Taking stock of the five major narratives and related projects worth watching in 2025

Original title: "5 narratives to watch in 2025. "

Author: nairolf

Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow

I won’t waste time writing a lengthy opening – 2024 is indeed going to be an amazing year. Let’s jump right to the point and look at the changes I’m most looking forward to in 2025:

Alternative virtual machines (altVMs)

2024 is the year that Alternative Virtual Machines (altVMs) shine.

@fuel_network has successfully launched the mainnet,

@cartesiproject continues to make steady progress, and MoveVM is getting more adoption, driven by @Aptos , @SuiNetwork , and @movementlabsxyz .

2025 could be the year of breakthrough for these alternative virtual machines, ushering in the next wave of on-chain applications.

It’s worth mentioning that @fluentxyz ’s hybrid execution model will play a key role in this area. It integrates EVM, SVM and Wasm into one execution environment, providing developers with the most comprehensive and flexible way to build applications. What’s even more exciting is that this design is scalable, meaning that any virtual machine can be added to this system in the future. Perhaps it will become the "ultimate solution" in the field of virtual machines.

Chain Abstraction

Chain abstraction made significant progress in 2024. It grew from an initial idea: to create an experience for users that makes them feel like they are using a single chain, even though there are hundreds of chains working together behind the scenes.

Users no longer need to frequently switch wallets, manage multiple gas tokens, or—most cumbersome—cross-chain bridging.

The UniversalX solution launched by @ParticleNtwrk can complete the transaction of any on-chain token through a unified interface. The experience is similar to Binance, but it is completely based on on-chain operation. The maturation of this technology will lead to many new products and, more importantly, many existing projects will begin to adopt these solutions.

This trend demonstrates deep collaboration between projects such as @EverclearOrg , @SOCKETProtocol , and @NEARProtocol , as well as the collaboration between @sedaprotocol and @routescan_io .

The focus in 2025 will be on how to make these innovative solutions accessible and available to more users.

L1 public chain

If there is no new L1 public chain in the encryption industry for a year, it will be a lot less fun. In 2024, Sui and Aptos are undoubtedly the star projects in this field.

What about 2025? We will welcome more exciting new projects.

@monad_xyz , @berachain and @HyperliquidX may become the "golden triangle" that promotes the development of the industry.

Among them, HyperEVM launched by Hyperliquid deserves special attention. As Hyperliquid's recent popularity continues to rise, how its ecosystem can be deeply connected to the exchange itself will become an important aspect worth looking forward to.

RaaS (Rollup as a Service)

RaaS is probably one of the least discussed areas right now. Why is this happening? The reason may be that it looks like a "boring business". However, many seemingly uninteresting business models are often most valuable in retrospect.

Rollups and L2 are hot topics in the cryptosphere (CT) in 2024, and this popularity is not going away anytime soon.

With @inkonchain and @AbstractChain set to launch related services in the coming months, the debate over these technologies will continue. But one thing is clear: more and more L2 chains will be born in the future.

Whether it’s a general-purpose or specialized chain, the data speaks for itself. Rollup-as-a-service platforms like @Calderaxyz have supported the deployment of around 100 new chains this year and offer rich integration and customization options from day one.

Additionally, @conduitxyz and @alt_layer are following a similar pattern. The market demand for RaaS providers is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

According to statistics from @_kaitoai , AI has received more than 40% of the attention this year, and its popularity is unprecedented.

But my gut tells me this is just the beginning. The Eliza project from @ai16zdao has become one of the most popular open source projects on GitHub in the past few months. Could it be a bridge to attract new developers into the crypto space? This will take time to prove, but it does have the potential to be an interesting "entry point."

We are already seeing the first real-world results of AI, such as @aixbt_agent developed by @virtuals_io . This agent continues to attract attention in crypto circles while also providing fairly accurate information.

Will the future revolve around "interpreting the thinking of AI agents"? The jury is still out, but it is foreseeable that in 2025 more and more AI agents will take on tasks that were once the responsibility of humans.

Other projects worthy of attention

• @pendle_fi continues to achieve exponential growth and is now considered one of DeFi’s “grandfather” projects. Will its total value locked (TVL) exceed US$10 billion in 2025? Worth the wait.

• @_kaitoai is creating a new field of information finance (InfoFi). What will it look like in the future? The answer should be revealed next year.

• @Polymer_Labs will become a strong competitor in the field of cross-chain interoperability, and I believe interoperability will be one of the important topics in 2025.

• @OndoFinance is pushing large traditional institutions into the blockchain space. Real World Assets (RWA) and asset tokenization have become trends, but they have not yet completely broken through the bottleneck. Will 2025 bring a turnaround due to a friendlier regulatory environment?

• @nillionnetwork ’s mainnet is scheduled to go online in February next year. The project could have significant ramifications amid growing concerns over privacy. What’s even more exciting is that it is expected to lead a new wave of on-chain applications.

See you in 2025.