Author: variant.eth
Compiled by: TechFlow
This summer, the Variant team has been looking ahead to the rest of 2024 and what we might see in 2025. Here is a snapshot of some of the situations we’re keeping an eye on as we explore the next wave of crypto development.
What do you think will happen in crypto over the next year? We’d love to hear your thoughts and predictions — share them with us at X (@variantfund) or on Warpcast (/variant).
Jesse
What I expect from crypto products in 2024-2025 (quick list, non-exhaustive):
Mobile becomes the default choice.
Stablecoin infrastructure is gradually maturing to support global fintech adoption and drive institutional and regulatory recognition.
Prediction markets can take unexpected forms.
NFTs are undergoing another amazing evolution.
Interactions between creator tools and token issuers become more fun and secure.
The Farcaster channel will be transformed into a wallet and DAO, and will undergo some strange and significant activities.
Telegram will further develop small applications, wallets and payment functions.
Frames and blinks will find social micro-apps at scale, validating “headless” marketing as an effective way to bootstrap protocols and market liquidity.
Data DAOs and tokenized marketplaces will attract entirely new users to earn tokens.
For crypto natives, there will be real “substantial participation” in token distribution, leading to more loyal and engaged users and holders.
Feel free to respond to Jesse's views here.
What I expect in 2024-2025 in terms of crypto infrastructure (quick list, not exhaustive):
Institutions began to pledge.
The chain and wallet abstraction works well, and users are finally able to experience a superior user experience (this is exactly the benefit of the work on scaling, interoperability, and intent).
Modularity matures; second-generation frameworks package integrated modules to address fragmentation while maintaining customizability.
ZK technology enables breakthrough applications at the intersection of privacy, off-chain data, and on-chain operations.
Security vulnerabilities are becoming less and less common (e.g. in DeFi and interfaces).
Decentralized computing is beginning to compete on cost and performance.
The MEV market structure is gradually maturing and will benefit users optimistically.
Feel free to respond to Jesse's views here.
That
Here are some developments I think will happen in the crypto space in the next 6 months to 1 year:
Open source AI is beginning to turn to crypto for monetization.
Decentralized AI and computing are gradually gaining momentum.
DePIN helps people get their first cryptocurrency.
The perverse incentives caused by financialization have reached a critical point.
Alana
My predictions for crypto in 2024/2025:
Block/CashApp will launch a stablecoin.
There will be a third spot ETF, but it’s not the one people are expecting.
PayPal begins offering a yield stablecoin (possibly a modified version of PYUSD) and is seeing significant adoption in Venmo.
The Human Verification Project will attract more than 100 million users.
A well-known talk show host uses NFT as his avatar.
Farcaster surpasses 3 million users and is beginning to deliver meaningful mobile-first distribution.
A groundbreaking use case for combining AI and crypto is community owned and trained models.
The current round of hype surrounding the decentralized GPU market ultimately proved to be just that, hype, as supply shortages eased and new types of chips emerged.
We do see important use cases for decentralized training and inference emerge as centralized clouds begin to develop policies about what types of models can run on their servers, but this will take 2+ years to really develop (because regulation is slow to move).
The Bitcoin-based development experience is significantly improved.
A well-known traditional finance figure wrote a tweet about Helium (or other DePIN projects).
A popular L2 decided to become its own L1.
At least half of the predictions were wrong.
Feel free to respond to Alana's views here.
Cooper
Some current year-end forecasts:
The shared sequencer is finally online.
Many proof-of-stake markets enter testnet.
As decentralization becomes more widespread, Rollup fears and anxieties are slowly easing.
Ethereum’s roadmap will become clearer.
ZK applications are published and actually used.
Sharding research has once again become a hot topic.
Feel free to respond to Cooper's views here.
Derek
Meta-level forecast for 2024-2025: We will move from the infrastructure to the application part of this cycle.
Some specific ideas:
More than 10 major fintech companies have launched their own stablecoins.
ETF starts staking.
A crypto consumer app built on Base reaches over 10 million weekly active users.
Every traditional financial giant fund tokenizes its products.
One crypto prediction market hit $1 billion in monthly volume in a category outside of politics.
Bitcoin serves as a reserve asset for major global currencies.
A top 20 U.S. bank borrowed money through DeFi channels.
A DePin network has over 10 million users.
A major AAA studio creates a game on-chain.
At some point, the trading volume of DEX exceeded that of CEX.
A mini game on Telegram/Ton attracts 1 billion players.
Feel free to respond to Derek's point here.
Geoff
In 12 months, I expect there will be a clearer picture of where product-market fit (PMF) is for agent AI in crypto.
During this time, I think we will see several applications gain traction and define the first generation of viable use cases. These leading applications will drive the network effects of the proxy platforms, influencing which platforms become the staking points.
The first step in this sequence is to build compelling user experiences that leverage agency. Some use cases that I think are most likely to gain early traction include:
Token discovery, research, and trading.
Airdrops and liquidity mining.
Games: Agents as playable characters and non-player characters (NPCs).
AI companion.
Autonomous content producer.
I’m very much looking forward to the coming wave of innovation in these and other use cases. It should be a fun time to be a crypto user!
Feel free to respond to Geoff's points here.
