OKX Ventures Annual Report: 60+ Project Layouts and 14 Major Trend Insights

In 2024, amidst the dramatic changes in the global financial landscape, the cryptocurrency industry underwent profound fluctuations and restructuring. After six months of consolidation and recovery, the total market capitalization of the industry surpassed $3.8 trillion by the end of the year, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high of $100,000, declaring its core position in the global asset system. This is not only a price surge, but also the beginning of structural transformation: a liquidity circulation chain centered around Bitcoin as the core asset, with ETFs and U.S. stocks as funding bridges, and U.S. listed companies as carriers, has already formed.

Bitcoin is rising to become the largest dollar-denominated financial asset globally, serving as a key tool to hedge against the U.S. fiscal deficit and the U.S. debt crisis. This financial transformation not only shapes a new asset value system but also injects lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry. The entire blockchain industry benefits from this, and OKX Ventures actively participates in this wave of transformation with an enterprising attitude, continuously optimistic about the subtle changes blockchain products will bring to the traditional world over the next decade.

1. Review of 2024: 60+ Project Layouts, Extensive Multi-Track Deployment

This year, OKX Ventures actively increased its investments in the industry, committed to accelerating innovation and development in the cryptocurrency sector. The total investment for the year exceeded $100 million, covering more than 60 projects and funds, with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and the BTC ecosystem, deeply exploring high-quality projects. In terms of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects, and the BTC ecosystem accounted for the highest proportion, while there was also extensive layout in multi-chain ecosystems, DeFi, and various ecological funds.

Moreover, OKX Ventures actively collaborates with TON Ventures, Ankaa, and TGH, among other funds and accelerator ecosystem partners, to jointly build a prosperous innovation ecosystem. By providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs, helping them transform ideas into reality more quickly and steadily. Whether in the incubation of startups or the acceleration of growth-stage companies, OKX Ventures always centers on innovation, 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 about capital investment, but also about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises based on this foundation. While capital serves as a driving force, it also requires strategic vision and systematic layout to promote the industry's continuous progress in multidimensional technological innovation, ecological development, and market expansion. Each investment decision is not merely a flow of funds but also a profound insight into the industry's prospects and support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion and exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures consistently aligns its layout with the industry's evolution over the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad space for the widespread application and profound transformation of blockchain.

At the same time, innovation in blockchain technology cannot solely rely on the drive of capital markets; it also depends on visionary entrepreneurial spirit and the continuous exploration of technical teams. OKX Ventures' mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies, driving breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This is not only support for individual projects or teams but also lays the foundation for the future ecosystem of the entire industry.

OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry lies not in the success of a single technology or platform, but in building an inclusive, innovative, and self-evolving industry ecosystem. It is this profound understanding of the industry and future vision that enables us to maintain foresight in the tide of this era's transformation, driving the industry towards a more mature and sustainable future through continuous evolution.

2. Looking Ahead to 2025: 14 Predictions, Insights into the Future

Prediction 1: Global blockchain further complies, industry becomes 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 comprehensive operating license in the UAE.

Innovations in custodial wallets will emerge to resolve the conflict between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custody wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including KYC transaction monitoring and other features. This innovation not only enhances user experience but also meets increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new development directions to the industry.

The macro regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for industry development. The UK government plans to consult on a regulatory framework for stablecoins and crypto assets in early 2025, indicating that the global regulatory environment is moving towards a clearer and more supportive direction. National strategic Bitcoin reserves may also become a reality in 2025.

The participation of institutional investors will significantly increase. As of December 17, the scale of Bitcoin spot ETFs exceeded $114.97 billion, and MicroStrategy's Bitcoin holdings reached 439,000 coins, with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the cryptocurrency industry.

The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights, raising the standards of the entire industry. Star predicts that by 2025, many crypto companies' compliance standards will reach or even exceed those of traditional finance. OKX's three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple, cover a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This comprehensive service model will become the industry standard, promoting the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.

The blockchain industry in 2025 will present a more mature, standardized, and innovative appearance. 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.

Prediction 2: AI Agents will become important market players, participating in asset creation, issuance, and trading

With the rapid development of large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multimodal models (XLMMs), new AI entities (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 approximately $16 trillion to global GDP. The future of intelligent agents is not just about being traditional tools; they will become major participants in the blockchain world, capable of autonomous decision-making and action.

We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios emerge in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interactions will become an important field, with blockchain's transparency and composability providing an ideal foundation. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, and even creating new social scenarios. Additionally, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) may become a hotspot, with multi-agent systems working together to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.

AI agents possess high adaptability, clear goal setting, and self-correction capabilities, allowing them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, proactively creating and publishing content, participating in asset trading to maximize profits, and automatically issuing assets based on market demand. This shift indicates that AI agents will play an increasingly important role in markets and social platforms, similar to the emergence of the Eliza AI agent framework, combined with platforms represented by Myshell, which will drive the development of this trend.

Finally, we expect to see more innovations regarding AI agent trading intentions and next-generation user trading interfaces. This may include using natural language for trading or developing new trading systems and tools specifically for AI agents. With the development of these technologies, the concept of "wallet as a browser" may eventually be realized, fundamentally changing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.

Prediction 3: Security projects will help address AI security issues

The verifiability of blockchain can indeed become an important solution to AI security problems. With the rapid development of AI technology, cybersecurity issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in areas such as forgery and deepfakes. Therefore, establishing a "human identity verification" mechanism is particularly important to ensure interactions between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations report that deepfake attacks have increased over the past year, and this is expected to rise by 50% to 60% in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly reflects two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means that new vulnerabilities are constantly emerging. For example, different versions of models may exhibit completely different behaviors, making attack methods continually change.

Blockchain projects, with their decentralized and immutable characteristics, can effectively address these challenges:

1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and trace data sources, ensuring the authenticity of content generation through cryptographic signatures, combating AI-generated deepfakes and fake news while ensuring data transparency and traceability.

2. Protecting training data: Protecting the datasets required for AI model training from tampering or attacks ensures data integrity and security, reducing the risk of single points of failure.

3. Recording and monitoring AI model usage: Preventing unauthorized abuse, sharing models or data on secure platforms 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 user trust in AI systems.

Prediction 4: AI will penetrate existing track projects, changing industry paradigms

In 2025, the deep application of AI technology will significantly change multiple industries, including gaming, NFTs, DeFi, and social sectors.

The gaming industry may be the most affected by AI. It is expected that by 2025, global AI spending in gaming will reach approximately $1.1 billion, indicating the industry's recognition of AI's potential. This includes: 1) Generative design: Using algorithms to generate game content, improving development efficiency. 2) Personalized experiences: AI will analyze player behavior to provide tailored game suggestions and challenges. 3) Enhanced interactivity: Intelligent NPCs will become more realistic, enhancing the immersive experience of games. 4) Smarter AI agents will improve the way players interact with games, alleviating the experiential burden on players themselves.

Social projects are also seeing many innovations, with AI playing a crucial role not only in content generation and community interaction but also in driving innovations in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In 2024, we saw platforms like Farcaster where AI agents such as Clanker and Larry introduced new asset issuance methods, demonstrating a certain level of community engagement and economic potential, with Clanker's market cap breaking $100 million and LUM reaching $70 million. In the future, AI will: 1) Achieve social monetization: Users can earn crypto rewards through content creation and interaction. 2) Build community economies: Utilizing blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and profit distribution. 3) Enhance security: Protect user privacy through decentralized identity verification.

DeFi will benefit from the efficiency improvements and interaction model changes brought by AI. 1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem, these autonomous software entities can automatically execute complex trading tasks, optimize investment strategies, and monitor market dynamics in real-time. 2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can lower the participation threshold for users, integrating DeFi protocols across multiple chains to provide automated liquidity investment strategies, thus reducing the barriers for users to participate in DeFi and improving asset management efficiency. 3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in detecting and optimizing vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish a baseline for normal trading behavior, issuing alerts upon detecting anomalies, thereby enhancing the security of DeFi platforms. It is expected that by 2025, the trading volume of decentralized exchanges (DEX) will reach $4 trillion, and the total locked value (TVL) will exceed $200 billion. OKX Ventures believes that there may be over 1 million AI agents active on-chain, further driving the development of the DeFi ecosystem.

OKX Ventures predicts that 2025 will be a year of deep integration between AI and various industries. With the development of technology and the improvement of infrastructure, these fields will usher in new opportunities and challenges, providing users with richer and safer experiences.

Prediction 5: Blockchain enhances the matching efficiency of AI elements

Blockchain technology is enhancing the matching efficiency of AI elements across multiple dimensions, including data elements, computing power elements, model elements, and funding elements. Taking the data market as an example, the demand for data from AI is growing at a pace far behind supply. ChatGPT trained on 300 billion words, while the latest model DBRX used 12 trillion data points. The demand for publicly available human text data for AI training may exceed the total stock as early as 2026.

OKX Ventures is optimistic about better matching of data element resources and has invested in projects such as Space and Time, Privasea, 0G, and CARV. Space and Time provides a decentralized data warehouse, efficiently indexing and querying on-chain and off-chain data. Privasea conducts AI computational analysis through FHE encryption, protecting privacy. CARV offers a modular data layer, providing high-quality user profiles and behavioral data for AI. 0G can also significantly enhance blockchain's ability to process data in the AI era. These projects improve 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 by AI. The AI chip market is expected to maintain steady growth. In 2023, sales of AI chips in data centers reached $154 billion, and it is expected to grow by 41% in 2025-2026. 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 emerge to enhance the matching efficiency of AI elements across multiple levels, providing strong support for the further development of AI. This synergy will drive breakthrough applications of AI in more fields, bringing profound impacts to various industries.

Prediction 6: Babylon and BTC Layer 2 usher in BTC's DeFi Summer

Looking ahead to 2025, the Bitcoin ecosystem's TVL and DeFi activity will see breakthroughs. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked over 57,288 Bitcoins, with a total value of $6 billion. As a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, Babylon has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin and various PoS chains. Projects like SatLayer and Lombard, as part of the Babylon ecosystem, will further unleash Bitcoin's potential through the deployment of smart contracts. Projects such as Bitlayer, Merlin, Bsquared Network, and Arch Network are exploring innovative scaling solutions to provide stronger infrastructure support for Bitcoin DeFi.

Technologies like UTXO Stack are dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin's smart contract functionality. These innovations will significantly increase transaction throughput, reduce costs, and pave the way for building more complex DeFi applications.

The Bitcoin DeFi space will see a richer variety of application scenarios. Projects like BounceBit, Corn, and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms like Solv Protocol and Bedrock will offer Bitcoin holders more diverse yield generation pathways. Zeus and Lombard are exploring how to integrate Bitcoin's value more deeply into the DeFi ecosystem. It is expected that by 2025, the trading volume of Bitcoin DEX may exceed $4 trillion, accounting for 20% of the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges.

Improving user experience will be another focus. Wallet projects like Unisat are dedicated to simplifying the interaction process between users and Bitcoin DeFi. Projects like Arch Network and SatLayer are developing innovative cross-chain solutions to enhance cross-chain interoperability, allowing users to transfer and utilize assets more conveniently across different blockchain ecosystems.

Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will present a more diversified and interconnected appearance. Innovations from infrastructure to application layers will drive Bitcoin's transformation from a mere value storage to a comprehensive financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.

Prediction 7: Bitcoin's native innovation diversifies and develops deeply

On the technical level, the expansion of Bitcoin's scripting language is an important direction. In addition to the widely discussed OPCAT, Bitcoin core developers are actively exploring the introduction of opcodes such as OPGROUP, OPCHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV), and OPTLUV. These new opcodes will greatly enhance Bitcoin's programmability, laying 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.

The Lightning Network, as Bitcoin's second-layer scaling solution, is expected to undergo significant upgrades in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow for the bulk creation of payment channels, greatly reducing the cost of opening them. Improvements in the bi-directional funding injection mechanism will enhance the capital utilization efficiency of channels. Additionally, the integration of Taproot assets is expected to achieve more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the application scope of the Lightning Network.

Enhancing privacy is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is key to future development. Confidential Transactions technology may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, while the optimization of CoinJoin mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. At the same time, the application of zero-knowledge proof technologies like zk-SNARKs on Bitcoin is also being actively explored, which may bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.

On the application level, the Bitcoin network is giving rise to diverse innovations, covering decentralized social networks, gaming, the metaverse, and open scientific research. These applications integrate technologies such as micropayments, decentralized identity, content notarization, Ordinals, and the RGB protocol, bringing new business models to the social media and gaming industries while enhancing the transparency and credibility of scientific research through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms. These diverse applications showcase Bitcoin's immense potential as a decentralized infrastructure, far exceeding traditional financial boundaries, laying a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.

Prediction 8: Ethereum ecosystem's dual breakthroughs in technology and ecology

In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to undergo significant development, with notable breakthroughs in both technology and ecology. In terms of scalability, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, allowing Ethereum to truly achieve a 200-fold scalability. After the Pectra upgrade, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce rollup costs, pushing daily transaction volumes to exceed 100 million. These improvements will provide the Ethereum network with stronger processing capabilities, laying the groundwork for supporting large-scale users.

The popularization of account abstraction technology will also be an important advancement. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 will see over 25% of on-chain transactions adopting account abstraction, allowing users to pay gas fees with any token. After the full account abstraction achieved by EIP-5003, the way users interact with smart contracts will change, improving the usability of Web3 applications. This change will make it easier for ordinary users to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem, promoting the popularization of decentralized applications.

In terms of optimizing staking mechanisms, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH for additional rewards. Meanwhile, permissionless staking pools are made possible through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, with the total amount of Ethereum staked expected to exceed 30 million ETH, maintaining an annualized yield of 3%-4%. This mechanism not only enhances network security but also attracts more users to participate in staking.

Zero-knowledge proof technology will be widely applied in the Ethereum ecosystem. General zkVM can generate block proofs in 30 seconds and be integrated into mainstream L2 networks, supporting privacy computing functions and achieving "privacy as a service." These technologies enhance privacy protection while maintaining security synchronization with the Ethereum mainnet, 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 on Ethereum validators will be reduced, and EVM execution efficiency will be enhanced. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than 10 times, and these technological updates will significantly enhance Ethereum's performance, supporting the future development of modular blockchain architecture.

Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. Native interoperability with ZK stacks will become standard for new rollups, and efficient validity proof clusters will gradually form. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 stopping services for specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the foundation for modular blockchain networks and promote Ethereum's transition from technology-driven to application-driven.

The Beam Chain upgrade will bring significant changes to Ethereum's consensus layer, including reducing block production time to 4 seconds, lowering the staking threshold to 1 ETH, and introducing zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes will not only enhance network performance but also increase decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.

Prediction 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Outlook

The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new leap, with improvements in network performance, technological innovation, and ecological expansion complementing the explosion of the RWA market, driving Ethereum to a new height. As more real-world assets are tokenized and migrated on-chain, Ethereum not only solidifies its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contracts but also plays a key role in connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance. By the end of 2024, the total market value of on-chain tokenized assets has surpassed $14 billion, with Ethereum holding nearly 80% market share, becoming the core driving force behind the development of this field.

The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, with Ethereum becoming the preferred underlying infrastructure platform for institutions due to its mature technology architecture, security, decentralization, and stability. The tokenized government bond market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with a locked value exceeding $3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the RWA market's total 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 secure, 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-chain, significantly enhancing the operational efficiency of financial markets. As Ethereum's infrastructure continues to upgrade, network transaction costs are further decreasing, providing stronger support for RWA applications.

The impact of Ethereum's economic model. The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of ecological scale but also injects new momentum into Ethereum's economic model. On-chain activities and transaction fees will become important sources of revenue for Ethereum in the future. According to market data forecasts, RWA-related on-chain activities are expected to generate fees exceeding $100 billion annually, a figure that is 40 times the current annual revenue of Ethereum, significantly enhancing ETH's value capture ability, becoming an important pillar of Ethereum's economic system.

Data from the end of 2024 shows that the TVL of RWA has increased by 25% year-on-year, reaching $8.4 billion, with Ethereum contributing $1.7 billion in a single month, marking the highest growth rate of the year. Stablecoins play an important role in this trend, with a total market value exceeding $200 billion, while the growth of synthetic dollar classes is particularly notable, with a monthly growth rate of 60%, and TVL reaching $1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. Innovative stablecoins like Ethena and Usual, deeply integrated with RWA, not only drive innovation in on-chain lending and liquidity markets but also further strengthen Ethereum's dominant position in high-value transactions.

Policy and market drivers. Further clarification of regulations will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to adopt a more crypto-friendly stance in 2025. Additionally, regions like Singapore and Europe are actively promoting regulatory frameworks for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market, clearing obstacles for institutional capital to enter the RWA field. This policy shift will attract more institutional participation in the Ethereum ecosystem, driving explosive growth in on-chain assets and trading volumes.

Prediction 10: Solana's Continued Leadership

Solana is consolidating its leading position in the high-performance public chain field with its technological advantages. By upgrading the Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 in 2025, while the application of state compression technology reduces the hardware threshold for validating nodes, cutting costs by 30%.

The activity of the Solana ecosystem reached a new peak in 2024, with nearly $200 million in daily on-chain transactions and approximately 250 million active wallets, with daily active addresses reaching a new high of 8.8 million. Its unique state rent mechanism and validator voting fees provide SOL with value support beyond transaction fees, with weekly fee income reaching $36.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among these, Jito contributed over 55% of the fee income through MEV activities, further driving the growth of the Solana ecosystem.

The performance of Solana's developer ecosystem is impressive, with the number of active developers reaching 2,500-3,000 per month, and the three-month retention rate of developers increasing from 31% to over 50%. On the technical stack, over half of the developers have at least three years of blockchain development experience, ensuring higher quality application output within the ecosystem. Leading protocols like Jupiter and Raydium are expected to see their TVL exceed $20 billion in 2025, accounting for over 35% of the entire DEX trading volume.

Solana is gradually being viewed as a chip in AI-driven casinos, and its applications combined with agents may deepen further, especially in speculative trading, DeFi, and more dApp innovations, becoming a core driving force for user growth and technological application.

Prediction 11: The Rise of Move-based Public Chains Diversifies

Sui and Aptos, as representative public chains of the Move language, will achieve significant breakthroughs in 2025. Sui demonstrates clear advantages in gaming, social, and especially financial application scenarios through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model. As of Q4 2024, Sui's TVL has surpassed $2 billion, growing 2700% since the beginning of the year, ranking eighth in blockchain network TVL. With nearly 8 billion on-chain transactions and a total of 68 million accounts, it shows strong ecological activity, mainly driven by protocols like Navi Protocol and Cetus. With Circle introducing native USDC and over $400 million in stablecoins, Sui's liquidity has significantly improved. Sui's zkLogin feature lowers the entry barrier for Web3 users, allowing them to log into dApps using web credentials like Google or Facebook, with huge potential in DeFi and on-chain gaming. Meanwhile, the launch of the SuiPlay 0x1 gaming machine further expands into the hardware field, supporting on-chain games and being compatible with traditional gaming platforms (such as Steam and Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional gamers into Web3.

Aptos, on the other hand, is building a complete ecosystem in the DeFi field with its improved version of the Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, expecting daily active users to exceed 1 million. Aptos experienced explosive growth in 2024, with its TVL increasing 19 times year-on-year to nearly $2 billion, and the on-chain stablecoin ecosystem continues to expand, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC, further enhancing liquidity. At the same time, Aptos has also received widespread recognition from institutional investors, with BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin Templeton's FOBXX deploying on the Aptos chain, and a Spanish bank even allocating 2% of its fund to the Bitwise Aptos Staking ETP listed in Switzerland. In terms of developer ecology, the number of Aptos developers has increased by 96% year-on-year, with the number of on-chain contract deployments reaching 3,000, showcasing the vitality of the ecosystem.

The native tokens of the two public chains are expected to enter the top ten globally, with total locked value (TVL) expected to exceed five times the current scale.

Prediction 12: Emerging Public Chains, Monad and Berachain Bring Hope

Monad, as a representative of the next generation of parallel EVMs, is rapidly rising, with its ecological development and technological innovation attracting attention. In the Devnet phase, Monad achieved a genuine performance test of over 10,000 TPS, with a block time of just 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 MonadDB database optimized for EVM storage patterns. These technological breakthroughs not only significantly enhance throughput and transaction speed but also greatly reduce network costs. Additionally, Monad's integration with cross-chain protocols like LayerZero and Wormhole enhances cross-chain interoperability, further enriching its ecosystem.

The recently established Monad Foundation focuses on decentralized governance and ecological development, promoting a validator-led governance model and supporting community-driven improvement proposals. The Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources, and market support to promote dApp building and ecological cooperation. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have committed to building on Monad, and the ecosystem scale is expected to double by the time of the mainnet launch.

Berachain is rapidly rising, with its ecosystem attracting over 270 projects, most of which are consumer applications covering DeFi, GameFi, social, and DePIN, showcasing diversity and vitality. In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved over 14 million transactions, with active addresses exceeding 600,000 and unique addresses reaching 1 million. Its core innovation lies in the unique PoL (Proof of Liquidity) consensus mechanism, significantly enhancing TVL through liquidity collateral while providing strong growth momentum for ecological projects.

Berachain's modular design further enhances scalability, supporting chain abstraction and providing developers with flexibility and efficient tools in conjunction with infrastructure like Particle Network. Moreover, its economic model integrates the interests of users, developers, and validators through staking mechanisms and built-in incentives, ensuring the sustainable development of the ecosystem.

In 2025, the Layer 1 market will form a multi-layered competitive landscape. Ethereum will continue to occupy the top spot in market capitalization, while the market share of next-generation public chains like Solana, Sui, and Aptos will continue to grow. Emerging public chains like Monad and Berachain will inject new vitality into the industry through technological innovation and unique ecosystems, bringing more possibilities.

Prediction 13: The Demonstration Effect of TON and Kaia Will Attract More Internet Companies

The successful paths of TON and Kaia represent the core models of the next generation of Web3 applications: "user traffic-centered super-financial innovation" and "seamless integration of Web2.5 experiences." TON, relying on Telegram's global user base of 900 million, has achieved a seamless migration of on-chain functions through its mini-program ecosystem and TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of scalable blockchain applications. In 2024, TON's market capitalization surpassed $25 billion, with on-chain transaction volumes reaching $300 million/day, active wallets exceeding 36 million, and even daily active addresses temporarily surpassing Ethereum, opening up a new model for large-scale adoption of on-chain services. TON's mini-programs are driving geometric growth in user engagement while laying the foundation for broader Web3 application scenarios by supporting stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.

Kaia, as a blockchain platform deeply integrated with Kakao and Line, quickly attracts users and developers through its mobile super application ecosystem in the Asian market. Kaia has already amassed 30 million independent wallet addresses, processing over 1.3 billion transactions, with peak daily transaction volumes reaching tens of millions of dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFTs, payments, and AI services, boasting over 420 dApps and an active user base of 7 million. Kaia's on-chain DEX Swap trading volume has exceeded $400 million and is introducing more DeFi infrastructure to enhance liquidity support.

The success of TON and Kaia not only indicates that Web3 applications have the potential to rapidly expand from social platforms to financial and practical scenarios but also demonstrates how to incubate billion-dollar projects through existing traffic platforms under the Web2.5 logic. The mini-program model not only effectively lowers the entry barrier for Web3 but also drives high-frequency on-chain transactions and diverse scenarios through the traffic advantages of super applications. We predict that such ecosystems, relying on a large user base and traffic conversion capabilities, will give rise to more billion-dollar projects in the future—from on-chain payments and decentralized e-commerce to asset management and RWA (real-world assets), new application innovations combined with liquidity will become the next growth engine.

Prediction 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): A New Driving Force Reshaping the Research Economy

For a long time, the traditional research system has faced issues such as concentrated resource allocation, data opacity, and innovation bottlenecks. Decentralized Science (DeSci) is reshaping research funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, injecting new vitality into the research economy.

The core innovation of DeSci lies in funding allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFTs not only provide legal protection for research outcomes but also allow 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, DeSci projects also show great potential. AminoChain is developing a decentralized biological sample market with $5 million in funding, helping patients control data usage rights and benefit from it while reducing sample acquisition costs for research institutions. Similarly, GenomesDAO utilizes a decentralized genomic database to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.

In terms of research publishing, ResearchHub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, reducing the average turnaround time to 9 days, far better than the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly enhancing research transparency and efficiency.

Additionally, research DAOs like VitaDAO achieve community-driven research funding through governance tokens, reducing intermediaries and minimizing funding waste. As the policy environment gradually clarifies and institutional participation increases, it is expected that the scale of on-chain research funding will further expand, promoting the commercialization of intellectual property, open publishing, and the management of medical data.

The rise of decentralized science is driving scientific research from closed to open, from centralized to democratic. The transparent mechanisms, efficient collaboration, and data-sharing models of DeSci will have a profound impact on global research innovation.

In Conclusion, About OKX Ventures

OKX Ventures is unwaveringly embracing the future of decentralized development, far beyond mere financial returns. In our view, decentralization is not just a direction for technological innovation; it is a force that disrupts tradition and reshapes industry order, carrying profound reflections on individual freedom, value distribution, and social structure. We understand that the true driving force behind decentralized development is not just financial support but the comprehensive empowerment of resources, strategic cooperation, and the promotion of technological innovation to truly realize the implementation of decentralized concepts. OKX Ventures is forward-looking, always placing the service of decentralized innovation at the core of its investment philosophy, rather than pursuing short-term financial returns.

We are not traditional financial investors. We are not just "money givers," but partners who provide "services," offer "resources," and empower entrepreneurs. In this regard, OKX Ventures is committed to being a long-term supporter and promoter of projects, accompanying every entrepreneurial partner through every step of growth. We are dedicated not only to discovering excellent teams, products, and technologies but also, more importantly, to helping these innovative projects establish a foothold in the market through resource integration and deep empowerment, truly unleashing their potential.

At the same time, OKX Ventures also plays a connecting role, becoming an important link between projects and the OKX Group. Through deep cooperation with the OKX ecosystem, OKX Ventures provides a multi-dimensional support platform for projects, including OKX Web3 Wallet, NFT Marketplace, XLayer, etc., helping projects gain strategic support across multiple levels such as technology, market, users, and ecology. OKX Ventures leverages OKX's years of accumulation and deep cultivation in the industry to provide platform resources and industrial chain support for the rapid development of blockchain projects, helping them stand out in fierce competition.

We focus on the intrinsic development of the industry itself, rather than short-term market fluctuations. OKX Ventures places greater importance on real innovations within the industry—not just theoretical breakthroughs but also actionable new applications, visible user inflows, and steady growth in the overall industry scale. We believe that as blockchain technology matures and application scenarios continue to expand, the decentralized industry will usher in a profound period of dividends in the next 3 to 5 years, bringing enormous market opportunities. OKX Ventures will continue to stand at the forefront of this trend, using profound industry insights, strong resource advantages, and long-term strategic vision to assist industry innovation and promote the widespread application and far-reaching impact of blockchain technology globally.