Original article by: Stacy Muur
Earlier this month, a16z crypto released their list of big ideas for 2025. Which protocols are already building in these key areas? Let’s explore in this newly released article.
The end of the year is one of my favorite times as the brains of the Web3 industry begin to share their high-conviction thoughts and predictions for 2025. It’s an exciting time to map out the potential landscape of crypto industry thinking over the next year.
This time, I want to focus on a16z crypto’s article: “ Some of our expectations for the cryptocurrency field (2025) ”. By observing A16z’s 7 major ideas, I listed the projects that can be put on my own watch list:
Big Idea #1: AI Agents That Can Manage Wallets
In short, AI agents have demonstrated the ability to trade independently and operate completely autonomously. Many new application scenarios may emerge in this field. AI agents can become new roles in Web3, participating in transactions, investments, bridging, and the realization of various other intentions.
In this area, the following projects are on my watch list:
- NEAR Protocol : NEAR is positioning itself as the “AI blockchain”. Several important features have been launched recently, including Near AI and Near Intents. NEAR has gained considerable market attention and is expected to become one of the leaders in this field by 2025.
- Fetch.ai : Fetch.ai is a platform built specifically for the AI economy, providing tools for building, deploying, and monetizing AI services. Its ASI wallet may combine Fetch's latest progress in the field of AI and become one of the first implementations of AI and wallet integration.
- Armor Wallet : This is an AI-powered crypto wallet and trading assistant. Armor Wallet is a non-custodial wallet that uses AI to trade between multiple blockchains and is able to perform complex transactions quickly and easily. It should be noted that Armor is still a relatively early project.
- Coin98 Super Wallet : At the end of November, Coin98 released their AI wallet, which comes with an AI assistant that can recommend tools and simplify complex tasks. It also supports natural, human-like interactions.
Big Idea #2: Enhanced Information Aggregation
The concept revolves around new mechanisms based on prediction markets that aim to aggregate information more efficiently and enhance the decision-making process in various fields. This is a relatively new idea, and in this area I recommend reading Delphi Digital’s report “Markets Will Save the World”.
My watch list:
- MetaDAO : MetaDAO is the first project to implement futarchy at scale in a DAO. Futarchy is a governance system that combines prediction markets with democratic voting to facilitate decision making. In a futarchy system, participants trade based on the outcomes of different policy options. This allows them to "vote" with their funds for the decisions they believe will lead to the best outcomes.
- Futarchy : The concept of Futarchy is similar to MetaDAO: using the market for governance and reflecting the potential impact of policies on stock prices (token value).
Big Idea #3: Mass Adoption of Stablecoins
The idea is to focus on the widespread adoption of stablecoins, which already process more transactions than Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. This shift will benefit many market participants, including stablecoin issuers, crypto card companies and crypto payment services.
To better illustrate the stablecoin ecosystem, here is a diagram of the ecosystem mentioned in the above study. Consider adding these projects to your watchlist. 
In this area, I believe it is necessary to highlight infrastructure that can support growth in trading volumes and be the primary beneficiary of broader stablecoin adoption.
In addition to TRON, which is the famous USDT transfer engine, a protocol worth paying attention to is Noble . This new project develops liquidity infrastructure that enables asset issuers to participate in the cross-chain economy.
Big Idea #4: Modularize Everything
Modularity is not new, but a16z crypto predicts that more modules will gain mainstream adoption next year. There are several notable verticals worth paying attention to in this space:
- RaaS: Gelato , Caldera , AltLayer , Conduit , Bison Labs .
- Interoperability: Hyperlane , Polyhedra , Omni .
- Shared sorting: Espresso , Radius , Zellular .
- Privacy: Nillion , Brevis , Automata , Fhenix , zkMe .
- Intents: Anoma , Aori , Native .
- Storage: Arweave , Storj , Filecoin , Zus
- Oracles: Pyth , RedStone , Supra , Chainlink
There are many other projects, and overall the focus on infrastructure solutions in 2025 remains very important.
Big Idea #5: Finally a seamless user experience
In my opinion, this is a very promising direction. Chain Abstraction has been a hot topic this year, and we are finally approaching the moment when abstract user experience can become a reality, not just a concept.
The following is a chain abstract diagram provided by The Defiant:
These are all worth keeping an eye on, but I want to specifically mention Particle as the project I’m most bullish on. They recently launched the first Universal Accounts, allowing users to seamlessly trade assets on any chain through UniversalX. 
Another potential investment in this space is Everclear, the primary clearing layer for Web3. As the solver economy expands across chain abstractions, solvers will need to rebalance across chains. Everclear is the most cost-effective facilitator of this process.
Big Idea #6: Crypto App Store
The original a16z crypto article mentions some noteworthy crypto app store developers, including the Telegram app on TON, Alchemy, Solana’s mobile dApp store (Seeker), and Worldcoin’s mobile app.
In fact, many wallet providers could seamlessly evolve into crypto app stores.
I would like to highlight a few more projects: Glue, DeFi App and VeBetter.
Big Idea #7: Everything can be tokenized
Tokenization is a broad topic, especially when it comes to the tokenization of “unconventional” assets. Here are a few projects worth watching in this space:
- Kaito AI : Tokenizing Influence (Attention Economy)
- GAIB : Providing an economic layer for an AI-driven future by tokenizing enterprise-grade GPUs
- Compute Labs : Support for shard ownership of GPUs (a direct competitor to GAIB)
- ShopX : Tokenized goods and products (powering RWA for e-commerce)
- Eaas : Tokenized Carbon Footprint
- AI Agents and DeSci : Dolz (tokenized porn stars), PsyDAO (tokenized psychedelic science and art), Molecule (biopharma IP tokenization protocol), and many other high-risk, hot projects.
This list includes some protocols that are on my personal watch list, but I would recommend that you don’t limit yourself to just these projects. The Web3 space is vast and many protocols are indeed worth keeping an eye on!
