Author: NingNin Source: X, @0xNing0x
I. Summary
The 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), and analyst selection awards.
Messari's core analytical framework includes: block space economics, ecosystem mapping valuation framework, narrative economics, Schumpeterian innovation theory, etc.
Original report link: https://messari.io/report/the-crypto-theses-2025
II. Macroeconomic Environment
1. Economic and Regulatory Environment
After reviewing the major events of the 2024 macroeconomic environment, Messari predicted the changes in the US economic environment and crypto regulation in 2025.
2025 will be a critical year for crypto policy reform in the US, with FIT21 and the Stablecoin Act being the most closely watched regulatory legislation cases, which will promote the transparency and standardization of the global crypto regulatory policy framework.
Unlike the optimistic views of stakeholders such as VanEck, Messari cautiously believes that there is a possibility of a reversal of Trump's crypto policy.
However, it will still be more crypto-friendly than Biden's policy.
Comment: Messari's macroeconomic environment analysis does not have any particularly insightful views, and its level is average, not as professional as the macroeconomic analysts on Twitter. This part mainly serves to fill pages.
Regarding the market outlook for 2025, multiple institutions are consistent with Messari:
The market trend in 2025 will be a Banana ForScale, with new highs in the first half of Q1, a significant correction in Q2, and a recovery and new highs for the whole year in Q3 and Q4.
2. What are institutions doing?
In 2024, the main battlefield for institutions was applying for and operating Bitcoin/ETH spot ETFs and promoting RWA (tokenization of US Treasuries) business. The events of Paypal launching the stablecoin PYUSD and Stripe acquiring the stablecoin company Bridge, have started to blur the boundaries between fintech, payments, and cryptocurrencies.
In terms of investment, institutions are adopting a barbell strategy consisting of AI and DePin, with the total financing of these two sectors growing by about 100% and 300% respectively compared to last year.
David Sacks, the incoming AI and crypto czar, is an investor in Solana, Helium, Render, and Hivemapper. It is expected that the US government will seriously consider cooperating with DePin projects in 2025.
Comment: Next year, the main theme of AIxCrypto will most likely be Web3AIAgent. The democratization of AI and AGI-type capital and talent-intensive heavy industry AIxCrypto projects need to undergo adaptive adjustments in the face of environmental changes.
DePin has been the darling of North American institutions this year, especially in high-quality data collection DePin and new energy DePin. Solana's strategic goal in 2025 is still to ensure that DePin occurs on Solana.
3. Where are the on-chain users?
Messari cited A16Z's report, which estimates that out of 220 million active addresses, there are about 30 million to 60 million real monthly active users.
Users are mainly distributed in Phantom wallet, stablecoins, Telegram mini-programs, Polymark prediction market, Base, and Hyperliquid.
Messari believes that the growth of on-chain users in 2025 will come more from the product power of Dapps, rather than from Bitcoin ATH news events or the legend of MEME coin wealth. Therefore, it is very Bullish on the adoption of chain abstraction and aggregated front-ends in 2025.
Comment: 2025 will be a pivotal year in the transition from the "fat protocol" era to the "fat application" era of Web3, and AppChain/chain abstraction will become the mainstream paradigm for Dapp construction.
The biggest disappointment of the application layer in 2024 was that Polymark broke through but failed to convert crypto users. Hopefully, in 2025, the super-app of chain abstraction can successfully sell crypto-native stablecoin services, high-yield Staking finance, and cyber lottery MEME coins to the general consumers, achieving a super-phenomenon Dapp that is both acclaimed and popular.
III. Track Analysis
The essence of Messari's annual outlook report is in this part, which is one of the best windows to observe the industry views of North American institutions.
--Bitcoin
Messari focused on discussing Runes/Glyphs, Bitcoin programmability, and BTC Staking.
Runes/Glyphs will recover under the stimulation of the mainnet launch of Fatty Penguin consumer chain, OpenSea token issuance, and the NFT renaissance.
The key BitVM2 engineering of Bitcoin programmability will make progress.
BTC Staking has an innate disadvantage compared to ETH Staking, and the higher economic security of Bitcoin ReStaking's AVS cannot effectively convince users to use it. BTC Staking projects in 2025 should still focus on improving the penetration rate among BTC Holders.
--Ethereum
Last year, Messari was openly Anti-Ethereum. This year, the attitude is much more moderate, acknowledging Ethereum's supreme status after the spot ETF. At the same time, it pointed out that after the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum's Blob pricing mechanism caused L1 to be unable to effectively capture the DA fees of L2, which was the main reason for Ethereum's defeat in the competition in 2024.
However, Ethereum's native application-layer narratives/products, such as Friend·Tech, Farcaster, Lens Protocol, and Eigen Layer AVS, etc., have all been unsuccessful.
But Messari believes that fee revenue is not the most important indicator for measuring the value of L1, but the ecosystem map is. From this perspective, Ethereum is still the best L1 ecosystem.
Comment: In 2025, Ethereum needs to see if it can incubate high-performance parallel EVML1 (Monad)/L2 (MegaETH) that can rival Solana.
--Solana
The key milestones for Solana in 2024 include the lightweight Firedancer client solution Frankendancer, the new SPL token standard, and the state compression solution ZKCompression.
The key milestones for Solana in 2025 will include the release of the Firedancer client, wider adoption of the prediction market governance protocol MetaDAO, new large-scale DePin projects based on Solana, AlAgentSummer occurring on Solana/Base, and the approval of a SOL spot ETF.
Comment: MEME coins do not have a super cycle, and the popularity of cyber lottery is a special phenomenon in a special period. The Solana ecosystem needs to diversify in a timely manner in 2025 and get rid of its heavy reliance on MEME coins.
--Alt L1s + infra
In 2025, Monad and Sonic will join the high-performance monolithic L1 competition with Solana and Sui. BeraChain driven by the (3,3) token economic model will also launch its mainnet.
In 2025, block space will be severely oversupplied, and the voice of Dapp developers will be further enhanced, no longer limited by the crypto community's ideology, and they will be able to build consumer-oriented use cases more freely.
After the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum's "Seven Injuries Fist", the DA narrative of modular blockchains has been concluded. Celestia and Avail are beginning to transform into a global cross-chain interoperability coordination layer.
The next-generation L2s like Mega and UniChain with high performance + AltVMs will also enter the battlefield.
Avalanche will undergo the largest mainnet upgrade in history, Avalanche9000, which will bring significant performance improvements, and together with Avalanche Interchain Messaging (AIM), it will build C-Chain as the center of liquidity hub. Avalanche ecosystem will have a brilliant performance in RWA and Web3 games (represented by off the grid) in 2025.
The 2025 prospects for Cosmos are still uncertain, and the key checkpoint is when the InterchainFoundation (ICF) truly takes control. After acquiring Skip Protocol earlier this month, ICF may accelerate this process.
Another Cosmos ecosystem giant project Initia, focusing on AppChain interoperability and ecosystem role interest re-alignment, will also join the ranks of the powerful new block space suppliers 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 cross-chain bridges, messaging platforms, intent infrastructure, ZK proof aggregators, and shared sequencers.
Comment: In analyzing Alt L1s + infra projects, the explanatory power of block space economics is unbeatable.
--DeFi
When the trading volume/CEX ratio of PerpDEX will catch up with the trading volume/CEX ratio of spot DEX has always been a focus of DeFi enthusiasts. The emergence of Hyperliquid has rekindled hope.
Another focus is how to make a trade-off between vertical integration and composability when building DeFi protocols.
The current structure of RWA is still mainly based on the tokenization of US Treasuries, and the two main lines of RWA in 2025 will be: tokenization of US Treasuries DAO idle assets and exporting on-chain yields to the traditional capital market.
In the Loyalty Points Fi sector, Pendle occupies a unique and critical ecological position.
In terms of anti-MEV, in addition to the market game model of FlashBot, the intentional architecture of CowSwap has emerged.
--Al x Crypto
Messari has divided AlxCrypto into four categories: decentralized computing networks, coordination platforms, AI tools and services, and applications. Of course, Messari is also concerned about AlAgentKOL and AIAgent MeMe coins.
Messari predicts that the major events worth watching in AIxCrypto in 2025 will be: Bittensor and Dynamic TAO becoming new AI project minting factories, the work of Prime Intellect and Nous Research further enhancing the feasibility of decentralized power training, and AI Agent becoming OnChain and completely separated from AI MeMe coins.
The open-source AGI project SentientLabs, which is fighting against commercial titans, will also receive greater attention in 2025.
--DePin
As the inventor of the term DePin, Messari now divides DePin into Physical Resource Networks (PRN) and Digital Resource Networks (DRN).
Messari is very Bullish on the new energy DePin projects Glow, Daylight Energy Helium, DAWN, GEODNET, Hivemapper, DIMO in the PRN sector, and Prodia, Filecoin, Grass in the DRN sector.
In 2025, Solana's dominance in the DePin field will be challenged by projects like Base.
Comment: This part has a large number of Alpha projects with potentially high risk-reward ratios, and readers with interest are strongly recommended to read the original text.
--Consumer
Messari has categorized Web3 games, MeMe coins and their launch platforms, DeSoc&SocialFi, and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) all under this part.
I have already written many articles discussing Web3 games, so I won't go into details here. I'll just say that Messari has observed an interesting change, where the game design of Web3 games is shifting from Play2Airdrop to Pay2Airdrop.
For MeMe coins and their launch platforms, gamification and personalized design are the new trends. In general, it's okay to develop around the positioning of MeMeCoin as a cyberlottery.
DeSoc&SocialFi, as a former product operator, I don't want to talk about it anymore. In 2025, it still hasn't amounted to much. Solana's flagship protocol Send has already transformed into an AIAgent.
The cultural renaissance of NFTs led by Penguins and Web3 consumer IPs, Penguins and Azuki will respectively launch the consumer chains Abstractchain and Animechain in 2025.
Comment: In the Consumer sector, the one I'm most Bullish on is Penguins' NFTs and the consumer chain Abstract Chain. 2025 will be the year of @LucaNetz's ascendance.
--CeFi
Unrelated to retail investors, omitted.
