in the field of virtual machines.
Chain Abstraction
Chain abstraction made significant progress in 2024. It evolved from a preliminary concept into an experience for users to feel as if they are using a single chain, even with hundreds of chains working in collaboration behind the scenes.
Users no longer need to frequently switch wallets, manage multiple gas tokens, or — most troublesome of all — bridge across chains.
The UniversalX solution launched by @ParticleNtwrk allows for trading any on-chain token through a unified interface, offering an experience similar to Binance but entirely on-chain. The maturity of this technology will spawn many new products, and more importantly, many existing projects will begin to adopt these solutions.
This trend showcases deep cooperation between projects, such as @EverclearOrg, @SOCKETProtocol, and @NEARProtocol, as well as the collaborative results of @sedaprotocol and @routescan_io.
The focus for 2025 will be on how to get more users to engage with and use these innovative solutions.
L1 Public Chains
If the crypto industry doesn't see the birth of new L1 public chains in a year, it loses a lot of fun. In 2024, Sui and Aptos are undoubtedly the star projects in this field.
So what about 2025? We will welcome more anticipated new projects.
@monad_xyz, @berachain, and @HyperliquidX may become the 'golden triangle' driving industry development.
Among them, Hyperliquid's HyperEVM is particularly noteworthy. With Hyperliquid's recent surge in popularity, how its ecosystem achieves deep connections with exchanges will be an important highlight to look forward to.
RaaS (Rollup as a Service)
RaaS may be one of the least discussed areas currently. Why is that? The reason might be that it looks like a 'boring business.' However, many seemingly uninteresting business models often hold the most value in hindsight.
Rollups and L2 are hot topics in the crypto circle (CT) in 2024, and this enthusiasm is unlikely to fade in the short term.
As @inkonchain and @AbstractChain are set to launch related services in the coming months, discussions about these technologies will continue. But one thing is clear: more and more L2 chains will emerge in the future.
Whether general-purpose or specialized chains, the data speaks for itself. Rollup-as-a-Service platforms like @Calderaxyz have already supported the deployment of about 100 new chains this year, providing rich integration and customization options from day one.
In addition, @conduitxyz and @alt_layer are also adopting similar models. The market demand for RaaS providers is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
According to statistics from @_kaitoai, AI's attention this year has surpassed 40%, and its popularity is unprecedented.
But my intuition tells me this is just the beginning. The Eliza project from @ai16zdao has become one of the most popular open-source projects on GitHub in the past few months. Could it become a bridge to attract new developers into the crypto space? Time will tell, but it certainly has the potential to be an interesting 'entry point.'
We have already seen the initial results of AI in the real world, such as the @aixbt_agent developed by @virtuals_io. This agent continues to attract attention in the crypto space while providing fairly accurate information.
Will the future revolve around 'interpreting the thoughts of AI agents'? There is currently no conclusion, but it can be foreseen that in 2025, more and more AI agents will take on tasks previously handled by humans.
Other projects worth paying attention to
@pendle_fi continues to achieve exponential growth and is now regarded as one of the 'pioneer' projects in DeFi. Will its total value locked (TVL) exceed $10 billion in 2025? It’s worth looking forward to.
@_kaitoai is pioneering a new field of Information Finance (InfoFi). What will it look like in the future? We should find out the answer next year.
@Polymer_Labs will become a strong competitor in the field of cross-chain interoperability, and I believe interoperability will be one of the important topics in 2025.
@OndoFinance is driving large traditional institutions into the blockchain space. Real World Assets (RWA) and asset tokenization have become trends, but have not yet fully broken through bottlenecks. Will 2025 bring a turning point due to a more friendly regulatory environment?
@nillionnetwork's mainnet is scheduled to launch in February next year. Against the backdrop of increasing attention to privacy issues, this project could have a significant impact. Even more exciting is that it is expected to lead a new wave of on-chain applications.
See you in 2025.
