Author: NingNin Source: X, @0xNing0x
I. Summary
Messari's 190-page report consists of three parts: the current state of encryption (macro environment, institutional status, where are the users) + track analysis (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Alt L1s +infra, DeFi, AlxCrypto, DePin, Consumer, CeFi) + analyst choice award.
Messari's core analysis frameworks include: block space economics, ecological map valuation framework, narrative economics, Schumpeter's innovation theory, etc.
Original report link: https://messari.io/report/the-crypto-theses-2025
II. Macro environment
1. Economic environment and regulatory environment
After reviewing the major events in the macro environment in 2024, Messari predicted the changing trends of the US economic environment and crypto regulation in 2025.
2025 is destined to be a key year for the reform of US crypto policy. FIT21 and the Stablecoin Act are the most eye-catching major regulatory legislation cases in the market, which will promote the transparency and standardization of the global crypto regulatory policy framework.
Different from the optimistic views of ETF stakeholders such as VanEck, Messari cautiously believes in the report that there is a possibility of a reversal of Trump's crypto policy.
But in any case, it will be friendlier than Biden's crypto policy.
Comments: Messari's macroeconomic environment analysis has no special insights, and its level is average. It is not as professional as the macro analysts on Twitter. The main purpose of this part is to make up the page count.
Looking forward to the market trend in 2025, many institutions are consistent with Messari:
That is, the market trend in 25 years will be a Banana ForScale, with a new high in the first half of Q1, a sharp adjustment in Q2, and a recovery in Q3 and Q4 to set a new high for the whole year.
2. What are institutions doing?
In 2024, the main battlefield for institutions will be to apply for and operate Bitcoin/ETH spot ETFs and promote RWA (mainly U.S. debt tokenization) business. The launch of the stablecoin PYUSD by Paypal and the acquisition of the stablecoin company Bridge by Stripe have blurred the boundaries between financial technology, payment and cryptocurrency.
In terms of investment, institutions adopt a barbell strategy consisting of Al and DePin, and the total financing of these two sectors has increased by about 100% and 300% respectively compared with last year.
The incoming AI and encryption czar David Sacks is an investor in Solana, Helium, Render and Hivemapper.It is expected that the US government will seriously consider cooperating with the DePin project in 2025.
Comment:Next year, the main theme of AIxCrypto will most likely be Web3AIAgent. AlxCrypto projects, such as AI democratization and AGI, which are capital- and talent-intensive, need to make adaptive adjustments in the face of huge changes in the environment.
DePin is the favorite of North American institutions this year, and they are particularly interested in high-quality data collection DePin and new energy DePin.One of Solana's strategies in 2025 is still to ensure that DePin happens in Solana.
3. Where are the users on the chain?
Messari quoted A16Z's report that about 30 million to 60 million of the 220 million active addresses are real monthly active users.
Users are mainly distributed in Phantom wallets, stablecoins, Telegram applets, Polymark prediction markets, Base and Hyperliquid.
Messari believes that the growth of users on the chain in 25 years will come more from the product strength of Dapp, rather than the Bitcoin ATH news event or the legendary story of MeMe coin getting rich. Therefore, its very bullish chain abstraction and aggregation front-end adoption in 25 years.
Comment: 25 years will be a turning point for Web3 to transition from the "fat protocol" era to the "fat application" era, and APPChain/chain abstraction will be the mainstream paradigm for Dapp construction.
The biggest regret of the application layer in 24 years is that Polymark successfully broke the circle but converted few crypto users. I hope that the 25-year chain abstract super APP can successfully sell crypto-native stablecoin services, high-interest staking financial management, and cyber lottery MeMe coins to consumers, and realize a super phenomenal Dapp that is both popular and popular.
Three, Track Analysis
The essence of Messari's annual outlook report is in this part, which is one of the best windows for us to observe the views of North American institutional industries.
--Bitcoin
Messari focused on inscriptions/runes, Bitcoin programmability, and BTC Staking.
Inscriptions/runes will recover under the stimulation of the launch of the Fat Penguin Consumer Chain mainnet, OpenSea's coin issuance, and the NFT Renaissance.
BitVM2, the key to Bitcoin programmability, will make progress in engineering.
BTC Staking has inherent disadvantages compared to ETH Staking, and the higher economic security of Bitcoin ReStaking's AVS cannot effectively convince users to use it. The focus of the BTCStaking project in 25 years should still be on increasing the penetration rate among BTC Holders.
--Ethereum
Last year, Messari was an openly anti-Ethereum. This year, its attitude is much milder, acknowledging the transcendent status of ETH spot after the ETF. At the same time, it pointed out that after the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum's Blob pricing mechanism caused L1 to be unable to effectively capture L2's DA fees, which was the main reason for Ethereum's defeat in the 24-year competition.
And Ethereum's native narratives/products at the application layer, such as Friends Technology, Farcaster, Lens Protocol and Eigen Layer AVS, etc., are not successful.
But Messari believes that fee income is not the most important indicator for measuring the value of L1, but the ecological map is. From this dimension, Ethereum is still the best L1 ecology.
Comment: In 25 years, Ethereum will see whether it can incubate high-performance parallel EVML1 (Monad)/L2 (MegaETH) comparable to Solana.
--Solana
Solana's key milestones in 24 years include the lightweight solution Frankendancer for the Firedancer client, the new SPL token standard, and the state compression solution ZKCompression.
Solana's key milestones in 25 years will include the release of the Firedancer client, the wider adoption of the prediction market governance protocol MetaDAO, the new large-scale DePin project based on Solana, AlAgent Summer on Solana/Base, and the approval of the SOL spot ETF.
Comment: There is no super cycle for meme coins, and the popularity of cyber lottery is a special phenomenon in a special period.Solana ecology should prepare for a rainy day and diversify in time to get rid of its heavy dependence on MeMe coins in 25 years.
--AltL L1s +infra
In 25 years, Monad and Sonic will join Solana to compete with Sui's high-performance single L1. (3,3) BeraChain driven by the token economic model will also be launched on the mainnet.
In 25 years, the block space will be seriously oversupplied, and the voice of Dapp developers will be further enhanced. They will no longer be restricted by the ideology of the crypto community and will be able to build consumer-oriented use cases more freely.
After the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum's "Seven Wounds Fist" has ended the DA narrative of modular public chains. Celestia and Avail have begun to transform into a global cross-chain interoperability coordination layer.
Mega, UniChain and other next-generation L2 with high performance + AltVMs will also reach the battlefield.
Avalanche ushered in the largest mainnet upgrade in history, Avalanche9000. This upgrade will bring significant performance improvements. Together with Avalanche Interchain Messaging (AlM), a liquidity center with C-chain as the center will be built. The Avalanche ecosystem will have a bright performance in RWA and Web3 games (represented by off the grid) in 25 years.
The 25-year outlook of Cosmos is still uncertain. When the Interchain Foundation (ICF) truly masters the coordination power is a key checkpoint. After ICF acquired Skip Protocol earlier this month, this process may be accelerated.
Initia, another giant project in the Cosmos ecosystem, focuses on APPChain interoperability and ecological role interest re-production, and will also join the ranks of powerful new block space suppliers in 25 years.
25 years of chain abstraction protocols such as @ParticleNtwrk are accelerating from narrative to productization. Chain abstraction is not a single technology, but a combination of technical primitives such as cross-chain bridges, messaging platforms, intent infrastructure, ZK proof aggregators, and shared sequencers.
Comment: When analyzing Alt L1s +infra projects, the explanatory power of block space economics is unmatched.
--DeFi
When will the PerpDEX trading volume/CEX ratio catch up with the spot DEX trading volume/CEX ratio? This has always been the focus of DeFi enthusiasts. The emergence of Hyperliquid has rekindled everyone's hope.
Another focus is how to trade off between vertical integration and composability when building DeFi protocols.
The current structure of RWA is still based on the tokenization of US debt. In 25 years, RWA will have two main lines: tokenizing DAO idle assets with US debt and exporting on-chain yields to traditional capital markets.
In terms of Points Fi, Pendle occupies a unique and key ecological position.
In terms of anti-MEV, in addition to FlashBot's market game model, CowSwap's intention architecture appears.
--Al x Crypto
Messari divides AlxCrypto into four categories: decentralized computing network, coordination platform, AI tools and services, and applications. Of course, Messari also pays attention to AlAgentKOL and AIAgent MeMe coins.
Messari predicts that the major events worth noting in AIxCrypto in 25 years are: Bittensor and Dynamic TAO become new AI project coin factories, the work of Prime Intellect and Nous Research further enhances the feasibility of decentralized computing training, and AI Agent will be OnChain and completely separate from AI MeMe coin.
SentientLabs, an open source AGI project against commercial titans, will also receive greater attention in 25 years.
--DePin
As the inventor of the word DePin, Messari now subdivides DePin into physical resource network (PRN) and digital resource network (DRN).
Messari is very bullish about the new energy DePin projects Glow, Daylight Energy Helium, DAWN, GEODNET, Hivemapper, DIMO in the PRN sector and Prodia, Filecoin, Grass in the DRN sector.
In 25 years, Solana's dominance in the DePin field will be challenged by Base and others.
Comment: This part has a large number of Alpha projects with potential high profit and loss ratios. Those who are interested are strongly recommended to read the original text.
--Consumer
Messari includes Web3 games, MeMe coins and their launch platforms, DeSoc&SocialFi, and NFT in this part.
I have written many articles discussing Web3 games, so I will not repeat them here. I just want to say that Messari has observed an interesting change. The gameplay design of Web3 games has begun to shift from Play2Airdrop to Pay2Airdrop
MeMe coins and their launch platforms, gamification and personalized design are the new trends of MeMeCoin's launch platform. In short, it is OK to develop around the positioning of MeMeCoin, a cyber lottery.
DeSoc&SocialFi, as a former product operator, I don’t want to talk more about this, and there is still nothing to do in 25 years. Solana to Blink’s top protocol Send has transformed into AIAgent.
Fat Penguin leads the NFT Renaissance and Web3 consumer IP. Fat Penguin and Azuki will launch consumer chains Abstractchain and Animechain respectively in 25 years.
Comment: In the Consumer sector, the most popular ones are Fat Penguin NFT and consumer chain Abstract Chain. 25 years will be the year when @LucaNetz will be enshrined.
--CeFi
It has nothing to do with retail investors, so I will skip it.
Catherine
Weatherly
Kikyo
Joy
Anais