Interpretation of the 2025 Encryption Industry Outlook Report

1. Overview

This 190-page report covers the current state of the encryption industry, key track analysis, and analyst opinions. The report employs analytical methods such as blockchain space economics, ecosystem valuation frameworks, narrative economics, and innovation theory.

2. Macroeconomic Environment

1. Economic and Regulatory Environment

The year 2025 will be a key year for the reform of U.S. encryption policy. The FIT21 and stablecoin bills are expected to promote the transparency and standardization of the global encryption regulatory framework. However, there is uncertainty regarding the new government's encryption policies.

Multiple institutions predict that the market will exhibit a "banana-shaped" trend in 2025: hitting a record high in the first quarter, undergoing significant adjustments in the second quarter, and recovering in the second half to reach new highs again.

2. Institutional Trends

The boundaries between fintech, payments, and encryption are becoming increasingly blurred. Institutional investment is focused on the fields of artificial intelligence and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePin), with total financing in these two sectors increasing by approximately 100% and 300% year-on-year, respectively.

It is expected that by 2025, the US government will seriously consider collaborating with the DePin project.

3. User Distribution

It is estimated that around 30 million to 60 million of the active addresses are real monthly active users. Users are mainly distributed across Phantom wallets, stablecoins, Telegram mini-programs, prediction markets, certain emerging public chains, and derivative trading platforms.

In 2025, the growth of on-chain users will rely more on the product strength of decentralized applications (Dapp), rather than the all-time highs of Bitcoin or the wealth stories of meme coins. Chain abstraction and aggregated front-ends are expected to gain wider adoption in 2025.

3. Track Analysis

Bitcoin

• Inscriptions/Runes may revive under the stimulation of factors such as the consumer chain mainnet launch, NFT platform token issuance, and NFT resurgence.
• The key technology BitVM2 for the programmability of Bitcoin will achieve engineering progress.
• The BTC staking project will focus on increasing penetration among BTC holders.

Ethereum

• The position of ETH has further solidified after the approval of the spot ETF.
• The upgraded Blob pricing mechanism in Cancun makes it difficult for L1 to effectively capture the data availability fees of L2.
• Ethereum's native narrative and product performance at the application layer are poor.
• From an ecosystem perspective, Ethereum is still the best L1 public chain.

Solana

Key milestones for Solana in 2025 include:

• Firedancer client released
• Broader adoption of the prediction market governance protocol MetaDAO
• The new large-scale DePin project has landed.
• AI agent ecosystem prosperity
• SOL Spot ETF Approved

Other public chains and infrastructure

• Competition among high-performance standalone L1 public chains intensifies
• Excess supply of block space, increased influence of developers
• Modular public chains are transforming into a global cross-chain interoperability coordination layer.
• A new generation of high-performance L2 solutions is emerging
• Some ecosystems have performed exceptionally well in specific areas ( such as RWA and Web3 games ).
• Blockchain abstraction technology accelerates productization

DeFi

• The trading volume of perpetual contract DEX is expected to catch up with spot DEX.
• DeFi protocols seek a balance between vertical integration and composability.
• RWA will focus on two main lines of development: the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds and on-chain yield output.
• Key ecological position projects have emerged in the points finance track.
• Continuous innovation in anti-MEV solutions

AI x Crypto

• AI x Crypto projects are divided into four categories: decentralized computing network, coordination platform, AI tools and services, and applications.
• The feasibility of decentralized AI training has improved
• The trend of AI agent on-chain is明显
• Open-source AGI projects are receiving more attention

DePin

• DePin is divided into Physical Resource Network ( PRN ) and Digital Resource Network ( DRN )
• The new energy DePin project is highly favored.
• The dominant position of certain public chains in the DePin field will be challenged.

consumer application

• The gameplay of Web3 games has shifted from Play2Airdrop to Pay2Airdrop.
• The meme coin launch platform is trending towards gamification and personalized design.
• The development of decentralized social and SocialFi is slow.
• The rise of NFT Renaissance and Web3 consumer IP
• Some NFT projects will launch exclusive public chains.