In 2024, amidst the drastic changes in the global financial landscape, the crypto industry has experienced profound ups and downs and reconstruction. After six months of consolidation and repair, the total market value of the industry exceeded 3.8 trillion US dollars at the end of the year, and Bitcoin, with a historic high of 100,000 US dollars , declared its core position in the global asset system. This is not only a rise in prices, but also the beginning of structural changes: a US dollar liquidity circulation chain with Bitcoin as the core asset, ETFs and US stocks as capital bridges, and US listed companies as carriers has been formed.
Bitcoin is rising to become the world's largest dollar-denominated financial asset, becoming a key tool to hedge the US fiscal deficit and US debt crisis. This financial change has not only shaped a new asset value system, but also injected lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry. The entire blockchain industry is benefiting from this. OKX Ventures is deeply involved in this wave of change with an enterprising attitude, and continues to be optimistic about the subtle changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world in the next 10 years.
1. Review of 2024: 60+ projects deployed, extensive layout in multiple tracks
This year, OKX Ventures actively increased its industry investment and is committed to accelerating the innovation and development of the crypto industry. The total investment for the whole year exceeded US$100 million, covering more than 60 projects and funds, focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship in Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON and BTC ecology, and deeply exploring high-quality projects. In terms of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects and BTC ecology account for the highest proportion, and there is also a wide layout in the fields of multi-chain ecology, DeFi and multiple ecological funds.
In addition, OKX Ventures is also actively working with funds and accelerator ecosystem partners such as TON Ventures, Ankaa and TGH to jointly build a prosperous innovation ecosystem. By providing financial support, strategic guidance and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs and help them turn their ideas into reality faster and more steadily. Whether it is incubation in the start-up stage or acceleration in the growth stage, OKX Ventures always takes innovation as the core, and is committed to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology, injecting more vitality and possibilities into the industry.
OKX Ventures deeply understands that the future of the blockchain industry is not just a matter of capital investment, but also about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative companies on this basis. While capital is a driving force, it also needs to rely on strategic vision and systematic layout to enable the industry to move forward in multi-dimensional technological innovation, ecological development and market expansion. Every investment decision is not just the flow of funds, but also a deep insight into the prospects of the industry and support for innovative forces. From the construction of infrastructure, to the expansion of the ecosystem, to the exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures has always been laying out around the evolution of the industry in the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad space for the widespread application and profound changes of blockchain.
At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot rely solely on the drive of the capital market, but also on the visionary entrepreneurial spirit and the continuous exploration of the technical team. The mission of OKX Ventures is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies and promote their continuous breakthroughs in technology, market and operation. This is not only support for a single project or team, but also lays the foundation for the future ecological construction of the entire industry.
OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or a single platform, but in building an industry ecosystem that is inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to always remain forward-looking in the trend of this era of change and drive the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future in its continuous evolution.
II. Looking Ahead to 2025: 14 Predictions, Insights into the Future
Outlook 1: Global blockchain is becoming more compliant and the industry is becoming more standardized
In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will see significant progress, laying a solid foundation for the healthy development of the industry. The number of licensed institutions will increase significantly, providing users with safer and more reliable services. OKX CEO Star pointed out that OKX has become the world's first cryptocurrency trading platform to obtain a full operating license in the UAE.
Compliance innovation will emerge in the custodial wallet field to resolve the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custodial wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including KYC transaction monitoring and other functions. This innovation can not only improve the user experience, but also meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements and bring new development directions to the industry.
The macro-regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for the development of the industry. The British government plans to consult on the regulatory framework for stablecoins and crypto assets in early 2025, which shows that the global regulatory environment is moving in a clearer and more supportive direction. It is also possible that the national strategic Bitcoin reserve will become a reality in 2025.
The participation of institutional investors will increase significantly. As of December 17, the scale of Bitcoin spot ETF exceeded $114.97B, and the number of Bitcoins held by MicroStrategy reached 439,000, with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the crypto industry.
The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights and raise the standards of the entire industry. Star predicts that by 2025, the compliance standards of many crypto companies will reach or even exceed those of the traditional financial industry. OKX's three business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3 and OKX Simple, cover a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This all-round service model will become the industry standard and promote the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.
The blockchain industry in 2025 will be more mature, standardized and innovative. As Star said, crypto finance is entering a new stage, which will witness the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.
Outlook 2: AI Agent will become an important player in the market, participating in asset creation, asset issuance, and asset trading
With the rapid development of very large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI agents will gradually become important players in the market. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is expected to reach $1.811 trillion by 2030, contributing about $16 trillion to global GDP. The future of AI agents is not just tools in the traditional sense, they will become major players in the blockchain world, with the ability to make decisions and act autonomously.
We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interaction will become an important area, and the transparency and composability of blockchain provide an ideal foundation for this. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, and even creating new social scenarios. In addition, decentralized agent organizations (DAOs) may also become a hot spot, where multi-agent systems will work together to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage agreements.
AI agents are highly adaptable, have clear goal setting and self-correction capabilities, and can make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, actively create and publish content, participate in asset transactions to maximize returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This shift indicates that AI agents will play a more important role in markets and social platforms. The emergence of AI agent frameworks like Eliza, combined with Agent platforms like Myshell, will drive the development of this trend.
Finally, we expect to see more innovations in AI agent transaction intent and next-generation user transaction interfaces. This may include using natural language to trade, or developing new trading systems and tools specifically for AI agents. As these technologies develop, the idea of a “wallet as a browser” may eventually become a reality, completely changing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.
Outlook 3: Security projects help solve AI security issues
The verifiability of blockchain can indeed be an important solution to AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, network security issues have become increasingly prominent, especially in terms of counterfeiting and deep fakes. Therefore, it is particularly important to establish a "human identity verification" mechanism to ensure the interaction between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations reported that deep fake attacks have increased in the past year and are expected to increase by 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues is mainly reflected in two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means that new vulnerabilities emerge in an endless stream. For example, different versions of the model may exhibit completely different behaviors, which makes the attack methods constantly changing.
Blockchain projects can effectively address these challenges by virtue of their decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics:
1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and track the source of data, ensure the authenticity of content generation through encrypted signatures, combat AI-generated deep fakes and fake news, and ensure the transparency and traceability of data.
2. Protect training data: Protect the data sets required for AI model training to prevent tampering or attacks, thereby ensuring data integrity and security and reducing the risk of single point failures.
3. Record and monitor AI model usage: Prevent unauthorized abuse and share models or data on a secure platform without worrying about information leakage or tampering. Users can audit and verify AI behavior, thereby increasing trust.
OKX Ventures believes that more AI security projects may emerge in the blockchain field in the future, enhancing users' trust in AI systems.
Outlook 4: AI infiltrates existing track projects and changes the industry paradigm
By 2025, the in-depth application of AI technology will significantly change multiple industries, including games, NFT, DeFi, and social fields.
The gaming industry is likely to be the industry most affected by AI. It is estimated that by 2025, global spending on AI in gaming will reach approximately $1.1 billion, indicating the industry's emphasis on the potential of AI. Including: 1) Generative design : Generate game content through algorithms to improve development efficiency. 2) Personalized experience : AI will analyze player behavior and provide tailored game suggestions and challenges. 3) Enhanced interactivity : Intelligent NPCs will be more realistic and enhance the immersion of the game. 4) More intelligent AI agents will improve the way gamers interact with the game and reduce the experience burden of the gamers themselves;
Social projects have also ushered in a lot of innovation. AI not only plays an important role in content generation and community interaction, but also promotes innovation in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In 2024, we saw that on platforms such as Farcaster, AI agents such as Clanker and Larry introduced new asset issuance methods, demonstrating a certain degree of community participation and economic potential. Among them, Clanker's market value exceeded 100 million US dollars, and LUM also reached 70 million US dollars. In the future, AI will: 1) Realize social monetization : users can get crypto rewards through content creation and interaction. 2) Build a community economy : Using blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and revenue distribution. 3) Improve security : Protect user privacy through decentralized identity authentication.
DeFi benefits from the efficiency improvements and changes in interaction patterns brought by AI. 1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem. These autonomous software entities can automatically perform complex trading tasks, optimize investment strategies, and monitor market dynamics in real time. 2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can also lower the threshold for users to participate, integrate DeFi protocols on multiple chains, provide users with automated liquidity investment strategies, lower the threshold for users to participate in DeFi and improve asset management efficiency. 3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in vulnerability detection and optimization of smart contracts. Through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish a baseline for normal trading behavior and issue an alarm once abnormal behavior is detected, thereby enhancing the security of the DeFi platform. It is estimated that by 2025, the trading volume of decentralized exchanges (DEX) will reach 4 trillion US dollars, and the total locked value (TVL) will exceed 200 billion US dollars. OKX Ventures believes that there may be more than 1 million AI agents active on the chain, which will further promote the development of the DeFi ecosystem.
OKX Ventures predicts that 2025 will be the year when AI will be deeply integrated into various industries. With the development of technology and the improvement of infrastructure, these fields will usher in new opportunities and challenges, providing users with a richer and safer experience.
Outlook 5 : Blockchain improves the matching efficiency of AI elements
Blockchain technology is improving the matching efficiency of AI elements in multiple dimensions, including data elements, computing power elements, model elements and capital elements. Taking the data market as an example, the growth rate of AI's demand for data lags far behind the supply. ChatGPT training uses 300 billion words, while the latest model DBRX uses 12 trillion data points. The demand for public human text data for AI training may exceed the total stock as early as 2026.
OKX Ventures is optimistic about the better matching of data factor resources and has invested in projects such as Space and Time, Privasea, 0G and CARV. Space and Time provides a decentralized data warehouse to efficiently index and query on-chain and off-chain data. Privasea uses FHE encryption for AI computing and analysis to protect privacy. CARV provides a modular data layer, providing AI with high-quality user portraits and behavior data. 0G can also greatly improve the ability of blockchain to process data in the AI era. These projects have improved the efficiency of AI data acquisition, processing and utilization.
In other areas, such as computing power, io.net can optimize the allocation of large-scale distributed computing resources required for AI. The AI chip market is expected to maintain steady growth. In 2023, data center AI chip sales reached US$154 billion, and are expected to grow by 41% from 2025 to 2026. Edge computing AI will become an important trend, supporting faster data processing and better privacy protection.
OKX Ventures is optimistic that more excellent AI startup projects will improve the matching efficiency of AI elements in multiple aspects such as data sharing, computing power allocation, and model collaboration, providing strong support for the further development of AI. This synergy will promote breakthrough applications of AI in more fields and bring far-reaching impacts to all walks of life.
Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 usher in BTC’s DeFi Summer
Looking ahead to 2025, the TVL and DeFi activity of the Bitcoin ecosystem will usher in a breakthrough. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked more than 57,288 Bitcoins with a total value of US$6 billion. As a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, Babylon has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin and various PoS chains. Projects such as SatLayer and Lombard, as part of the Babylon ecosystem, will further unleash the potential of Bitcoin by deploying smart contracts. Projects such as Bitlayer, Merlin, Bsquared Network and Arch Network are exploring innovative expansion solutions to provide stronger infrastructure support for Bitcoin DeFi.
Technologies such as UTXO Stack are dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin’s smart contract capabilities. These innovations will greatly increase transaction throughput, reduce fees, and pave the way for building more complex DeFi applications.
There will be more diverse application scenarios in the Bitcoin DeFi space. Projects such as BounceBit, Corn, and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms such as Solv Protocol and Bedrock will provide Bitcoin holders with more diverse ways to generate income. Zeus and Lombard are exploring how to integrate the value of Bitcoin more deeply into the DeFi ecosystem. It is estimated that by 2025, the trading volume of Bitcoin DEX may exceed 4 trillion US dollars, accounting for 20% of the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges.
Improving user experience will be another focus. Wallet projects such as Unisat are committed to simplifying the user's interaction with Bitcoin DeFi. Projects such as Arch Network and SatLayer are developing innovative cross-chain solutions to enhance cross-chain interoperability, enabling users to more easily transfer and use assets between different blockchain ecosystems.
In general, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will be more diversified and interconnected. Innovations from infrastructure to application will drive Bitcoin from a simple value storage to a full range of financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.
Outlook 7: Bitcoin’s native innovation, diversification and in-depth development
On the technical level, the expansion of Bitcoin's scripting language is an important direction. In addition to the widely watched OP_CAT, Bitcoin core developers are also actively exploring the introduction of opcodes such as OP_GROUP, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV), and OP_TLUV. These new opcodes will greatly enhance Bitcoin's programmability and lay the foundation for more complex smart contracts and application scenarios. For example, OP_GROUP may allow the creation of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, while CTV is expected to enable pre-signed transactions, significantly improving transaction efficiency.
As a second-layer expansion solution for Bitcoin, the Lightning Network is expected to undergo a major upgrade in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow for batch creation of payment channels, significantly reducing the cost of opening them. Improvements to the two-way funding mechanism will increase the efficiency of channel funding. In addition, the integration of Taproot assets is expected to enable more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the scope of application of the Lightning Network.
Privacy enhancement is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is the key to future development. Confidential Transactions technology may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, and the optimization of CoinJoin mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. At the same time, the application of zero-knowledge proof technology such as zk-SNARKs on Bitcoin is also being actively explored, which may bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.
At the application level, the Bitcoin network is spawning diverse innovations, covering decentralized social networks, games and metaverses, as well as open scientific research. These applications integrate technologies such as micropayments, decentralized identities, content storage, Ordinals, and RGB protocols, which not only bring new business models to the social media and gaming industries, but also enhance the transparency and credibility of scientific research through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms. These diverse applications demonstrate the huge potential of Bitcoin as a decentralized infrastructure, far beyond the scope of traditional finance, and lay a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.
Outlook 8: Ethereum Ecosystem Technology and Ecosystem Breakthroughs
In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to experience significant development, with significant breakthroughs in both the technical and ecological aspects. In terms of scalability, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, and Ethereum can truly achieve 200 times of scalability. After the Pectra upgrade, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce the cost of rollups and push daily transactions to exceed 100 million. These improvements will provide the Ethereum network with stronger processing power and lay the foundation for supporting large-scale users.
The popularization of account abstraction technology will also be an important progress. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 has enabled more than 25% of on-chain transactions to adopt account abstraction, and users can use any token to pay gas fees. After EIP-5003 implements complete account abstraction, it will change the way users interact with smart contracts and improve the usability of Web3 applications. This change will make it easier for ordinary users to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem and promote the popularization of decentralized applications.
In terms of optimization of the staking mechanism, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH to obtain additional income. At the same time, the permissionless staking pool is realized through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, making the total amount of Ethereum staked expected to exceed 30 million, and the annualized income is stable between 3% and 4%. This mechanism not only improves network security, but also attracts more users to participate in staking.
Zero-knowledge proof technology will be widely used in the Ethereum ecosystem. Universal zkVM can generate block proofs within 30 seconds and be integrated into the mainstream L2 network, supporting privacy computing functions and realizing "privacy as a service". These technologies not only improve privacy protection, but also keep security in sync with the Ethereum main network, providing users with more choices.
In terms of network efficiency, through Verkle Trees, EOF optimization and PeerDAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade, the storage burden of Ethereum validators will be reduced and the EVM execution efficiency will be improved. The network throughput is expected to increase by more than 10 times. These technical updates will significantly enhance the performance of Ethereum and provide support for the development of future modular blockchain architectures.
Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. The native interoperability ZK stack has become the standard for new rollups, and efficient validity proof clusters are gradually taking shape. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 stopping serving specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the foundation for modular blockchain networks and promote Ethereum's transformation from technology-driven to application-driven.
The Beam Chain upgrade will usher in important changes to the Ethereum consensus layer, including shortening the block production time to 4 seconds, lowering the staking threshold to 1 ETH, and introducing zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes not only improve network performance, but also enhance decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.
Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Outlook
The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new round of leaps. The improvement of network performance, technological innovation and ecological expansion complement the explosion of the RWA market, which will push Ethereum to a new height. As more and more real assets are tokenized and migrated to the chain, Ethereum not only consolidates its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contract platforms, but also plays a key role in connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance. By the end of 2024, the total market value of tokenized assets on the chain has exceeded US$14 billion, and Ethereum accounts for nearly 80% of the market share, becoming the core driving force for the development of this field.
The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, and Ethereum has become the preferred underlying infrastructure platform for institutions with its mature technical architecture, security, decentralization and stability. The tokenized treasury bond market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with a locked volume of more than US$3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the total RWA market value. This market is providing low-risk, high-liquidity collateral for DeFi, driving the rapid development of decentralized lending and derivatives markets.
Ethereum provides a safe, efficient and transparent migration path for traditional financial assets through its smart contract platform and distributed validator network. Tokenized assets can achieve faster and lower-cost transactions and settlements on the chain, thereby significantly improving the operating efficiency of the financial market. With the continuous upgrading of Ethereum infrastructure, network transaction costs are further declining, providing stronger support for RWA applications.
The impact of RWA on Ethereum's economic model. The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of the ecological scale, but also injects new momentum into Ethereum's economic model. On-chain activities and transaction fees will become an important source of income for Ethereum in the future. According to market data forecasts, the annual fees brought by RWA-related on-chain activities are expected to exceed US$100 billion, which is 40 times the current annual income of Ethereum. It will significantly enhance ETH's value capture ability and become an important pillar of Ethereum's economic system.
Data at the end of 2024 showed that RWA's TVL increased by 25% year-on-year to $8.4 billion, of which Ethereum contributed $1.7 billion in a single month, the highest increase of the year. Stablecoins have played an important role in this trend, with a total market value of over $200 billion, and the growth of synthetic dollars has been particularly significant, with a monthly growth rate of up to 60%, and a TVL of $1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. The deep integration of innovative stablecoins such as Ethena and Usual with RWA has not only promoted innovation in the on-chain lending and liquidity markets, but also further strengthened Ethereum's dominance in high-value transactions.
Policy and market driving force. Further clarification of regulation will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to take a more pro-crypto stance in 2025. In addition, regions such as Singapore and Europe are also actively promoting the regulatory framework for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market and removing obstacles for institutional capital to enter the RWA field. This policy shift will attract more institutional participation to the Ethereum ecosystem and promote the explosive growth of on-chain assets and transaction volume.
Preview 10: Solana’s continued leadership
Solana is relying on its technological advantages to continue to consolidate its leading position in the field of high-performance public chains. By upgrading the Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 in 2025. At the same time, the application of state compression technology reduces the hardware threshold of verification nodes and reduces the cost burden by 30%.
The activity of the Solana ecosystem reached a new peak in 2024, with a daily transaction volume of nearly $200 million, a total of about 250 million active wallets, and a new high of 8.8 million daily active addresses. Its unique state rental mechanism and validator voting fees provide SOL coins with value support in addition to transaction fees, with weekly fee income reaching $36.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among them, Jito contributed more than 55% of fee income with MEV activities, further promoting the growth of the Solana ecosystem.
Solana's developer ecosystem has performed impressively, with 2,500-3,000 active developers per month and a three-month developer retention rate that has increased from 31% to over 50%. In terms of the technology stack, more than half of the developers have at least three years of blockchain development experience, and this maturity ensures higher-quality application output in the ecosystem. Head protocols such as Jupiter and Raydium are expected to exceed $20 billion in TVL in 2025, accounting for more than 35% of the total DEX transaction volume on the entire network.
Solana is gradually being seen as a chip in the AI-driven casino, and its application scenarios combined with Agent may be further deepened, especially in speculative trading, DeFi, and more dApp innovations, becoming the core driving force for user growth and technological applications.
Outlook 11: The rise and diversification of Move public chains
Sui and Aptos, as representative public chains of the Move language, will achieve important breakthroughs in 2025. Sui has shown obvious advantages in gaming, social and especially financial application scenarios through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, Sui's TVL has exceeded US$2 billion, a year-to-date increase of 2,700%, ranking eighth in the TVL of blockchain networks. The on-chain transaction volume is nearly 8 billion, with a total account of 68 million, showing strong ecological activity, mainly driven by protocols such as Navi Protocol and Cetus . With the introduction of native USDC by Circle and the injection of more than US$400 million in stablecoins, Sui's liquidity has increased significantly. Sui's zkLogin function lowers the entry threshold for Web3 users, allowing users to log in to dApps through network credentials such as Google or Facebook, and has great potential in the fields of DeFi and chain games. At the same time, the release of the SuiPlay 0x1 game console has further expanded to the hardware field, supporting on-chain games and being compatible with traditional game platforms (such as Steam and Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional game players to enter Web3.
Aptos has built a complete ecosystem in the DeFi field with its improved version of the Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, and it is expected that the number of daily active users will exceed 1 million . Aptos will usher in explosive growth in 2024, with TVL increasing 19 times year-on-year to nearly US$2 billion. The on-chain stablecoin ecosystem continues to expand, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC to further enhance liquidity. At the same time, Aptos has also been widely recognized by institutional investors. BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin FOBXX have been deployed on the Aptos chain one after another. A Spanish bank even allocated 2% of its fund to the Bitwise Aptos Staking ETP listed on SIX in Switzerland. In terms of developer ecology, the number of developers in Aptos increased by 96% year-on-year, and the number of on-chain contract deployments reached 3,000, demonstrating the vitality of the ecology.
The market value of the native tokens of the two public chains is expected to enter the top ten in the world, and the total locked value (TVL) is expected to reach more than 5 times the current scale.
Outlook 12: Emerging public chains, Monad and Berachain bring hope
As a representative of the new generation of parallel EVM, Monad is rising rapidly, and its ecological development and technological innovation have attracted much attention. In the Devnet stage, Monad achieved a real performance test of more than 10,000 TPS, with a block time of only 1 second and single-slot finality, fully demonstrating the potential of its efficient architecture . Monad's core optimizations include the MonadBFT consensus mechanism, optimistic parallel execution, asynchronous execution (delayed execution), and the MonadDB database optimized for the EVM storage mode. These technological breakthroughs not only greatly improve throughput and transaction speed, but also significantly reduce network costs. In addition, Monad's integration with cross-chain protocols such as LayerZero and Wormhole enhances cross-chain interoperability and further enriches its ecology.
The recently established Monad Foundation focuses on decentralized governance and ecosystem development, promotes a validator-led governance model, and supports community-driven improvement proposals. The Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources, and market support to promote dApp construction and ecosystem cooperation. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have committed to building on Monad, and the ecosystem size is expected to double when the mainnet goes online.
Berachain is rising rapidly, and its ecosystem has attracted more than 270 project commitments, most of which are consumer applications, covering DeFi, GameFi, social and DePIN, showing diversity and vitality . In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved more than 14 million transactions, with more than 600,000 active addresses and 1 million unique addresses. Its core innovation lies in the unique PoL (Proof of Liquidity) consensus mechanism, which significantly increases TVL through liquidity pledge, while providing strong growth momentum for ecological projects.
Berachain's modular design further enhances scalability, supports chain abstraction, and combines with infrastructure such as Particle Network to provide developers with flexibility and efficient tools. In addition, its economic model deeply integrates the interests of users, developers, and validators through staking mechanisms and built-in incentives to ensure the sustainable development of the ecosystem.
In 2025, the Layer 1 market will form a multi-level competition landscape. Ethereum will continue to occupy the top of the market capitalization list, while the market share of new generation public chains such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos will continue to grow. Emerging public chains such as Monad and Berachain will inject new vitality with technological innovation and unique ecology, bringing more possibilities to the industry.
Outlook 13: The demonstration effect of TON and Kaia will attract more Internet companies
The success paths of TON and Kaia represent the core model of the next generation of Web3 applications: "super-financialization innovation centered on user traffic" and "seamless integration of Web2.5 experience". Relying on Telegram's global user base of 900 million, TON has achieved imperceptible migration of on-chain functions through the mini-program ecosystem and TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of large-scale blockchain applications. In 2024, TON's market value exceeded US$25 billion, the on-chain transaction volume reached US$300 million per day, the number of active wallets exceeded 36 million, and the number of daily active addresses even surpassed Ethereum, opening up a new model for the large-scale adoption of on-chain services. TON's mini-programs are driving geometric growth in user engagement, while laying the foundation for a wider range of Web3 application scenarios by supporting stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.
Kaia, a blockchain platform launched by the deep integration of Kakao and Line, quickly attracts users and developers by deeply cultivating the mobile super application ecosystem in the Asian market. Kaia already has 30 million independent wallet addresses, has processed more than 1.3 billion transactions, and the peak daily transaction volume on the chain has reached tens of millions of US dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFT, payment and AI services, has more than 420 dApps, and the number of active users is as high as 7 million. Kaia's on-chain DEX Swap transaction volume has exceeded 400 million US dollars, and it is introducing more DeFi infrastructure to enhance liquidity support
The success of TON and Kaia not only shows that Web3 applications have the potential to quickly expand from social platforms to financial and practical scenarios, but also shows how to incubate billion-dollar projects through existing traffic platforms under the logic of Web2.5. The mini-program model not only effectively lowers the entry threshold of Web3, but also promotes the high frequency and diversification of on-chain transactions through the traffic advantages of super applications. We predict that this type of ecosystem that relies on a high user base and traffic conversion capabilities will give birth to more billion-dollar projects in the future - from on-chain payments, decentralized e-commerce to asset management and RWA (real world assets), new application innovation combined with liquidity will become the next growth engine.
Outlook 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): A new driving force for reshaping the scientific research economy
For a long time, the traditional scientific research system has faced problems such as centralized resource allocation, opaque data, and hindered innovation. Decentralized Science (DeSci) has reshaped scientific research funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, injecting new vitality into the scientific research economy.
DeSci's core innovation lies in funding allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFT not only provides legal protection for scientific research results, but also allows researchers, communities and investors to participate in funding and profit distribution. For example, Molecule has allocated $2 million through the IP-NFT protocol to support multiple biomedical research projects, and its ecosystem's TVL has reached $30 million and continues to grow.
In the field of medical data, the DeSci project also shows great potential. AminoChain has raised $5 million to develop a decentralized biological sample market, helping patients control and benefit from data usage rights while reducing the sample acquisition costs of research institutions. Similarly, GenomesDAO uses a decentralized genome database to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.
In terms of scientific research publishing, ResearchHub completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, shortening the average turnaround time to 9 days, far better than the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly improving scientific research transparency and efficiency.
In addition, research DAOs such as VitaDAO use governance tokens to achieve community-driven scientific research funding, reduce intermediaries, and reduce capital waste. As the policy environment gradually becomes clearer and institutional participation increases, it is expected that the scale of on-chain scientific research funding will further expand, and promote the further development of intellectual property commercialization, open publishing, and medical data management.
The rise of decentralized science is driving scientific research from closed to open, and from centralized to democratic. DeSci's transparent mechanism, efficient collaboration, and data sharing model will have a profound impact on global scientific research innovation.
