OKX Ventures Annual Report: 60+ Project Layout and 14 Major Trends Forecast

In 2024, amid the wave of drastic changes in the global financial landscape, the encryption industry has experienced profound ups and downs and reconstruction. After half a year of consolidation and repair, the industry's total market value exceeded US$3.8 trillion at the end of the year, and Bitcoin declared its core position in the global asset system with a historic high of US$100,000 . This is not only a rise in prices, but also the beginning of structural changes: a U.S. dollar liquidity cycle chain has been formed with Bitcoin as the core asset, ETFs and U.S. stocks as the capital bridge, and U.S. stock listed companies as the carrier.

Bitcoin is emerging as the world's largest dollar-denominated financial asset and a key tool to hedge the U.S. fiscal deficit and U.S. debt crisis. This financial change not only shapes a new asset value system, but also injects lasting growth momentum into the blockchain industry. The entire blockchain industry is benefiting from this. OKX Ventures is deeply involved in this wave of change with an enterprising attitude, and continues to be optimistic about the subtle changes that blockchain products will bring to the traditional world in the next 10 years.

**1. Review of 2024: 60+ project layout, extensive layout on multiple

tracks**

This year, OKX Ventures has actively increased investment in the industry and is committed to accelerating innovation and development in the encryption industry. The cumulative total investment throughout the year exceeded US$100 million, covering more than 60 projects and funds, focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship in Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON and BTC ecology, and deeply exploring high-quality projects. From the perspective of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects and BTC ecology account for the highest proportions. At the same time, it also has extensive deployment in the fields of multi-chain ecology, DeFi and multiple ecological funds.

Not only that, OKX Ventures is also actively working with funds and accelerator ecological partners such as TON Ventures, Ankaa and TGH to jointly build a prosperous innovation ecosystem. By providing financial support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower entrepreneurs around the world and help them turn their ideas into reality faster and more steadily. Whether it is incubation in the start-up stage or acceleration in the growth stage, OKX Ventures always takes innovation as its core and is committed to promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology and injecting more vitality and possibilities into the industry.

OKX Ventures deeply understands that the future of the blockchain industry is not just a matter of capital investment, but also about how to efficiently integrate global resources, gather industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises on this basis. While capital serves as a driving force, it also needs to rely on strategic vision and systematic layout to promote the industry to continuously move forward in multi-dimensional technological innovation, ecological development and market expansion. Every investment decision is not only the flow of funds, but also a profound insight into the industry prospects and support for innovation. From the construction of infrastructure, to the expansion of the ecosystem, to the exploration of cutting-edge technologies, OKX Ventures has always planned around the evolution of the industry in the next ten years, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad scope for the widespread application and profound changes of blockchain. space.

At the same time, the innovation of blockchain technology cannot only rely on the driving force of the capital market, but also relies on the visionary entrepreneurial spirit and the continuous exploration of the technical team. OKX Ventures' mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies and promote their continuous breakthroughs in technology, market and operations. This is not only support for a single project or team, but also lays the foundation for the future ecological construction of the entire industry.

OKX Ventures believes that the success of the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or a single platform, but in building an industry ecosystem that is inclusive, innovative and capable of self-evolution. It is this profound industry understanding and future vision that enables us to remain forward-looking in the changing trend of this era and promote the industry to move towards a more mature and sustainable future as it continues to evolve.

**2. Looking ahead to 2025: 14 predictions to gain insight into the

future**

**Preview 1: The global blockchain is further compliant and the industry

is more standardized**

In 2025, the compliance environment of the blockchain industry will usher in significant progress, laying a solid foundation for the healthy development of the industry. The number of licensed institutions will increase significantly to provide users with safer and more reliable services. OKX CEO Star pointed out that OKX has become the world’s first cryptocurrency trading platform to obtain a full operating license in the UAE.

Compliance innovation will emerge in the field of custodial wallets to resolve the contradiction between self-custody and supervision. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-hosted wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including features such as KYC transaction monitoring. This kind of innovation can not only improve user experience, but also meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements and bring new development directions to the industry.

The macro regulatory environment will become more positive, creating favorable conditions for industry development. The UK government plans to consult on a regulatory framework for stablecoins and crypto-assets in early 2025, signaling that the global regulatory environment is moving in a more clear and supportive direction. A national strategic Bitcoin reserve may also become a reality in 2025.

The participation of institutional investors will increase significantly. As of December 17, the scale of Bitcoin spot ETF exceeded $114.97B, the number of Bitcoins held by MicroStrategy reached 439,000, and the total investment cost was approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the crypto industry.

The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights, raising standards for the entire industry. Star predicts that by 2025, the compliance standards of many crypto companies will meet or even exceed those of the traditional financial industry. OKX's three major business lines: OKX Exchange, OKX Web3 and OKX Simple, cover a wide range of services from transactions to decentralized applications. This all-round service model will become an industry standard and promote the application and popularization of blockchain technology in more fields.

The blockchain industry in 2025 will appear more mature, standardized and innovative. As Star said, crypto finance is entering a new stage, which will witness the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.

**Foresight 2: AI Agent will become an important subject in the market,

participating in asset creation, asset issuance, and asset transactions.**

With the rapid development of extremely large-scale language models (XLLMs) and multi-modal models (XLMMs), new AI agents (AI Agents) will gradually become an important subject in the market. According to a research report, the global AI agent market is expected to reach US$1.811 trillion by 2030, which will contribute approximately US$16 trillion to global GDP. The future of intelligent AI is not just a tool in the traditional sense, they will become major players in the blockchain world, with the ability to make decisions and act autonomously.

We expect that more innovative AI agent application scenarios will appear in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interactions will become an important area, for which the transparency and composability of blockchain provide an ideal basis. We may see agents sending funds to each other, co-issuing tokens, or even creating new social scenarios. In addition, decentralized agent organizations (DAOs) may also become a hot spot, where multi-agent systems will work together to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage agreements.

AI agents have a high degree of adaptability, clear goal setting and self-correction capabilities, and can make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, actively create and publish content, participate in asset transactions to achieve maximum returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This shift indicates that AI agents will play a more important role in the market and social platforms. The emergence of AI agent frameworks similar to eliza, combined with Agent platforms like Myshell, will promote the development of this trend.

Finally, we expect to see more innovation around AI Agent trading intent and next-generation user trading interfaces. This could include using natural language for trading, or developing new trading systems and tools specifically for AI agents. As these technologies develop, the concept of “wallet as browser” may eventually be realized, revolutionizing the way users interact with blockchain and AI systems.

Foresight 3: Security projects help solve AI security issues

The verifiability of blockchain can indeed become an important solution to AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, network security issues have become increasingly prominent, especially in aspects such as counterfeiting and deepfakes. Therefore, it is particularly important to establish a "personal identification certificate" mechanism to ensure the interaction between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations reported an increase in deepfake attacks in the past year and expect a 50% to 60% increase in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly reflects two points: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means that new vulnerabilities emerge one after another. For example, different versions of a model may exhibit significantly different behavior, allowing attacks to evolve.

Blockchain projects can effectively address these challenges with their decentralized and immutable characteristics:

1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and track data sources and ensure the authenticity of content generation through encrypted signatures. It can combat deep forgery and fake news generated by AI while ensuring data transparency and traceability.

2. Protect training data: Protect the data sets required for AI model training to prevent tampering or attacks, thereby ensuring data integrity and security and reducing the risk of single points of failure.

3. Record and monitor AI model usage: Prevent unauthorized abuse and share models or data on a secure platform without worrying about information leakage or tampering. Users are able to audit and verify AI behavior, thereby increasing trust.

OKX Ventures believes that more AI security projects may grow in the blockchain field in the future to enhance users' trust in AI systems.

**Foresight 4: AI penetrates existing track projects and changes the

industry paradigm**

In 2025, the in-depth application of AI technology will significantly change multiple industries, including games, NFT, DeFi, social and other fields.

The gaming industry is probably the industry most affected by AI. It is expected that global spending on AI in games will reach approximately US$1.1 billion by 2025, indicating the industry's emphasis on the potential of AI. Including: 1) Generative design : generating game content through algorithms to improve development efficiency. 2) Personalized experience : AI will analyze player behavior and provide tailored game suggestions and challenges. 3) Enhance interactivity : Intelligent NPCs will be more realistic and enhance the immersion of the game. 4) A more intelligent AI agent improves the way game players interact with the game and reduces the experience burden of the game players themselves;

Social projects have also ushered in a lot of innovation. AI not only plays an important role in content generation and community interaction, but also promotes innovation in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In 2024, we see that on platforms such as Farcaster, AI agents such as Clanker and Larry have introduced new asset issuance methods, demonstrating a certain degree of community participation and economic potential. Among them, Clanker's market value has exceeded US$100 million, and LUM has also reached $70 million. In the future, AI will: 1) Realize social monetization : users can earn cryptographic rewards through content creation and interaction. 2) Build a community economy : Using blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and revenue distribution. 3) Improve security : Protect user privacy through decentralized authentication.

DeFi benefits from efficiency improvements and changes in interaction models brought by AI. 1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem. These autonomous software entities can automatically perform complex trading tasks, optimize investment strategies, and monitor market dynamics in real time. 2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can also lower the threshold for users to participate, integrate DeFi protocols on multiple chains, provide users with automated liquidity investment strategies, lower the threshold for users to participate in DeFi, and improve asset management efficiency. 3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in vulnerability detection and optimization of smart contracts. Through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish a baseline of normal trading behavior and issue alerts once abnormal behavior is detected, thereby enhancing the security of the DeFi platform. sex. It is expected that in 2025, the trading volume of decentralized exchanges (DEX) will reach 4 trillion US dollars, and the total locked value (TVL) will exceed 200 billion US dollars. OKX Ventures believes that there may be more than 1 million AI agents on the chain. activities, which will further promote the development of the DeFi ecosystem,

OKX Ventures predicts that 2025 will be the year when AI will be deeply integrated with various industries. With the development of technology and improvement of infrastructure, these fields will usher in new opportunities and challenges, providing users with a richer and safer experience.

Preview 5 **: Blockchain improves the matching efficiency of AI

elements**

Blockchain technology is improving the matching efficiency of AI elements in multiple dimensions, mainly including: data elements, computing power elements, model elements and financial elements. Taking the data market as an example, AI's demand for data is growing far behind its supply. ChatGPT was trained using 300 billion words, while the latest model DBRX used 12 trillion data points. The demand for public human text data for AI training may exceed the total stock as early as 2026.

OKX Ventures is optimistic about better matching of data element resources and has invested in projects such as Space and Time, Privasea, 0G and CARV. Space and Time provides a decentralized data warehouse to efficiently index and query on-chain and off-chain data. Privasea uses FHE encryption to perform AI calculation analysis to protect privacy. CARV provides a modular data layer, providing high-quality user portraits and behavioral data for AI. 0G can also significantly improve the blockchain’s ability to process data in the AI ​​era. These projects have improved the efficiency of AI data acquisition, processing and utilization.

In other fields, such as io.net in the field of computing power, it can optimize the allocation of large-scale distributed computing resources required for AI. The AI ​​chip market is expected to maintain solid growth. Data center AI chip sales will reach US$154 billion in 2023, and are expected to grow by 41% from 2025 to 2026. Edge computing AI will become an important trend, supporting faster data processing and better privacy protection.

OKX Ventures is optimistic that more excellent AI entrepreneurial projects will improve the matching efficiency of AI elements at multiple levels such as data sharing, computing power allocation, and model collaboration, providing strong support for the further development of AI. This synergy will promote breakthrough applications of AI in more fields and bring far-reaching impact to all walks of life.

Preview 6: Babylon and BTC layer 2 usher in BTC’s DeFi Summer

Looking forward to 2025, the TVL and DeFi activity of the Bitcoin ecosystem will usher in a breakthrough. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked more than 57,288 Bitcoins, with a total value of US$6 billion. As a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, Babylon has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin and various PoS chains. As part of the Babylon ecosystem, projects such as SatLayer and Lombard will further unleash the potential of Bitcoin by deploying smart contracts. Projects such as Bitlayer, Merlin, Bsquared Network and Arch Network are exploring innovative expansion solutions to provide stronger infrastructure support for Bitcoin DeFi.

Technologies such as UTXO Stack are dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin’s smart contract functions. These innovations will greatly increase transaction throughput and reduce fees, while paving the way for building more complex DeFi applications.

There will be more diverse application scenarios in the Bitcoin DeFi field. Projects such as BounceBit, Corn and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms such as Solv Protocol and Bedrock will provide Bitcoin holders with more diverse ways to generate income. Zeus and Lombard are exploring how to integrate the value of Bitcoin more deeply into the DeFi ecosystem. It is estimated that by 2025, the trading volume of Bitcoin DEX may exceed US$4 trillion, accounting for 20% of the spot trading volume of centralized exchanges.

Improvement of user experience will be another focus. Wallet projects such as Unisat are committed to simplifying the user interaction process with Bitcoin DeFi. Projects such as Arch Network and SatLayer are developing innovative cross-chain solutions to improve cross-chain interoperability and enable users to transfer and use assets between different blockchain ecosystems more conveniently.

Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will appear more diversified and interconnected. Innovations from infrastructure to application levels will promote the transformation of Bitcoin from a simple store of value to a comprehensive financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.

**Preview 7: Diversified and in-depth development of Bitcoin’s native

innovation**

From a technical perspective, the expansion of the Bitcoin scripting language is an important direction. In addition to the widely watched OP_CAT, Bitcoin Core developers are also actively exploring the introduction of opcodes such as OP_GROUP, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_TLUV. These new opcodes will greatly enhance the programmability of Bitcoin and lay the foundation for more complex smart contracts and application scenarios. For example, OP_GROUP may allow the creation of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, while CTV is expected to enable pre-signed transactions, significantly improving transaction efficiency.

As Bitcoin’s second-layer scaling solution, the Lightning Network is expected to undergo an important upgrade in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow the creation of payment channels in batches, significantly reducing the cost of opening them. The improvement of the two-way capital injection mechanism will improve the channel’s capital utilization efficiency. In addition, the integration of Taproot assets is expected to enable more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the application scope of the Lightning Network.

Privacy enhancement is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is key to future development. Confidential Transactions technology may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, and the optimization of CoinJoin currency mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. At the same time, the application of zero-knowledge proof technology such as zk-SNARKs on Bitcoin is also being actively explored, which may bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.

At the application level, the Bitcoin network is spawning diverse innovations, covering decentralized social networks, games and metaverses, as well as open scientific research and other fields. These applications integrate micropayments, decentralized identity, content storage, Ordinals, RGB protocols and other technologies, not only bringing new business models to the social media and gaming industries, but also through transparent fund management, data integrity protection and decentralization. The centralized evaluation mechanism improves the transparency and credibility of scientific research. These diversified applications demonstrate the huge potential of Bitcoin as a decentralized infrastructure, far exceeding the scope of traditional finance, and laying a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.

**Preview 8: Breakthroughs in Ethereum’s ecological technology and

ecology**

In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to experience important developments, with significant breakthroughs at both the technical and ecological levels. In terms of expansion, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, and Ethereum can truly achieve 200 times expansion. After Pectra is upgraded, the increase in blob capacity will further reduce the cost of rollup and push the daily transaction volume to exceed 100 million. These improvements will provide the Ethereum network with greater processing power and lay the foundation for supporting large-scale users.

The popularization of account abstraction technology will also be an important development. The implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 has enabled more than 25% of on-chain transactions to adopt account abstraction, and users can use any token to pay gas fees. After EIP-5003 achieves complete account abstraction, it will change the way users interact with smart contracts and improve the usability of Web3 applications. This change will make it easier for ordinary users to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem and promote the popularity of decentralized applications.

In terms of staking mechanism optimization, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH to obtain additional income. At the same time, the permissionless staking pool is realized through EIP-6110 and EIP-7002, making the total amount of Ethereum pledged expected to exceed 30 million, with the annualized income stabilizing between 3% and 4%. This mechanism not only improves network security, but also attracts more users to participate in staking.

Zero-knowledge proof technology will be widely used in the Ethereum ecosystem. Universal zkVM can generate block proofs in 30 seconds and be integrated into mainstream L2 networks to support privacy computing functions and achieve "privacy as a service". These technologies improve privacy protection while maintaining security synchronization with the Ethereum main network, providing users with more choices.

In terms of network efficiency, through the Verkle Trees, EOF optimization and PeerDAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade, the storage burden of Ethereum validators will be reduced and the EVM execution efficiency will be improved. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than 10 times. These technical updates will significantly enhance the performance of Ethereum and provide support for the development of future modular blockchain architecture.

Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction in 2025. The ZK stack with native interoperability has become the standard configuration of the new rollup, and efficient effectiveness proof clusters are gradually formed. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 stopping serving specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the foundation for a modular blockchain network and promote the transformation of Ethereum from technology-driven to application-driven.

The Beam Chain upgrade will usher in important changes in the Ethereum consensus layer, including shortening the block production time to 4 seconds, lowering the pledge threshold to 1 ETH, and the introduction of zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes not only improve network performance, but also enhance decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.

Preview 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Outlook

The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new round of leaps. The improvement of network performance, technological innovation and ecological expansion, and the explosion of the RWA market, complement each other and will push Ethereum to a new level. As more and more real-world assets are tokenized and migrated to the chain, Ethereum has not only consolidated its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contract platforms, but also in the process of connecting traditional finance and decentralized finance. Play a key role. As of the end of 2024, the total market value of tokenized assets on the chain has exceeded US$14 billion, and Ethereum accounts for nearly 80% of the market share, becoming the core driving force for the development of this field.

The rise of tokenized assets. Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets, and Ethereum has become the preferred underlying infrastructure platform for institutions with its mature technical architecture, security, decentralization and stability. The tokenized treasury bond market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with its locked-up volume exceeding US$3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the total RWA market value. This market is providing low-risk, high-liquidity collateral for DeFi and promoting the rapid development of decentralized lending and derivatives markets.

Ethereum provides a safe, efficient, and transparent migration path for traditional financial assets through a smart contract platform and a distributed verifier network. Tokenized assets can enable faster and lower-cost transactions and settlements on the chain, thereby significantly improving the operating efficiency of financial markets. With the continuous upgrade of Ethereum infrastructure, network transaction costs are further declining, providing stronger support for RWA applications.

Impact on the Ethereum economic model. The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of the ecological scale, but also injects new momentum into the economic model of Ethereum. On-chain activity and transaction fees will become important sources of revenue for Ethereum in the future. According to market data predictions, RWA-related on-chain activities are expected to bring in more than $100 billion in annual fees. This figure is 40 times the current annual revenue of Ethereum. It will significantly enhance the value capture capability of ETH and become a key player in the Ethereum economic system. important pillar.

Data at the end of 2024 shows that RWA's TVL increased by 25% year-on-year to US$8.4 billion, of which Ethereum contributed US$1.7 billion in a single month, the highest growth rate during the year. Stablecoins play an important role in this trend, with a total market capitalization exceeding US$200 billion, and the growth of the Synthetic Dollar category is particularly significant, with a monthly growth rate of up to 60%, and TVL reaching US$1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. %. The deep integration of innovative stablecoins such as Ethena and Usual with RWA not only promotes innovation in on-chain lending and liquidity markets, but also further strengthens Ethereum's dominant position in high-value transactions.

Policy and market driving forces. Further regulatory clarity will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to adopt a more pro-crypto stance in 2025. In addition, regions such as Singapore and Europe are also actively promoting regulatory frameworks for tokenized financial assets to inject more compliance and compliance into the market. Transparency removes obstacles for institutional capital to enter the RWA field. This policy change will attract more institutional participation in the Ethereum ecosystem and promote the explosive growth of on-chain assets and transaction volume.

Preview 10: Solana’s continued lead

Solana is leveraging its technical advantages to continue to consolidate its leading position in the field of high-performance public chains. By upgrading Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed the 100,000 mark in 2025. At the same time, the application of state compression technology lowers the hardware threshold of verification nodes and reduces the cost burden by 30%.

The activity of the Solana ecosystem has reached a new peak in 2024, with the daily transaction volume on the chain reaching nearly 200 million US dollars, the total number of active wallets being approximately 250 million, and the number of daily active addresses reaching a new high of 8.8 million. Its unique state rent mechanism and validator voting fees have brought value support to SOL coins in addition to transaction fees. Weekly fee income reached US$36.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 62%. Among them, Jito contributed more than 55% of fee income through MEV activities, further promoting the growth of Solana ecosystem.

The performance of Solana's developer ecosystem is impressive, with the number of monthly active developers reaching 2,500-3,000, and the three-month developer retention rate increasing from 31% to more than 50%. On the technology stack, more than half of developers have at least 3 years of blockchain development experience. This maturity ensures higher-quality application output in the ecosystem. Leading protocols such as Jupiter and Raydium are expected to have TVL exceeding US$20 billion in 2025, accounting for more than 35% of the entire DEX trading volume on the network.

Solana is gradually being regarded as a bargaining chip in AI-driven casinos, and its application scenarios combined with Agents may be further deepened, especially in speculative trading, DeFi and more dApp innovations, becoming the core of promoting user growth and technology applications. driving force.

Preview 11: The rise and diversification of Move-based public chains

Sui and Aptos, as representative public chains of the Move language, will achieve important breakthroughs in 2025. Through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model, Sui shows obvious advantages in gaming, social networking, and especially financial application scenarios. As of the fourth quarter of 2024, Sui's TVL has exceeded US$2 billion, a year-to-date increase of 2,700%, ranking eighth in blockchain network TVL. The transaction volume on the chain is nearly 8 billion, and the total accounts are 68 million, showing strong ecological activity, mainly driven by protocols such as Navi Protocol and Cetus . With the introduction of native USDC by Circle and the injection of more than $400 million in stablecoins, Sui's liquidity has increased significantly. Sui's zkLogin function lowers the entry barrier for Web3 users and allows users to log in to dApps through network credentials such as Google or Facebook. It has huge potential in the fields of DeFi and chain games. At the same time, the release of SuiPlay 0x1 game console has further expanded into the hardware field, supporting on-chain games and being compatible with traditional game platforms (such as Steam, Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional game players to enter Web3.

Aptos has built a complete ecosystem in the DeFi field with its improved version of Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, and is expected to have more than 1 million daily active users . Aptos will usher in explosive growth in 2024, with TVL increasing 19 times year-on-year to nearly US$2 billion. The stablecoin ecosystem on the chain continues to expand, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC, which further enhances liquidity. At the same time, Aptos has also been widely recognized by institutional investors. BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin FOBXX have been deployed on the Aptos chain. A Spanish bank even allocated 2% of its fund to the Bitwise Aptos Staking ETP listed on Swiss SIX. In terms of the developer ecosystem, the number of Aptos developers increased by 96% year-on-year, and the number of on-chain contract deployments reached 3,000, demonstrating the vitality of the ecosystem.

The market value of the native tokens of the two major public chains is expected to enter the top ten in the world, and the total locked value (TVL) is expected to reach more than 5 times the current scale.

Preview 12: Emerging public chains, Monad and Berachain bring hope

As a representative of the new generation of parallel EVM, Monad is rising rapidly, and its ecological development and technological innovation have attracted much attention. In the Devnet stage, Monad achieved real-world performance testing of more than 10,000 TPS, with a block time of only 1 second and single-slot finality, fully demonstrating the potential of its efficient architecture . Monad’s core optimizations include the MonadBFT consensus mechanism, optimistic parallel execution, asynchronous execution (delayed execution), and the MonadDB database optimized for the EVM storage model. These technological breakthroughs not only significantly increase throughput and transaction speed, but also significantly reduce network costs. In addition, Monad’s integration with cross-chain protocols such as LayerZero and Wormhole enhances cross-chain interoperability and further enriches its ecology.

The recently established Monad Foundation focuses on decentralized governance and ecological development, promotes a validator-led governance model, and supports community-driven improvement proposals. Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources and market support to promote dApp construction and ecological cooperation. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have committed to building on Monad, and the ecological scale is expected to double when the mainnet is launched.

Berachain is rising rapidly, and its ecosystem has attracted more than 270 project commitments, most of which are consumer applications, covering DeFi, GameFi, social and DePIN, showing diversity and vitality . In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved more than 14 million transactions, with active addresses exceeding 600,000 and unique addresses reaching 1 million. Its core innovation lies in the unique PoL (Proof of Liquidity) consensus mechanism, which significantly increases TVL through liquidity mortgage and provides strong growth momentum for ecological projects.

Berachain's modular design further enhances scalability, supports chain abstraction, and combines with infrastructure such as Particle Network to provide developers with flexibility and efficient tools. In addition, its economic model deeply integrates the interests of users, developers and verifiers through the staking mechanism and built-in incentives to ensure the sustainable development of the ecosystem.

In 2025, the Layer 1 market will form a multi-level competition landscape. Ethereum continues to occupy the top spot in terms of market capitalization, while the market share of new generation public chains such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos will continue to grow. Emerging public chains such as Monad and Berachain inject new vitality with technological innovation and unique ecology, bringing more possibilities to the industry.

**Preview 13: The demonstration effect of TON and Kaia will introduce

more Internet companies**

The successful paths of TON and Kaia represent the core model of the next generation of Web3 applications: "hyper-financial innovation centered on user traffic" and "seamless integration of Web2.5 experience." Relying on Telegram's global user base of 900 million, TON has realized the imperceptible migration of on-chain functions through the mini program ecosystem and TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of large-scale blockchain applications. In 2024, TON's market value exceeded US$25 billion, on-chain transaction volume reached US$300 million per day, active wallets exceeded 36 million, and daily active addresses even surpassed Ethereum several times, opening up a path for the large-scale adoption of on-chain services. New model. TON's mini programs are driving geometric growth in user participation, while laying the foundation for a wider range of Web3 application scenarios by supporting stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.

Kaia, as a blockchain platform launched through the in-depth integration of Kakao and Line, has quickly attracted users and developers by deeply exploring the mobile super application ecosystem in the Asian market. Kaia already has 30 million unique wallet addresses, has processed more than 1.3 billion transactions, and the peak daily transaction volume on the chain reaches tens of millions of dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFT, payment and AI services, with more than 420 dApps and 7 million active users. Kaia's on-chain DEX Swap trading volume has exceeded $400 million and is introducing more DeFi infrastructure to enhance liquidity support

The success of TON and Kaia not only shows that Web3 applications have the potential to rapidly expand from social platforms to financial and practical scenarios, but also demonstrates how to incubate tens of billions of dollars of projects through existing traffic platforms under the logic of Web2.5. The mini program model not only effectively lowers the entry barrier to Web3, but also promotes the high frequency of on-chain transactions and diversified scenarios through the traffic advantage of super applications. We predict that this type of ecosystem, relying on a high user base and traffic conversion capabilities, will spawn more projects with a market value of tens of billions of dollars in the future - from on-chain payments, decentralized e-commerce to asset management and RWA (real world assets), etc. direction, the combination of new application innovation and liquidity will become the next growth engine.

**Foresight 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): a new driving force for

reshaping the scientific research economy**

For a long time, the traditional scientific research system has faced problems such as concentrated resource allocation, opaque data, and hindered innovation. Decentralized science (DeSci) is reshaping scientific research funding, collaboration and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, and is injecting new vitality into the scientific research economy.

DeSci's core innovations lie in capital allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFT not only provides legal protection for scientific research results, but also allows researchers, communities and investors to participate in funding and income distribution. For example, Molecule has allocated US$2 million through the IP-NFT protocol to support multiple biomedical research projects, and its ecological TVL has reached US$30 million and continues to grow.

In the field of medical data, the DeSci project also shows great potential. AminoChain has raised US$5 million in financing to develop a decentralized biological sample market, helping patients control and benefit from data usage, while reducing sample acquisition costs for research institutions. Similar GenomesDAO uses decentralized genome databases to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.

In terms of scientific research publishing, ResearchHub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, shortening the average turnaround time to 9 days, which is far better than the 70-98 days of traditional journals, significantly improving the transparency and efficiency of scientific research.

In addition, VitaDAO and other research DAOs implement community-driven scientific research funding through governance tokens, reducing intermediate links and reducing waste of funds. As the policy environment gradually becomes clearer and institutional participation increases, it is expected that the scale of scientific research funding on the chain will further expand and promote the further development of intellectual property commercialization, open publishing and medical data management.

The rise of decentralized science is pushing scientific research from closed to open, and from centralized to democratic. DeSci's transparent mechanism, efficient collaboration and data sharing model will have a profound impact on global scientific research and innovation.