Original Title: DWF Ventures' Selection of 2025 Narratives
Source: DWF Ventures
Compiled by: Fu Ruan, Odaily Planet Daily
In 2024, the crypto industry will see increased attention from institutional investors, with ETFs and stablecoins steadily growing. Therefore, DWF Ventures holds an optimistic view of the overall crypto industry in 2025 and predicts that fund inflows will shift to on-chain. DWF Ventures' focus on the 2025 trends:
· Stablecoins
· DeFi
· Consumer-facing applications
· AI
Stablecoins
Tether and Circle have long dominated the growth of stablecoins. Although stablecoins are primarily used as mediums for trading and payments, we believe their role as assets is also gradually strengthening. The profitability of Tether and Circle has attracted more traditional fintech companies to enter the stablecoin space.
· Stripe's acquisition of Stablecoin further demonstrates traditional fintech companies' strong interest in this market.
· PayPal is focusing on PYUSD and is promoting its application on Solana by offering yields of up to 20%.
· The USDtb launched in partnership 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.
Therefore, we believe that with the accelerated entry of institutions, the application of stablecoins will experience explosive growth in 2025, and the increase in yields will benefit all users.
DeFi
With the growth of stablecoins, DeFi has also seen significant advancements. The usage of many DeFi protocols has rapidly risen, with Aave and Pendle's protocol revenues 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 such as Uniswap, Raydium Protocol, and Hyperliquid.
As more liquidity flows into the ecosystem, we will see more innovation, particularly in terms of yield layers and lending mechanisms.
With technological advancements in throughput, latency, and execution, along with upcoming projects like Monad, MegaETH, and Hyperliquid's HyperEVM, the momentum for DeFi innovation will be further enhanced.
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 using the Telegram platform without the need to create a wallet or back up 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 gaining popularity. Therefore, this will be a trend in 2025, and protocols that 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 continuously topping the charts. These bots process information and generate content at an astonishing speed, operating around the clock without rest, far surpassing humans.
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 demonstrates 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 product-market fit (PMF) will be key to standing out. As AI Agents are widely adopted, decentralized AI infrastructure will rapidly develop across all levels of the crypto space.
