Blockworks Co-Founder 2025 Prediction: U.S. to Become Crypto Hub, Base to Be Solana's Main Competitor

Original Author: Mippo, Blockworks Co-founder

Original Translator: DeepTech TechFlow

1. The U.S. Will Reemerge as the Global Cryptocurrency Core.

More and more entrepreneurs will return to the U.S. and set up offices in New York. The scale of cryptocurrency conferences in the U.S. will also surpass similar events in the Asian region.

2. Over 10 DeFi protocols will officially implement fee switches, including Uniswap.

3. DeFi protocols will gradually adopt customer asset rehypothecation as a new business model.

This trend will involve areas such as cross-chain bridges, Liquidity Staking Tokens (LSTs), and more.

4. The Ethereum community's debate on the "North Star" roadmap will reach a conclusion:

Scaling attempts on the L1 mainnet will remain at a lower level (e.g., increasing the Gas target to 50M gwei, while discussions on block time reduction will intensify).

Ultimately, the Rollup-centric roadmap will be reaffirmed.

5. Max's scaling proposal will fail to garner sufficient support, ultimately failing.

6. This outcome will bring much-needed cohesion to the Ethereum community and improve overall market sentiment.

However, some dissenting developers and users may exit the ecosystem as a result. The price of ETH tokens is expected to perform strongly.

7. Rollup-based solutions will still struggle to achieve significant breakthroughs by 2025.

However, protocols like Across can achieve good interoperability. A clear direction for achieving universal synchronous composability is not yet visible.

8. Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) will gradually become a key part of L2 infrastructure and eventually a permanent feature.

9. Solana's development momentum will continue in this cycle, but issues will gradually surface by 2025:

Due to the decentralization of memecoins and the challenges posed by MEV (Maximum Extractable Value), Solana's REV will find it difficult to reach a new all-time high. To address these issues, Solana's community maximalism will rise.

10. The Firedancer client will officially launch in the fourth quarter, at which time Solana's network will achieve a processing capacity of 100,000 TPS.

11. Solana may adjust its token issuance policy to reduce inflation, while Ethereum will not make a similar change.

12. Base will emerge as a dark horse in the Rollup ecosystem and become a major competitor to Solana.

The total assets on Base are expected to exceed $400 billion. Base will also become the preferred chain for AI agents and other AI applications.

13. Stablecoins will gradually become the dominant asset on L2 networks, with their quantity expected to exceed twice that of ETH.

14. The stablecoin market will experience breakthrough growth in the coming year:

The market cap is expected to exceed $450 billion. Stablecoins will become one of the top three areas of investment focus for venture capitalists (VCs).

15. Over 5 large fintech companies or traditional financial institutions will launch their own stablecoins by 2025.

This will put pressure on existing stablecoins, leading to a slowdown in their growth rate.

16. Over 10 enterprises (including banks and Web2 giants) will launch their own L2 networks by 2025.

However, most of these networks will struggle to gain market acceptance and achieve tangible results. The only possible exception is fintech companies like Robinhood.

17. With a large user base and strong brand influence, Robinhood will become one of the industry's dominant forces by 2025.

By the end of the year, Robinhood will be considered one of the top two leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States alongside Coinbase.

18. Investment opportunities in L1 blockchains still exist and will not disappear in the short term.

The most prominent projects will be Sui and HyperLiquid.

19.ICO models will make a comeback, but will not dominate as they did in 2017.

Investor protection measures will be more robust, and ICOs will resemble more of a crowdfunding event.

It is expected that 5 blue-chip protocols will fundraise through ICOs.

20.Venture capital will flow back into the crypto industry, but funding levels will not reach those of 2021.

The total venture capital investment in the crypto space in 2021 was $30 billion. By 2025, it is expected to be between $20 billion and $25 billion. The market will see more funding rounds in the range of $50 million to $100 million.

21.Crypto companies will see an IPO window, but not a large-scale wave of listings.

Over 4 companies are expected to IPO, but due to the lingering valuation bubble from 2021, more companies may delay their listing plans.

Growth equity investment is still unlikely to enter the crypto space.

22.The main trend of 2025 will be the integration of AI with crypto.

Ongoing advancements in foundational models will attract more attention and drive a surge in AI-related tokens.

23.The application scenarios of AI will become more diverse, not limited to just intelligent agents.

Different types of intelligent agents will be experimented with, such as content creators, hedge fund traders, artists, etc.

However, the vast majority of these experiments will be in early stages and may not succeed.

24.TikTok's influence in the crypto space will reach unprecedented levels.

Crypto Twitter (CT) may become a primary exit channel for certain TikTok tokens.

25.The United States will pass significant crypto legislation in 2025.

An updated version of a market structure bill or a stablecoin bill may be signed into law.

26.Bitcoin's L2 solutions will still struggle to make a breakthrough in 2025.

True Layer 2 Bitcoin, based on Zero Knowledge Proof (ZK), is still a ways off.

27. Cryptocurrency will be widely seen as a lasting force in US politics.

Mainstream media (MSM) attitudes will gradually shift, starting to acknowledge that cryptocurrency is not easily going away from the historical stage.

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