Original author: Mippo, Blockworks co-founder
Original translation by: Deep Tide TechFlow
1. The U.S. will re-emerge as the global center of cryptocurrency.
An increasing number of entrepreneurs will return to the U.S. and set up offices in New York. The scale of cryptocurrency conferences in the U.S. will also exceed similar events in Asia.
2. More than 10 DeFi protocols will officially launch fee switches, including Uniswap.
3. DeFi protocols will gradually adopt customer asset rehypothecation as a new business model.
This trend will involve cross-chain bridges, liquid staking tokens (LSTs), and other areas.
4. The Ethereum community's debate about the 'North Star' roadmap will reach a conclusion:
Attempts to scale L1 mainnets will remain at a low level (for example, raising the Gas target to 50M gwei, while discussions about shortening block times will heat up).
In the end, the roadmap centered on Rollup will be reaffirmed.
5. Max's scaling proposal will fail to gain sufficient support and ultimately fail.
6. This outcome will bring much-needed cohesion to the Ethereum community and improve overall market sentiment.
Nevertheless, some dissenting developers and users may exit the ecosystem as a result. The price of ETH tokens is expected to perform strongly.
7. Rollup-based solutions will still struggle to achieve significant breakthroughs by 2025.
However, sufficient interoperability can be achieved through protocols like Across. There is currently no clear direction for achieving universal synchronous composability.
8. Trusted execution environments (TEEs) will gradually become an important part of L2 infrastructure and ultimately become a permanent feature.
9. Solana's development momentum will continue in this cycle, but issues will gradually emerge by 2025:
Due to the decentralization of memecoins and challenges posed by MEV (maximum extractable value), Solana's REV will find it difficult to hit new highs. In response to these issues, maximalism within the Solana community will rise.
10. The Firedancer client will officially launch in the fourth quarter, at which point Solana's network will achieve a processing capacity of 100,000 TPS.
11. Solana may adjust its token issuance policy to reduce inflation, while Ethereum will not make similar changes.
12. Base will become a dark horse in the Rollup ecosystem and become a major competitor to Solana.
Total assets on Base are expected to exceed $40 billion. Base will also become the preferred chain for AI agents and other AI applications.
13. Stablecoins will gradually become the dominant asset on L2 networks, with their number expected to be more than twice that of ETH.
14. The stablecoin market will experience breakthrough growth in the coming year:
Market capitalization is expected to exceed $450 billion. Stablecoins will become one of the top three investment areas of focus for venture capitalists (VCs).
15. More than 5 large fintech companies or traditional financial institutions will launch their own stablecoins in 2025.
This will bring competitive pressure to existing stablecoins, leading to a slowdown in their growth rate.
16. More than 10 enterprises (including banks and Web2 giants) will launch their own L2 networks in 2025.
But most of these networks will struggle to gain market recognition and achieve tangible results. The only potential exception is fintech companies such as Robinhood.
17. With a large user base and strong brand influence, Robinhood will become one of the dominant forces in the industry by 2025.
By the end of the year, Robinhood will be viewed alongside Coinbase as the two leading crypto exchanges in the U.S.
18. Investment opportunities in L1 blockchains still exist and will not disappear in the short term.
The standout projects will be Sui and HyperLiquid.
19. The ICO model will return, but will not dominate like it did in 2017.
Investor protection measures will be improved, and ICOs will resemble crowdfunding activities more.
5 blue-chip protocols are expected to raise funds through ICOs.
20. Venture capital will flow back to the crypto industry, but the scale of financing will not reach the levels of 2021.
In 2021, the total venture capital in the crypto space was $30 billion. It is expected to be between $20 billion and $25 billion in 2025. The market will see more financing rounds of $50 million to $100 million.
21. Crypto companies will have an IPO window, but there will not be a large-scale listing frenzy.
More than 4 companies are expected to go public, but due to the valuation bubble of 2021 not being fully digested, more companies may delay their listing plans.
Growth equity investments will still not enter the crypto space.
22. The mainstream trend in 2025 will be the combination of AI and crypto.
The continuous advancement of foundational models will attract more attention and drive a surge in AI-related tokens.
23. The application scenarios of AI will become more diverse, not limited to agents.
Different types of agents will be experimented with, such as content creators, hedge fund traders, artists, and more.
But the vast majority of attempts will remain in the early stages and may not succeed.
24. TikTok's influence in the crypto space will reach unprecedented heights.
Crypto Twitter (CT) may become the main exit channel for certain TikTok tokens.
25. The U.S. will pass significant crypto legislation in 2025.
An updated market structure bill or stablecoin bill may be signed into law.
26. Bitcoin's L2 solutions will still struggle to achieve breakthroughs by 2025.
Truly zero-knowledge proof (ZK)-based Bitcoin L2 will still take longer to achieve.
27. Cryptocurrencies will be widely regarded as a long-term force in American politics.
The attitude of mainstream media (MSM) will gradually shift, starting to acknowledge that cryptocurrencies will not easily exit the historical stage.
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