As we enter 2026, the ritual of "year-end review" in the internet industry is becoming increasingly prevalent. From Luo Zhenyu's "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech, which he has maintained for ten years, to Wu Xiaobo's year-end show analyzing economic cycles, and to the New Year's Eve live streams by industry leaders such as Lei Jun and Luo Yonghao, these reviews and outlooks have become a barometer for observing business trends.
In the crypto space, this "looking back" sentiment is equally strong. KOLs on social media are sharing their year-end reviews, and major trading platforms are also launching their own 2025 annual reports for users—such as OKX's "Rewind 2025" user annual statement, allowing investors to share their trading history on social media and review the gains and losses of the year.
Beyond the micro-narratives of these individual data points, we also need a strategic review from a macro perspective. OKX founder Star Xu Xu's year-end letter, "2025: Steady Progress Towards Financial Freedom," provides just such a high-level perspective. It's not merely an annual report card for the platform, but also a strategic judgment on the survival rules of the second half of the crypto industry. Through this letter, we can step outside of price fluctuations to glimpse how an industry leader, from a strategic standpoint, assesses the future development and evolution of the crypto market.
Unlike the year-end summaries on the market that are filled with FOMO and grand narratives, this letter reads with an unusual calmness, even "restraint." OKX is undergoing a strategic restructuring according to Star's will: using "calmness and restraint" to combat the entropy increase in the market, evolving from a simple trading platform into a underlying operating system connecting traditional finance and the Web3 world.
A philosophical shift: The Wild West or the Gentle West?
In the letter, Star reiterated a recognizable concept—"The Mild Mild West." This is also the title of the short film OKX will release in early 2025. This also signifies a fundamental shift in the founders' understanding of the essence of the crypto industry.
For a long time, the crypto space has touted permissionless innovation and absolute freedom, the "Wild West." However, the reality of 2025—including the Bybit hack and the industry-wide loss of over $3.4 billion in hacker losses, as well as the birth and exploitation of thousands of projects—has brutally proven that freedom without governance often becomes a feast for predators.
In his letter, Star did not shy away from this point, but instead redefined "financial freedom": "Financial freedom is often misunderstood. It emphasizes that rules, enforcement, and governance are not the opposite of freedom, but rather the cornerstone of financial freedom. It is not about the absence of rules, but about the presence of governance, rules, and enforcement."
Five years ago, this argument might have been seen as a betrayal of the spirit of decentralization, but in 2025, it is the most pragmatic response to institutional entry and mass adoption. It emphasizes that rules, enforcement, and governance are not the opposite of freedom, but rather the cornerstone of financial freedom.
Compliance: From "Resisting the Rules" to "Embracing the Rules"
Guided by this philosophy, OKX's compliance actions in 2025 will no longer be passive defense, but rather a highly aggressive offense.
While competitors are still struggling with regulatory red lines in various countries, OKX has already secured a "passport" to the European single market of 450 million people by obtaining the EU MiCA (Crypto Asset Market Regulation) license. This move is strategically extremely valuable—it not only means that OKX can operate compliantly in 27 EU countries, but also that it has built a moat, keeping out competitors who cannot afford the high compliance costs.
The data disclosed in the letter also corroborates the effectiveness of this strategy: in licensed markets, OKX's trading volume increased 53 times. This demonstrates that in markets with clear regulations, compliance itself acts as a magnet for liquidity.
Transparency: The Mathematicalization of Trust
Against the backdrop of a crisis of trust triggered by a hacker attack on a peer company, the repeated emphasis in the letter on "Proof of Reserves" (PoR) and "3-5% excess asset reserves" is particularly significant.
OKX has transformed PoR from an optional feature into an industry standard. This isn't just about proving its innocence; it's about attempting to mathematically represent the abstract concept of "trust." Users don't need to trust OKX's character, they only need to trust the mathematics. This strategy of "excessive transparency" is essentially forcing the industry to raise its entry barriers—if competitors cannot provide the same level of transparency, they will be perceived as "unsafe" by the market.
Product Invisibility: CeDeFi and Seamless Interaction
Star devoted a significant portion of his letter to discussing technology, but you'll notice he rarely talked about flashy specifications, instead focusing on "reducing friction" and "eliminating complexity." This reflects the core logic of OKX's product strategy: infrastructure should be invisible.
1. CeDeFi: Ending the binary opposition between CEX and DEX
In recent years, on-chain transactions have exploded. The MEME craze on the Solana and BSC chains has attracted a lot of traffic. The development of DEX platforms such as Hyperliquid and Aster has made traditional centralized exchanges (CEXs) anxious about being diverted by decentralized exchanges.
OKX's strategy is not to suppress DEX, but to "devour" it.
The CeDeFi (centralized decentralized finance) function mentioned in the letter involves OKX building an extremely complex "smart routing" system within its app to directly connect liquidity from chains such as Solana and Base to a centralized interface.
For users: They don't need to manage seed phrase, study cross-chain bridges, or worry about insufficient gas fees. They simply click "buy" like buying or selling Bitcoin, and the backend system automatically handles all the complex on-chain operations.
For OKX: This means it's no longer just a matching engine, but an aggregator. Regardless of whether transactions occur on-chain or off-chain, the traffic and funds remain within the OKX ecosystem.
Data confirms the success of this strategy: in 2025, OKX's DEX trading volume surged by 262%. This shows that what users need is not the dogma of decentralization, but decentralized access to assets—if the centralized experience can be done better, users will not hesitate to vote with their feet.
2. Web3 Wallets: From Tools to Entry Points
The evolution of the OKX Web3 wallet follows the same logic. By introducing Passkey technology and Account Abstraction, OKX is eliminating the biggest obstacle to Web3: the "private key".
In Star's vision, future users may not even realize they are using a Web3 wallet. They will simply be logging into a financial app via facial recognition and then making global payments or investments. This "seamless" experience is the only path for Web3 to reach a billion users.
Infrastructure Alliances and Strategic Shifts: X Layer's Strategic Shift
Although Star's letter doesn't seem to focus much on X Layer, considering OKX's actions throughout the year, we can see a clear underlying theme of "infrastructure expansion." X Layer is not just a chain; it represents OKX's ambition to control the industry's underlying standards.
The most noteworthy strategic detail is the revision of X Layer's technical roadmap. At the end of 2025, OKX made a bold decision: to migrate X Layer from the initial Polygon CDK architecture to OP Stack, officially joining the "Superchain" alliance composed of Optimism, Coinbase (Base), and Uniswap (Unichain).
OKX has completely abandoned the closed ecosystem mindset of its early OKT Chain and corrected X Layer's initial independent approach. Joining the OP Stack means that X Layer can achieve native, seamless interoperability with chains like Base. OKX realizes that future competition is not a zero-sum game between "chains," but an ecosystem war between "chain groups." Through this alliance, X Layer shares Ethereum's largest Layer 2 liquidity pool.
In line with X Layer's strategy, OKX carried out a complete "supply-side reform" of its platform token OKB in 2025. This involved burning OKT and establishing OKB as X Layer's sole gas token, while locking in a total supply of 21 million tokens.
This move deeply integrates OKX's corporate value with its on-chain ecosystem value. OKB is no longer just a fee deduction for exchanges; it has become the "native currency" of a vast ecosystem. As X Layer hosts more and more DeFi and payment applications, the rigid demand for OKB will become the foundation supporting its value.
From Speculation to Utility: Payments and the Real World
The success of OKX Pay in Brazil, mentioned in the letter, is perhaps the most underestimated strategic highlight.
In the crypto industry, the vast majority of innovations still revolve around "asset speculation." However, OKX's strategy in Brazil targets "value transfer." Through deep integration with Brazil's PIX payment system, OKX Pay allows users to make instant, zero-fee everyday payments using stablecoins.
This is more than just a product; it's an "escape route." For users in regions with high inflation and fiat currency, OKX offers a more reliable alternative to banks and a more convenient alternative to cash. While other exchanges are still vying for traders, OKX has already begun competing for the wallets of ordinary consumers in South America. This is also the most practical manifestation of the "financial freedom" mentioned in Star's letter—making cryptocurrency truly useful.
Conclusion: Be a friend of the cycle
Looking at Star's 2025 year-end letter, we don't sense the restlessness of trying to "get rich overnight," but rather a long-term perspective and determination.
After experiencing the early, chaotic phase of the industry, OKX seems to have realized a truth: in a market full of uncertainty (price fluctuations, hacker attacks, policy regulations), the greatest commercial value comes from providing "predictable certainty".
Compliance provides legal certainty;
PoR It provides certainty about asset security;
X Layer and CeDeFi It provides a reliable technical experience.
This "steady progress" strategy might seem unexciting, even "boring," in the crypto market rife with get-rich-quick myths. But in the financial world, "boring" is often the highest compliment. It signifies that the system has matured to the point where it no longer needs to create hype to grab attention, and that the infrastructure is robust enough to handle trillions of dollars in transactions.
The blueprint has been drawn, and now is the time to forge ahead.
As Star stated at the end of the letter, "Scale only makes sense when it is underpinned by systems, control, and long-term intentions." This statement not only summarizes OKX's past year but also accurately predicts the survival rules of the crypto industry for the next decade. For investors, understanding this "aggressive restraint" may be key to understanding where the next alpha opportunity lies.
