Blockworks co-founders' 27 predictions for 2025: The U.S. becomes a crypto hub, Base will be Solana's main competitor
The mainstream trend in 2025 will be the combination of AI and cryptocurrency.Author: Mippo, Co-founder of Blockworks
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
The United States will re-emerge as the core center of global 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 surpass similar events in Asia.
More than 10 DeFi protocols will officially launch fee switches, including Uniswap.
DeFi protocols will gradually adopt rehypothecation of customer assets as a new business model .
This trend will involve areas such as cross-chain bridges and liquid staking tokens (LSTs).
The Ethereum community's debate on the "North Star" roadmap will reach a conclusion:
Attempts to scale the L1 mainnet will remain at a low level (for example, raising the Gas target to 50M gwei, while discussions about shortening block times will intensify).
Ultimately, the roadmap centered around Rollups will be reaffirmed.
Max's scaling proposal will fail to gain sufficient support and will ultimately fail.
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.
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.
Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) will gradually become an important component of L2 infrastructure and will ultimately become a permanent feature.
Solana's growth 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 struggle to reach new highs. In response to these issues, extremism within the Solana community will rise.
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 .
Solana may adjust its token issuance policy to reduce inflation, while Ethereum will not make similar changes.
Base will become a dark horse in the Rollup ecosystem and will emerge as a major competitor to Solana.
The total assets on Base are expected to exceed $40 billion.
Base will also become the preferred chain for AI agents and other AI applications.
Stablecoins will gradually become the dominant asset on L2 networks, with their quantity expected to reach more than twice that of ETH.
The stablecoin market will experience breakthrough growth in the coming year:
The market capitalization is expected to exceed $450 billion. Stablecoins will become one of the top three investment areas of focus for venture capitalists (VCs).
More than 5 large fintech companies or traditional financial institutions will launch their own stablecoins by 2025.
This will create competitive pressure on existing stablecoins, leading to a slowdown in their growth rate.
More than 10 enterprises (including banks and Web2 giants) will launch their own L2 networks by 2025.
However, most of these networks will struggle to gain market recognition and achieve tangible results.
The only possible exception is fintech companies like Robinhood.
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 seen alongside Coinbase as one of the two leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S.
Investment opportunities in L1 blockchains still exist and will not disappear in the short term.
The standout projects will be Sui and HyperLiquid.
The ICO model will make a comeback, but it will not dominate like it did in 2017.
Investor protection measures will be more robust, and ICOs will resemble crowdfunding activities.
It is expected that 5 blue-chip protocols will raise funds through ICOs.
Venture capital will flow back into the crypto industry, but the scale of financing will not reach the levels of 2021.
The total venture capital in the crypto space in 2021 was $30 billion. In 2025, it is expected to be between $20 billion and $25 billion. The market will see more funding rounds of $50 million to $100 million.
Crypto companies will enter a window for IPOs, but there will not be a large-scale wave of listings.
More than 4 companies are expected to go public, but due to the valuation bubble of 2021 still not being fully digested, more companies may delay their listing plans.
Growth equity investments will still not enter the crypto space.
The mainstream trend in 2025 will be the combination of AI and crypto.
Ongoing advancements in foundational models will attract more attention and drive a surge in AI-related tokens.
The application scenarios for AI will become more diverse, not limited to agents .
Different types of agents will be attempted, such as content creators, hedge fund traders, artists, etc.
However, the vast majority of attempts will be in the early stages and may not succeed.
TikTok's influence in the crypto space will reach unprecedented heights.
Crypto Twitter (CT) may become a major exit channel for certain TikTok tokens.
The U.S. will pass significant cryptocurrency legislation in 2025.
An updated market structure bill or stablecoin bill may be signed into law.
Bitcoin's L2 solutions will still struggle to achieve breakthroughs by 2025.
Truly ZK-based Bitcoin L2 solutions will take longer to realize.
Cryptocurrency will be widely regarded as a long-term force in U.S. politics.
The mainstream media's (MSM) attitude will gradually shift, beginning to acknowledge that cryptocurrency will not easily exit the historical stage.
