Interpretation of Messari's 190-page report: Highlight key points, grasp direction, find opportunities

Original Title: The Crypto Theses 2025

Original Author: NingNing, SevenUp DAO

I. Overview

This 190-page report by Messari consists of three parts: the current state of crypto (macroeconomic environment, institutional status, where users are) + track analysis (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Alt L1s + infra, DeFi, AlxCrypto, DePin, Consumer, CeFi) + analyst selection awards.

Messari's core analytical framework includes: blockchain space economics, ecological mapping valuation framework, narrative economics, Schumpeter's innovation theory, and more.

II. Macroeconomic Environment

1. Economic Environment and Regulatory Environment

After reviewing significant events in the macro environment of 2024, Messari predicts changes in the U.S. economic environment and crypto regulation trends for 2025.

• 2025 is destined to be a key year for U.S. crypto policy reform, with the FIT21 and stablecoin bills being the most notable regulatory legislative cases that will promote transparency and standardization in global crypto regulatory frameworks.
• Contrary to the optimistic views of ETF stakeholders like VanEck, Messari cautiously believes there is a possibility of a reversal in Trump's crypto policy.

However, it will still be friendlier than Biden's crypto policy.

Comment: Messari's macro environment analysis lacks special insights and is of average quality, not as professional as macro analysts on Twitter. This part mainly serves to fill pages.

Looking ahead to the market trends of 2025, several institutions align with Messari:

• The market trend in 2025 will likely be a "Banana For Scale," with new highs in Q1 and significant adjustments in Q2, followed by recovery and new highs in Q3 and Q4.

2. What Are Institutions Doing?

In 2024, institutions are focused on applying for and operating Bitcoin/ETH spot ETFs and promoting RWA (mainly tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds) businesses. Events like PayPal launching the stablecoin PYUSD and Stripe acquiring a stablecoin company, Bridge, have begun to blur the lines between fintech, payments, and cryptocurrencies.

In terms of investment, institutions are adopting a barbell strategy composed of AI and DePin, with total financing in these two sectors growing approximately 100% and 300% compared to last year.

The incoming AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, is an investor in Solana, Helium, Render, and Hivemapper. It is expected that the U.S. government will seriously consider collaborating with DePin projects in 2025.

Comment: Next year, the main theme of AIxCrypto will likely be Web3AIAgent. AI democratization and capital-intensive AGI projects in the AIxCrypto sector will need to adapt to significant environmental changes.

DePin is a favorite among North American institutions this year, particularly interested in high-quality data collection DePin and new energy DePin. One of Solana's strategies for 2025 remains ensuring DePin occurs on Solana.

3. Where Are On-Chain Users?

Messari cites a report from A16Z, stating that out of 220 million active addresses, about 30 to 60 million are real monthly active users.

Users are primarily distributed across Phantom wallets, stablecoins, Telegram mini-programs, Polymark prediction markets, Base, and Hyperliquid.

Messari believes that the growth of on-chain users in 2025 will come more from the product capabilities of Dapps rather than Bitcoin ATH news events or MeMe coin wealth stories. Therefore, it is very bullish on the adoption of chain abstraction and aggregation frontends in 2025.

Comment: 2025 will be a pivotal year for Web3, transitioning from the "fat protocol" era to the "fat application" era, with APPChain/chain abstraction becoming the mainstream paradigm for building Dapps.

The biggest regret in the application layer in 2024 is that Polymark successfully broke into the mainstream but converted very few crypto users. It is hoped that in 2025, chain abstraction super apps can successfully sell crypto-native stablecoin services, high-yield staking finance, and cyber lottery MeMe coins to a broad consumer base, achieving both acclaim and commercial success.

III. Track Analysis

The essence of Messari's annual outlook report lies in this part, which serves as an excellent window to observe the perspectives of North American institutions.

Bitcoin

• Messari focuses on inscriptions/runes, Bitcoin programmability, and BTC staking.
• Inscriptions/runes are expected to revive under the stimulation of the fat penguin consumer chain mainnet launch, OpenSea token issuance, and the NFT renaissance.
• Key BitVM2 engineering progress will be made in Bitcoin programmability.
• BTC staking has inherent disadvantages compared to ETH staking, and the higher economic security of Bitcoin ReStaking's AVS does not effectively persuade users to participate. The focus of BTC staking projects in 2025 should still be on increasing penetration among BTC holders.

Ethereum

• Last year, Messari was openly anti-Ethereum. This year, the attitude is much more moderate, acknowledging ETH's transcendent status after the ETF approval. It also points out that the blob pricing mechanism after the Cancun upgrade prevents L1 from effectively capturing L2's DA fees, which is a primary reason for Ethereum's defeat in the competition in 2024.
• However, Ethereum's native narratives/products at the application layer, such as Friend.tech, Farcaster, Lens Protocol, and Eigen Layer AVS, have not been successful.
• Messari believes that fee revenue is not the most important metric for measuring L1 value; ecological mapping is. From this perspective, Ethereum remains the best L1 ecosystem.

Comment: In 2025, Ethereum's success will depend on whether it can incubate high-performance parallel EVML1 (Monad)/L2 (MegaETH) projects that can compete with Solana.

Solana

• Key milestone events for Solana in 2024 include the lightweight Firedancer client solution Frankendancer, new SPL token standards, and state compression solutions ZKCompression.
• Key milestone events for Solana in 2025 will include the release of the Firedancer client, broader adoption of the prediction market governance protocol MetaDAO, new large DePin projects based on Solana, AlAgentSummer occurring on Solana/Base, and the approval of SOL spot ETF.

Comment: Meme coins do not have super cycles; the popularity of cyber lotteries is a special phenomenon of a unique period. The Solana ecosystem needs to diversify and prepare for the future, aiming to reduce its heavy reliance on MeMe coins in 2025.

Alt L1s + infra

• In 2025, Monad and Sonic will join the high-performance monolithic L1 competition against Solana and Sui. The (3, 3) token economic model-driven BeraChain will also launch its mainnet.
• In 2025, there will be a severe oversupply of blockchain space, and the voice of Dapp developers will further increase, no longer restricted by the ideological constraints of the crypto community, allowing for more freedom in building consumer-oriented use cases.
• The "seven injuries" of Ethereum after the Cancun upgrade signal the end of the DA narrative for modular public chains. Celestia and Avail are beginning to transition to a global cross-chain interoperability coordination layer.
• Next-generation L2s with high performance + AltVMs, such as Mega and UniChain, will also enter the battlefield.
• Avalanche will undergo its largest mainnet upgrade in history, Avalanche9000, which will bring significant performance improvements and establish a liquidity center centered around the C chain with Avalanche Interchain Messaging (AIM). The Avalanche ecosystem is expected to perform well in RWA and Web3 gaming (represented by off the grid) in 2025.
• The prospects for Cosmos in 2025 remain uncertain, with the timing of when the Interchain Foundation (ICF) truly gains coordination power being a key checkpoint. The recent acquisition of Skip Protocol by ICF may accelerate this process.
• Another giant project in the Cosmos ecosystem, Initia, focusing on APPChain interoperability and ecological role benefit re-production, will also join the ranks of powerful new blockchain space providers in 2025.
• In 2025, chain abstraction protocols like @ParticleNtwrk are accelerating from narrative to productization. Chain abstraction is not a single technology but a combination of technical primitives such as cross-chain bridges, messaging platforms, intent infrastructure, ZK proof aggregators, and shared sequencers.

Comment: When analyzing Alt L1s + infra projects, the explanatory power of blockchain space economics is unmatched.

DeFi

• The ratio of PerpDEX trading volume to CEX has always been a focal point for DeFi enthusiasts. The emergence of Hyperliquid has reignited hope.
• Another focus is how to make trade-offs between vertical integration and composability when building DeFi protocols.
• Currently, the structure of RWA is still primarily focused on the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds. In 2025, RWA will have two main lines: DAO idle assets for U.S. Treasury bond tokenization and exporting on-chain yields to traditional capital markets.
• In the area of yield farming, Pendle occupies a unique and critical ecological position.
• In terms of anti-MEV, beyond the market game model of FlashBot, the intent architecture of CowSwap has emerged.

AI x Crypto

• Messari categorizes AIxCrypto into four types: decentralized computing networks, coordination platforms, AI tools and services, and applications. Of course, Messari also pays attention to AI Agent KOLs and AI Agent MeMe coins.
• Messari predicts that significant events worth noting in AIxCrypto for 2025 include: Bittensor and dynamic TAO becoming new AI project token issuance factories, further enhancing the feasibility of decentralized computing power training through Prime Intellect and Nous Research, and AI Agents becoming on-chain and completely separating from AI MeMe coins.
• The open-source AGI project SentientLabs, which opposes commercial titans, will also receive greater attention in 2025.

DePin

• As the inventor of the term DePin, Messari now subdivides DePin into Physical Resource Networks (PRN) and Digital Resource Networks (DRN).
• Messari is very bullish on the PRN sector's new energy DePin projects such as Glow, Daylight Energy Helium, DAWN, GEODNET, Hivemapper, DIMO, and the DRN sector's Prodia, Filecoin, and Grass.
• In 2025, Solana's dominant position in the DePin field will face challenges from Base and others.

Comment: This part contains numerous potential high-risk, high-reward alpha projects, and interested readers are strongly recommended to read the original text.

Consumer

• Messari categorizes Web3 games, MeMe coins and their launch platforms, DeSoc & SocialFi, and NFTs all under this part.
• I have written many articles discussing Web3 games, so I won't elaborate further here. I will only mention that Messari has observed an interesting change: the gameplay design of Web3 games is shifting from Play2Airdrop to Pay2Airdrop.
• For MeMe coins and their launch platforms, gamification and personalized design are emerging as new trends for MeMeCoin launch platforms. In short, developing around the positioning of MeMeCoin as a cyber lottery is sufficient.
• Regarding DeSoc & SocialFi, I don't want to discuss this area much as a former product operator; it still has little to show in 2025. Solana has transformed its flagship protocol Send to focus on AI Agents.
• The NFT renaissance led by fat penguins and Web3 consumer IP will see fat penguins and Azuki launch consumer chains Abstractchain and Animechain in 2025.

Comment: In the Consumer sector, I am most bullish on fat penguin NFTs and the consumer chain Abstract Chain. 2025 will be a year of deification for @LucaNetz.

CeFi

Not related to retail investors, omitted.