Dragonfly Partners: Six Predictions for the Crypto Industry in 2025

Tác giả gốc: Haseeb ＞|＜

Bản dịch gốc: TechFlow

These predictions will either make me look like a prophet or ignorant, but what is certain is that my views may make more than a few hold-out parties unhappy.

I divide my predictions into six parts: L1 and L2, token issuance, stablecoins, regulation, “AI Agents”, and the combination of mật mã and AI.

Future trends of L1 and L2

The boundary between L1 and L2 is blurring. Users no longer care about the difference between the two (in fact, they may never really care). Todays blockchain ecosystem, including L1 and L2, is already too crowded as a whole, and will usher in a round of integration in the future. The key to this round of integration is not technical superiority, but whether it can find a unique market positioning and establish user stickiness through an effective market strategy (GTM).

Despite the strong performance of SVM and Move technologies, EVMs market share will continue to grow in 2025. This is mainly driven by projects such as @căn cứ , @monad_xyz Và @berachain . This growth is no longer due to compatibility, but because EVM and Solidity have rich training data. In 2025, large language models (LLMs) will dominate the writing of application code, and EVM has accumulated a large number of verified cryptographic contract libraries, which will become its important advantage.

Solanas low latency performance will drive more blockchains to optimize for responsiveness. The blockchain industry will shift from competing on transactions per second (TPS) to competing on latency – infrastructure like @doublezero and ultra-low latency L2s like @megaeth_labs will drive user expectations for blockchain experiences close to Web2 responsiveness. We will see more trends around Optimistic UI, pre-confirmation, intent expression, email sign-ups, browser-embedded wallets, and progressive security. Special thanks to @privy for his innovative advancement in this space.

@HyperliquidX has proven that dedicated chains focused on specific applications are a viable model, especially when user experience and cross-chain ease of operation are important. In the future, more projects will follow this model, and the idea of one chain to rule them all will become a thing of the past.

New Trends in Mã thông báo Issuance

The current model of large-scale airdrops through point programs has ended. Two main token distribution models will emerge in the future:

• For projects with clear core indicators (such as exchanges or lending protocols), they will distribute tokens based entirely on points. Such projects do not mind whether they will be farmed or gamified because the distribution of tokens is actually a feedback or discount mechanism as a core indicator, and the so-called airdroppers are also real users in a sense.

• For projects without clear core metrics (such as L1 and L2), they will turn more to crowdfunding sales. Social contributions may be rewarded through small-scale airdrops, but the majority of tokens will be distributed through crowdfunding. Airdrops for vanity metrics are outdated because these tokens do not really flow to users, but to professional airdrop parties.

In addition, Memecoin’s market share will gradually be replaced by “AI Agent” themed tokens. This change can be seen as a shift from “financial nihilism” to “financial over-optimism”.

The explosive growth of stablecoins

The use of stablecoins will explode in 2025, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs). Their application scenarios will no longer be limited to trading and speculation, and more companies will use on-chain dollars for instant settlement.

Banks are also starting to take notice: by the end of 2025, some are expected to announce their own stablecoins to avoid being left behind by the industry. However, with Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce, Tether will maintain its dominance in the market.

In the meantime, @ethena_labs expects to attract more capital, especially if Treasury yields continue to fall over the next year. When the opportunity cost of capital decreases, the returns from basis trades will become more attractive.

Quy định

In 2025, the United States is expected to pass stablecoin-related legislation, while broader market infrastructure reforms (i.e., the FIT21 Act) may be delayed. The adoption of stablecoins will accelerate significantly, but Wall Streets crypto integration, asset tokenization, and related progress in traditional finance (TradFi) may lag behind.

Under the Trump administration, Fortune 100 companies may be more aggressive in offering crypto services to consumers, while technology companies and startups will demonstrate a higher risk tolerance. Trumps inauguration may bring a short regulatory vacuum during which the market will be more relaxed about the integration of crypto technology due to the lack of clear rules and enforcement priorities. It is expected that during this window period, crypto technology will usher in a large-scale application expansion in Web2 platforms.

AI Agent

(This is a long section because my opinions may be controversial – bear with me!)

The “AI Agent” craze is expected to continue throughout 2025, but will eventually fade. This is not a true long-term disruption brought about by AI, but because of its social attributes, it has become the focus of the crypto community (CT).

Current “AI Agents” are not really intelligent agents. They are actually chatbots with Memecoin attached, and have little autonomous capabilities other than posting on Twitter. In addition, most of the existing “AI Agents” are “Wizard of Oz” models – there are real people behind the scenes to ensure that the AI does not make mistakes. This situation will not change in the short term, because there are still many problems with the current intelligent agent technology (even Fortune 100 companies have not yet deployed intelligent agents in production environments). For example, these agents can be easily manipulated and may make inappropriate remarks that damage the brand image, or be hacked to steal its resources. A truly autonomous AI can refer to the case of @freysa_ai – if an AI is not hacked, it is likely because there is human intervention behind it.

Nevertheless, I think this trend will accelerate. Chatbots do have the potential to replace many online celebrities because they don’t need to rest, always keep a consistent message, and are more “economical” than humans. In addition, most online celebrities themselves are not known for their originality. The collection and dissemination of real-time information can actually be easily achieved by algorithms (such as @aixbt_agent ).

Right now, these chatbots are new because the concept is so unique, its like seeing an elephant painting. The first time you see it, you probably dont care if the painting is beautiful because the process itself is amazing. But after you see it a thousand times, the novelty wears off. I think this will happen when the technology for chatbots plateaus.

Take aixbt, for example. It is now very good at aggregating data from different projects. By next year, with the emergence of the next generation of intelligent agents, aixbt may generate less false information (i.e., hallucinations), analyze more deeply, and have more insightful views. But for most users, these improvements may not seem particularly significant, and may even feel little different from now.

I think this sense of novelty and market enthusiasm will continue throughout 2025, as the crypto industry generally stays interested in new things for a longer period of time. However, by 2026, I expect a sudden change: chatbots become so popular that users begin to get tired of them. Public opinion may reverse. When users see their favorite human key opinion leaders (KOLs) lose their livelihoods due to competition from chatbots, a kind of class consciousness may be stimulated. Users will gradually tend to support human KOLs, even if the quality and consistency of these contents may not be as good as chatbots.

In response to this preference for human content, future chatbots may hide their AI identities and try to disguise themselves as humans to compete for more attention market share. Unlike todays reliance on Memecoin monetization, future chatbots may adopt a profit model similar to that of human KOLs, such as through sponsorship, affiliate links, and promotion of their own tokens. By then, incidents of KOLs being accused of being chatbots may occur frequently, and there may even be scandals of AI identity revelations. This trend may become very complex and weird.

However, there is a darker trend behind this. Currently, large language models (LLMs) excel in text processing, but have not matured in other areas. In the field of crypto, one of the easiest ways to monetize text skills is to become an influencer, and another is to become a scammer. In the future, as technology improves, we may see a large number of autonomous scambots. This situation may become a serious social problem like the outbreak of ransomware and cryptojacking after 2017.

While chatbots may still be in the spotlight in 2025, the long-term disruptive impact of AI won’t be on the social level.

Likewise, AI’s long-term impact will not be in trading. AI will not allow everyone to have a “trading agent” or a mini hedge fund. While AI does enhance individual capabilities, this enhancement is proportional to the user’s capital, data, and infrastructure. Therefore, we can expect AI to further strengthen existing large trading firms because they have greater capital and data advantages. In other words, large trading firms will become even better at making profits. In addition, AI will narrow the technology gap between trading firms because all firms will have access to “advanced quantitative analysis tools in the cloud.”

Over time, AI will make markets extremely efficient – even in niche markets. This will result in the average trader having almost no advantage, even with a homemade assistant AI. The value of original research will drop dramatically. However, for the average user, increased market competition and liquidity may be good news, meaning more trading opportunities and more active markets. (For example, @Polymarket may achieve higher liquidity in all areas!)

If the future is not about chatbots or trading robots, what else is there to look forward to? Here is my core point, although almost no one is talking about it: the truly disruptive AI Agent will appear in the field of software engineering.

Why is this so important? Ask yourself: What is the most important investment in our industry? What expensive resource is limiting the emergence of more applications, wallets, and better infrastructure? The answer is software. If AI Agents can significantly reduce the cost of software development, it will change the landscape of the entire industry.

In the post-AI era, seed rounds may no longer require raising millions of dollars. You can launch an application with just $10,000 in AI cloud computing fees. Self-funded projects like Hyperliquid and Jupiter will move from rare exceptions to the mainstream. Application development and innovative attempts on the chain will usher in explosive growth. For an industry driven by software, this impact of falling costs will trigger a wave of innovation in the blockchain field.

The impact of this change on security will also be profound. AI-driven static analysis and monitoring tools will become ubiquitous, making security more accessible. These AIs will be optimized for code bases such as EVM/Solidity or Rust, and trained based on large databases of security audits and attack cases. They will also improve their capabilities through reinforcement learning (RL) in simulated adversarial blockchain environments. I am increasingly convinced that when it comes to security, AI tools will ultimately be more beneficial to defenders than attackers. AI will continue to perform red team testing of smart contracts, while other AIs will focus on strengthening contracts, formally verifying their properties, and improving incident response and remediation capabilities.

In the meantime, while you can continue to trade those AI-tinged Memecoins, real intelligent agents will do far more than just tweet and hype tokens, and their impact will be much more far-reaching.

True Crypto x AI

Above we mainly discussed the impact of AI on the encryption industry (this is the main direction of impact), but encryption technology will also have a reverse effect on AI.

In the future, truly autonomous agents may use cryptocurrencies to pay each other. This trend will become more pronounced once the regulatory policies for stablecoins become more relaxed – even large companies running AI agents may choose to use stablecoins for payments between agents because this method is more convenient than traditional bank accounts.

In addition, we will see more large-scale experiments around decentralized training and reasoning. Some emerging projects, such as @exolabs , @NousResearch , Và @PrimeIntellect , will provide real alternatives to centralized training and company-specific models. @Giao thức NEAR is also working hard to create a complete AI technology stack that is trusted, neutral, and permissionless.

Another intersection of crypto and AI is in user experience (UX). Wallets in the post-AI era will usher in a complete revolution – an AI-driven wallet will be able to automatically handle cross-chain bridging, optimize transaction paths, minimize fees, solve interoperability issues or front-end vulnerabilities, and help users avoid obvious scams or rug pulls. Users will no longer need to switch between multiple wallets, change RPCs, or rebalance stablecoins – AI will do it all automatically. This change may take until 2026 to mature enough to completely change the user experience in the crypto industry. But when all this is achieved, what impact will this have on the network effect of the blockchain? What happens when users no longer care which chain an application runs on, or even notice it?

It’s still early days for this space, but I’m excited about its future and hope to see it really explode soon. In the long term (e.g., by mid-2026), I believe that most of the market value in the “AI x Crypto” space will be concentrated in this direction.

That’s all my predictions. I promised to finish this post before I hit 100k followers, and I’m a little late, but I finally finished it before the New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that by this time next year, I will have been replaced by AI and officially “unemployed”!

Disclaimer: The content of this article is my personal opinion only and does not represent the position of Dragonfly; Dragonfly has investments in many of the projects mentioned in the article. This article is not financial advice, please do your own research (DYOR). As for whether I am an AI? This question is left to you to judge.

This article is sourced from the internet: Dragonfly Partners: Six Predictions for the Crypto Industry in 2025

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