Original author: Haseeb ＞|＜, Partner at Dragonfly

Original text translated by: 深潮 TechFlow

These predictions will either make me look like a prophet or make me seem ignorant, but one thing is certain: my views may upset many 'holders'.

I will divide my predictions into six parts: L1 and L2, token issuance, stablecoins, regulation, 'AI Agent', and the convergence of crypto and AI.

Future trends of L1 and L2

The boundary between L1 and L2 is becoming blurred. Users no longer care about the distinction between the two (in fact, they may never have truly cared). Today's blockchain ecosystem, including L1 and L2, has become overly crowded, and a round of consolidation is on the horizon. The key to this consolidation is not technological superiority, but whether unique market positioning can be found and user stickiness can be established through effective go-to-market strategies (GTM).

Despite the strong performance of SVM and Move technologies, EVM's market share will continue to grow in 2025. This is mainly driven by projects like @base, @monad_xyz, and @berachain. This growth is no longer due to compatibility, but because EVM and Solidity have rich training data. In 2025, large language models (LLMs) will dominate the writing of application code, and EVM has already accumulated a large number of verified crypto contract libraries, which will become its significant advantage.

Solana's low-latency performance will prompt more blockchains to optimize response speeds. The blockchain industry will shift from competition for 'transactions per second (TPS)' to competition for 'latency'—for example, infrastructure such as @doublezero and ultra-low-latency L2s (like @megaeth_labs) will drive user expectations for blockchain experiences to approach Web2 response speeds. We will see more application trends regarding Optimistic UI, pre-confirmation, intent expression, email registration, in-browser wallets, and progressive security. Special thanks to @privy for their innovative progress in this field.

@HyperliquidX has proven that focusing on specific applications is a viable model, especially when prioritizing user experience and ease of cross-chain operations. In the future, more projects will emulate this model, and the idea of 'one chain to rule them all' has become a thing of the past.

New trends in token issuance

The current model of large-scale airdrops through points programs has ended. In the future, there will be two main token distribution models:

For projects with clear core metrics (like exchanges or lending protocols), they will base token distribution entirely on points. These projects do not mind whether they will be 'farmed' or 'gamified', as token distribution effectively serves as feedback or discount mechanisms for core metrics, and those who do airdrops are, in a sense, also their real users.

For projects without clear core metrics (like L1 and L2), they will turn more to crowdfunding sales. There may be small-scale airdrops to reward social contributions, but most tokens will be distributed through crowdfunding. Airdrops done for vanity metrics are outdated, as these tokens do not truly flow to users but rather to professional airdrop hunters.

Furthermore, the market share of Memecoins will gradually be replaced by 'AI Agent' themed tokens. This change can be seen as a shift from 'financial nihilism' to 'financial over-optimism'.

The explosive growth of stablecoins

The usage of stablecoins will experience explosive growth in 2025, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs). Their application scenarios will no longer be limited to trading and speculation, and more businesses will use on-chain dollars for instant settlement.

Banks are also beginning to pay attention to this trend: it is expected that by the end of 2025, some banks will announce the issuance of their own stablecoins to avoid being left behind by the industry. However, under Lutnick's tenure as Secretary of Commerce, Tether will still maintain its dominant position in the market.

Meanwhile, @ethena_labs is expected to attract more capital, especially in the context of continuous decline in treasury yields over the next year. When the opportunity cost of capital decreases, the profits from basis trading will become more attractive.

Regulation

In 2025, the U.S. is expected to pass stablecoin-related legislation, while broader market infrastructure reforms (i.e., the FIT21 bill) may be delayed. The adoption rate of stablecoins will accelerate significantly, but Wall Street's crypto integration, asset tokenization, and relevant advancements in traditional finance (TradFi) may lag behind.

Under the leadership of the Trump administration, Fortune 100 companies may be more proactive in offering crypto services to consumers, while tech companies and startups will show a higher risk tolerance. Trump's inauguration may bring about a brief 'regulatory vacuum period' during which, due to a lack of clear rules and enforcement focus, the market will adopt a more lenient attitude towards the integration of crypto technology. It is expected that during this window period, crypto technology will experience massive application expansion in Web2 platforms.

AI Agent

(This part is longer because my views may provoke controversy—please read patiently!)

The craze for 'AI Agent' is expected to continue throughout 2025, but will eventually gradually fade. This is not a true long-term disruption brought by AI, but rather due to its social attributes, making it the focus of the crypto community (CT).

Current 'AI Agents' are not true agents in the real sense. They are essentially chatbots accompanied by Memecoins, with almost no other autonomous capabilities besides posting on Twitter. Moreover, existing 'AI Agents' are largely 'Wizard of Oz' models—real people manipulating them behind the scenes to ensure the AI does not make mistakes. This situation will not change in the short term, as the current state of agent technology still has many issues (even Fortune 100 companies have yet to deploy agents in production environments). For example, these agents can be easily manipulated, potentially making inappropriate remarks that harm brand image, or be hacked to steal their resources. True autonomous AIs can refer to the case of @freysa_ai—if an AI has not been hacked, it is likely because there is human intervention behind it.

Nonetheless, I believe this trend will still accelerate. Chatbots indeed have the potential to replace many internet celebrities, as they do not need rest, consistently deliver messages, and are more 'economical' than humans. Moreover, most internet celebrities themselves are not known for their originality. The collection and dissemination of real-time information can already be easily achieved through algorithms (for example, @aixbt_agent).

Currently, these chatbots feel novel because their concept is very unique; it feels like seeing an elephant painting. The first time you see it, you may not care whether the painting is exquisite because the process itself is amazing. But after seeing it a thousand times, this novelty will gradually fade. I believe that this will happen when the technology of chatbots stabilizes.

Taking aixbt as an example, it is now very proficient in aggregating data from different projects. By next year, with the emergence of the next generation of agents, aixbt may reduce the generation of misinformation (i.e., 'hallucinations'), analyze more deeply, and provide more insightful opinions. However, for most users, these improvements may not seem particularly significant and may feel not much different from the current situation.

I believe that this novelty and market enthusiasm will last throughout 2025, as the crypto industry typically maintains a long-term interest in new things. However, by 2026, I expect a mutation: chatbots will become so ubiquitous that users will start to tire of them. Public opinion may reverse. When users see their favorite human key opinion leaders (KOLs) losing their livelihoods due to competition from chatbots, a sense of 'class consciousness' may be triggered. Users will gradually tend to support human KOLs, even if the quality and consistency of their content may not be as good as that of chatbots.

To cope with this preference for human content, future chatbots may hide their AI identities, attempting to masquerade as humans to capture more attention market share. Unlike today's reliance on Memecoins for monetization, future chatbots may adopt profit models similar to human KOLs, such as sponsorships, affiliate links, and promoting their own tokens. By then, incidents where KOLs are accused of being chatbots may occur frequently, and scandals of AI identity revelations may arise. This trend could become very complex and bizarre.

However, there is a darker trend behind this. Currently, large language models (LLMs) excel in text processing, but are not yet mature in other areas. In the crypto space, one of the easiest ways to monetize text ability is to become an influencer, while another is to become a scammer. In the future, with technological advancements, we may see a large influx of autonomous scam bots (scambots). This situation may become a serious social issue, akin to the outbreak of ransomware and cryptojacking after 2017.

Although chatbots may still be the focus in 2025, the long-term disruptive impact of AI will not manifest at the social level.

Similarly, AI's long-term impact will not appear in the trading domain. AI will not make everyone have a 'trading agent' or mini hedge fund. While AI can enhance individual capabilities, this enhancement is proportional to the user's capital, data, and infrastructure. Therefore, we can expect that AI will further empower existing large trading firms, as they have greater capital and data advantages. In other words, large trading firms will become even more adept at profiting. Furthermore, AI will narrow the technological gap between trading firms, as all companies can use 'cloud-based advanced quantitative analysis tools.'

Over time, AI will make the market extremely efficient—even including some niche markets. This will lead to ordinary traders having almost no advantage, even if they have their own homemade assistant AI. The value of original research will significantly decline as a result. However, for ordinary users, increased market competition and liquidity may be good news, meaning more trading opportunities and a more active market. (For example, @Polymarket may achieve higher liquidity across all domains!)

If the future hot topic is not chatbots nor trading bots, then what else is worth looking forward to? Here are my core points, although hardly anyone mentions them currently: truly disruptive AI Agents will emerge in the field of software engineering.

Why is this so important? Ask yourself: what is the most important input for our industry? What expensive resources limit the emergence of more applications, wallets, and better infrastructure? The answer is software. If AI Agents can significantly reduce the cost of software development, it will change the entire industry's landscape.

In the post-AI era, seed round financing may no longer need to raise millions of dollars. With just $10,000 in AI cloud computing costs, you can launch an application. Self-funded projects like Hyperliquid and Jupiter will shift from rare exceptions to mainstream. On-chain application development and innovative attempts will experience explosive growth. For a software-driven industry, this decline in costs will trigger a wave of innovation in the blockchain space.

The impact of this change on security will also be profound. AI-driven static analysis and monitoring tools will become ubiquitous, making security more accessible. These AIs will be optimized for codebases such as EVM/Solidity or Rust and trained on a large database of security audits and attack cases. They will also improve their capabilities through reinforcement learning (RL) in simulated adversarial blockchain environments. I increasingly believe that, in terms of security, AI tools will ultimately benefit defenders rather than attackers. AI will continue to conduct 'red team testing' on smart contracts, while other AIs will focus on strengthening contracts, formally verifying their properties, and enhancing incident response and remediation capabilities.

Meanwhile, while you can continue to trade those AI-themed Memecoins, the true agents will be far more than just tweeting and hyping tokens; their influence will be much deeper.

Real Crypto x AI

Above, we primarily discussed the impact of AI on the cryptocurrency industry (which is the main direction of influence), but cryptographic technology will also have a reverse effect on AI.

In the future, true autonomous agents may use cryptocurrency for mutual payments. Once regulatory policies for stablecoins become more relaxed, this trend will become more apparent— even large companies running AI Agents may choose to use stablecoins for payments between agents because it is more convenient than traditional bank accounts.

Additionally, we will see more large-scale experiments around decentralized training and reasoning. Some emerging projects, such as @exolabs, @NousResearch, and @PrimeIntellect, will provide real alternatives for centralized training and company-exclusive models. @NEARProtocol is also working hard to create a credible, neutral, and permissionless complete AI technology stack.

Another convergence point between crypto and AI is user experience (UX). Post-AI era wallets will undergo a complete revolution—an AI-driven wallet will be able to automatically handle cross-chain bridging, optimize transaction paths, minimize fees, resolve interoperability issues or front-end vulnerabilities, and help users avoid obvious scams or rug pulls. Users will no longer need to switch between multiple wallets, change RPCs, or rebalance stablecoins—AI will do all of this automatically. This transformation may take until 2026 to mature enough to fundamentally change the user experience in the crypto industry. But when all this is realized, what impact will it have on the network effects of blockchain? What will happen when users no longer care about which chain an application runs on, or even perceive it?

This field is still in its early stages, but I am full of expectations for its future and hope to see it truly explode soon. In the long run (say, by mid-2026), I believe that most of the market value in the 'AI x Crypto' field will be concentrated in this direction.

These are all my predictions. I promised to complete this article before reaching 100,000 fans, and although it was a bit late, I managed to finish it before the New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that by this time next year, I will have been replaced by AI and officially 'unemployed'!

Disclaimer: The content of this article is solely my personal opinion and does not represent the position of Dragonfly; Dragonfly has investments in many of the projects mentioned in the article. This article is not financial advice; please do your own research (DYOR). As for whether I am an AI? I'll leave that question for you to judge.

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