Author: DWF Ventures
Compiled by: Furuhe, Odaily Planet Daily
In 2024, the crypto industry has attracted more attention from institutional investors, and ETFs and stablecoins are also growing steadily. Therefore, DWF Ventures is optimistic about the overall crypto industry in 2025 and predicts that capital inflows will shift towards on-chain. DWF Ventures' focus on 2025 trends:
Stablecoins
DeFi
Consumer-facing applications
AI
Stablecoins
Tether and Circle have long dominated the growth of stablecoins. Although stablecoins are mainly used as a medium for trading and payment, we believe their role as an asset is also gradually strengthening. The profitability of Tether and Circle has attracted more traditional fintech companies to enter the stablecoin field.
Stripe's acquisition of Stablecoin further demonstrates the strong interest of traditional fintech companies in this market.
PayPal is focusing on PYUSD and driving its application on Solana by offering up to 20% returns.
The USDtb launched in collaboration with BlackRock provides exposure to RWA yields through the Usual platform, while the launch of iUSDe marks a further integration - introducing regulated high DeFi yields to traditional finance for the first time.
In addition, DWF Labs is incubating a high-yield stablecoin project called Falcoin Stable, which is planned to be launched this year.
Therefore, we believe that with the accelerated entry of institutions, the application of stablecoins will experience explosive growth in 2025, and the growth of yields will benefit all users.
DeFi
With the growth of stablecoins, DeFi has also made significant progress. The usage of many DeFi protocols has surged rapidly, with Aave and Pendle's protocol revenues reaching new highs.
The trading volume of spot and perpetual contracts on DEX/CEX has also doubled since the beginning of the year, driven mainly by platforms like Uniswap, Raydium Protocol, and Hyperliquid.
With more liquidity flowing into the ecosystem, we will see more innovations, especially in the yield layer and lending mechanisms.
With technological advancements in throughput, latency, and execution, as well as the upcoming projects like Monad, MegaETH, and Hyperliquid's HyperEVM, the momentum for DeFi innovation will be further strengthened.
Consumer-facing applications
Consumer-facing applications aim to lower the entry barrier for non-crypto-native users.
TON's mini-apps are an example, where users can quickly get started on the Telegram platform without creating a wallet or backing up seed phrases, ultimately guiding them into the on-chain world.
Mobile-centric experiences are emerging, with popular protocols like Jupiter, as well as trading tools like Moonshot, Photon, BONKbot, and ApePro gaining traction. Therefore, this will be a trend in 2025, and protocols that can enhance the user experience and introduce more retention mechanisms will gain a larger market share.
Artificial Intelligence
In the past few months, AI Agents have exploded in the crypto community, with aixbt consistently topping the popularity charts. These bots process information and generate content at an astounding pace, operating 24/7 without the need for rest, far exceeding human capabilities.
Currently, AI Agents have been involved in various areas, including security vulnerability discovery, code assessment, no-code frameworks, data analysis, and fund investment. We believe that with the release of o1 by OpenAI, which will achieve more humanized behavior, the next wave of innovation will bring more interesting use cases, especially in commercialization.
The number of AI Agents will continue to grow, and competition will become increasingly fierce. Finding the right product-market fit (PMF) will be the key to standing out. As AI Agents become widely adopted, decentralized AI infrastructure will see rapid development across various layers of the crypto ecosystem.
