Written by: Hashkey Capital

1. Market Overview 1.1 Cryptocurrency Market Fundamentals

Since the first half of 2024 , the cryptocurrency market experienced significant growth, with its total market value soaring from $2.31 trillion to $3.33 trillion, an increase of 44.2%. This growth is backed by several key milestones, including the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF in the first half of 2024 and the overwhelming victory of Donald Trump in the second half of the year – its relaxed regulation and pro-crypto-encrypted injection into the industry Optimism. Bitcoin’s dominance also rose, from 53.4% ​​to 56.8%, thanks mainly to the doubling of the asset management scale of Bitcoin ETFs, reflecting the increased interest of institutional investors.

Although Ethereum ETF was launched in the second half of 2024, its performance was relatively flat. Compared with Bitcoin ETFs, institutional investors' preference for Bitcoin remains It is obvious that it is seen from the declining ETH/BTC ratio.

Solana also performed well, with its SOL price rising 29.3% since the first half of 2024. In addition to the price increase, Solana's ecosystem reached $2 billion in 2024.

In 2024, DeFi's market share further expanded, with the total lock-in value (TVL) more than doubled since the beginning of the year. Thanks to the deeper liquidity and the established brand effect of decentralized exchanges on platforms such as Solana and Base, the transaction volume ratio of DEX/CEX increased from 9.37% at the beginning of the year to 11.05% at the end of the year, and the overall transaction volume increased significantly. The transaction volume reached US$2.67 trillion. The more simplified listing process also encourages more projects to shift to DEX-based strategies, thus supporting more diverse long-tail asset trading. It is worth noting that Solana and Base's DeFi TVL market share in 2024 has more than doubled to 7.17% and 3% respectively.

As a "killer application" in the crypto field, the adoption of stablecoins has also accelerated significantly, with its market value increasing by 26.8% from 1H 2024, reaching a record high, exceeding the $205 billion, new entrants such as Ethena further boosted the trend with their competitive yields. Outlook is notCome, the potential approval of ETFs that prefer assets such as XRP and SOL will have a positive catalytic effect on the market.

1.2 The macro environment and

The situation in the United States has changed, the November 2024 election, special Trump defeated Harris and was elected president again, while the Republicans won a majority in the upper and lower houses. This time the Trump regime will gain greater voice and execution. Trump's US priority and isolationism will also bring great uncertainty to the international situation, which makes countries likely to follow the United States and start trade protection and regionalization of economic and trade. Trump was very friendly to the cryptocurrency market during his campaign, claiming that he would allow self-custodial wallets, vigorously develop dollar stablecoins, select crypto-friendly economic politicians, and consider setting BTC as the US treasury reserve asset, and can truly promote crypto The development of the market still requires his reality after he comes to power.

Europe is mainly affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war. At present, the war seems to be in a tug-of-war. It may continue for a long time to cause energy prices in Europe to rise. At the same time, Russia The Ukrainian war also increased military expenditures in European countries. In terms of political parties in various countries, the right-wing party has significantly strengthened its voice. In the Netherlands, the far-right party Liberal Party has become the largest party in the House of Commons; in Germany, the elective party ranked second in the European Parliament election, surpassing the rule. Party Social Democratic Party. In addition, right-wing parties in Italy, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other countries also played an important role. Affected by the United States, restricting illegal immigration and economic isolation are also major issues in European countries. Europe is following more of the crypto market. The Crypto Asset Market Supervision Act (MiCA) officially implemented at the end of 24 also clarifies the regulatory schemes for stablecoins and cryptocurrency entities. At the same time, European countries have maintained strict scrutiny on crypto tax regulation. .

Geologies of other regions

The Middle East has been in constant war, and Hamas launched an attack on Israel last year In the following year, Israel launched operations in the Gaza region and beheaded several Hamas senior executives, and the situation entered the final stage. At the same time, Iran and Lebanon also had friction with Israel and armed conflict broke out, and the Syrian civil war led to the collapse of the Assad regime. Mile, Argentina in South America, came to power and carried out a lot of reforms, eliminated a large number of departments and dollarized currency. After taking power, it achieved certain results and reduced Argentina's overall inflation rate. South America and many regions are also admirers of Bitcoin, and Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador and others have all promoted the establishment ofThe law allows crypto to be legally regulated and circulated in the country.

Economic

In 2024, the global overall GDP growth rate was 2.6%, and the inflation rate was 2.5%. Overall, it has emerged from the recession during the new crown period and has returned to the growth level before the outbreak of the new crown virus. After a two-year interest rate hike cycle, the United States finally brought inflation to partial control. Starting from September 2024, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25bps for three consecutive meetings. It seems that inflation seems to be under control and the economy is also developing towards a stable implementation. The eurozone has been more affected by geopolitical wars, which has led to high energy prices. In addition, the European Central Bank has been forced to raise interest rates in response to the high interest rates of the Federal Reserve, which has also led to slow economic growth. He emerging markets still maintained a high growth rate, but they all faced considerable challenges. Due to sluggish consumption, exports are boycotted and are in a deflationary state, facing problems such as rising unemployment rates and difficulties in business operations. At the same time, with the bursting of the real estate bubble, there are a large number of related debts and bad debt risks. Emerging markets have suffered from the impact of US dollar interest rate hikes, resulting in some local currencies depreciation severely.

Source: Performance of major stock market indexes in various countries in 2024< /p>

Looking at the development of the US economy in 2024, it is still in the world's leading position. All three major U.S. indexes rose sharply, with the Nasdaq, which is dominated by technology companies, rising by more than 28%, and the S&P500 also rose by 15.2%. The United States has basically been confronting inflation for a long time throughout the year. With the extremely tight capital market, technology companies still burst into amazing growth potential. AI technology companies represented by Nvidia performed the most well this year, and the development of AI has not disappointed investors' expectations. The AI ​​model represented by ChatGPT has subverted many fields such as career, education, and artistic creation, exponentially Improved output efficiency. With the continuous improvement of computing power, AI will also be used in more fields. Another outstanding performance on the list is the Nikkei Index. As the yen remains at 0 interest rates during the global interest rate hike cycle, international investors have stolen Coming to the Japanese stock market to trade interest rates, which also drove the Japanese stock market to rise and the depreciation of the yen. Being sought after by capital and the export trade advantages brought by the depreciation of the yen have improved the profitability of Japanese companies., which also caused the Japanese stock market to finally hit a new high after the bubble burst more than 30 years later.

2. Bitcoin 2.1 Product and Protocol Design

In the second half of 2024, there were some important software upgrades on Bitcoin, such as the one introduced in Bitcoin Core 28.0 Flexible transaction forwarding strategy and Lightning Network's BOLT12. These client upgrades may affect various application scenarios. For example, Bitcoin Core's implementation of V3 transactions now supports zero-fee transaction forwarding, which may affect the development of the MEV-related business model adopted by mining pools.

Discussions on Bitcoin protocol layer design are also continuing, focusing mainly on soft fork proposals. There are differences among many developers, as can be seen from the OP_NEXT summit held in late 2024 and its follow-up discussions. At present, these discussions can be roughly divided into several camps: one is to implement restrictions or other more flexible functions by adding new opcodes, such as OP_CTV and OP_CAT; the other is LNHANCE, which introduces a complete set of solutions. Toolsets to improve the Lightning Network; some developers have gone a step further and promoted the so-called "Great Script Restoration" campaign.

In these discussions, no consensus has been reached. Some discussion focuses on whether some upgrades focus too much on specific areas and lack diversity (such as OP_CTV), while others focus on whether some proposals are too flexible (such as OP_CAT), which can lead to unexpected uses such as recursive restrictions, thereby The agreement level raises unforeseen risks. At the same time, some developers advocate that consensus should be cleaned up first, rather than blindly pursuing functional upgrades.

The discussion of these proposals is mainly conducted on the mailing list. There are also feedback forms in the community to collect opinions from developers of various backgrounds. In addition, several studies have analyzed transactions currently active on signet related to soft fork proposals.

Source: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/ Covenants_support

However, it is foreseeable that there will still be many intense discussions and controversies in the future soft fork activation process, just likeThe previous Taproot soft fork upgrade was the same. By 2025, we are expected to see some form of consensus and development.

The implementation of BitVM, another previously discussed implementation solution, is still progressing steadily. Similar to the previous report, the current focus is still on the design and implementation of cross-chain bridges. Recently, some cross-chain bridge test versions based on BitVM have started running, such as BitLayer, etc.

2.2 Layer 2 - Lightning Network

The number of publicly accessible lightning network channels has not changed much, and the total volume remains around 5000 BTC. The number of nodes remains basically stable, but the number of channels continues to decrease. This may indicate that the liquidity of the Lightning Network is gradually concentrated in the hands of some large node service providers, or that some early channels have been shut down due to security patch updates.

However, the protocol and application ecosystem of Lightning Network are still developing. For example, BOLT12 (offer) has been adopted by many clients and can support static payment methods to improve user experience.

In addition, some Layer 1 networks (such as Nervos CKB, etc.) are actively developing BOLT-compliant Standardized Layer 2 solution for compatibility and interoperability with Lightning Networks.

In this area, the main focus remains on evaluating the feasibility of business models. Since token issuance is not usually used as a means of financing or integrated into business operations, investment and financing decisions must pay more attention to project performance indicators, such as the number of users and asset size.

As the payment field is increasingly attracting attention, Lightning Network's ability to support payment services makes it a widely adopted promising solution. Service-oriented projects, especially those that use the Lightning Network as the cross-border transaction settlement layer, may gain more attention. Service-oriented projects such as Breez Technology, etc., that provide Lightning Network as a cross-border, point-to-point (P2P) and enterprise-to-business (B2B) transaction settlement layer are expected to gain more attention and development momentum. Future developments in this field depend on issuing stablecoins on the Lightning Network, and possible implementations include RGB and Taproot Assets mentioned below.

2.3 Layer 2 - Side Chains

Layer 2 The performance of side chains is uneven. Some projects have declined since their peak period, while others have continued to grow. As shown in the chart below, TVLs for each Layer 2 project also showed a clear alternating trend.

Source: DeFi llama

The challenges faced by Bitcoin Layer 2 (L2) and BTCFi are multifaceted, and one of the key issues is relying on unsustainable TVL surges and airdrop incentives. Although the approach to using points to incentivize TVL has been tried, the key factor remains to build a robust ecosystem to ensure lasting liquidity. The main driver of Bitcoin deposit L2 solutions is the opportunity to obtain Bitcoin-denominated, low-risk returns. However, in terms of asset portfolio, BTCFi can achieve better liquidity abstraction and protocol layer stacking by leveraging existing infrastructure. If Bitcoin L2 can focus on building an ecosystem around improving the utility of BTCFi instead of simply copying the EVM chain, there is still a lot of room for growth.

So, in summary, the key to success of Bitcoin L2 is: 1) ensuring the security of assets (whether it is third-party custody or self-custody); and 2) Pursuing a vertical integration strategy (which will better serve BTCFi).

2.4 On-chain assets

Assets on the Bitcoin chain can usually be divided into two categories: meta-protocol and CSV (client verification). However, overall, these assets did not show significant appreciation with the rise in Bitcoin prices and were less active. The altcoins on the Bitcoin chain have not outperformed other altcoins in general.

BRC20, Runes

BRC20, Runes, and other meta-protocol assets have performed poorly recently. Their market capitalization and growth are far less than many of the popular Meme assets this year, which also confirms that such assets have short life cycles and cyclical characteristics in the absence of strong practicality. These easily replaced tokens are now being replaced by the updated Meme and AI agent narratives.

RGB

As the earliest CSV protocol, RGB is still being promoted recently. There are already some technologies that can support integration with the Lightning Network. RGB's narrative is mostly about the issuance of Tether's stablecoin, but the specific implementation plan is still unclear. In terms of further programmability, it may take some time for AluVM to support more flexible development possibilities. Therefore, overall, the performance of RGB type protocols and assets remains to be seen.

Taproot Assets

Taproot Assets is launched by Lightning Network Development Team Lightning Labs, which can be implemented in Lower fees to mint stablecoins and enable instant settlement on Bitcoin. Tether has also announced that it will issue stablecoins based on Taproot Assets.

For the on-chain asset track, since the experience and liquidity support of Bitcoin on-chain DEX is not enough to support the need for better performance tokens, CEX remains important for such assets. At the same time, due to the natural support of CEX Exchange for technologies such as hot and cold wallets, it may cause certain difficulties in the integration of some new asset types. At the same time, due to the natural support of CEX Exchange for technologies such as hot and cold wallets, it may cause certain difficulties in the integration of some new asset types.

2.5 BTCFi

BTCFi can provide additional Bitcoin for Bitcoin holders As the infrastructure continues to improve, the overall locked value is expected to grow.

Source: DeFi Llama

In addition, as mentioned in the L2 section above, the types of returns pursued by BTC assets have shifted from L2 to pledge, current pledge and liquid re-pled, which can superimpose multiple returns and also drive The growth of various BTCFi projects. Among them, Babylon, the cornerstone of this income path, attracted a large number of Bitcoin-denominated TVLs after several stages of control testing, which demonstrates the community's improvement by leveraging Bitcoin's decentralized and test-based security. BTC Urgent need for practicality. As a portal to the BTCFi ecosystem, Babylon enables Bitcoin holders to participate directly. In addition, various LST projects have emerged one after another to unlock liquidity and drive DeFi activities. The design of these LST projects generally draws on mature DeFi design concepts and introduces veModel, Pendle and other methods into the protocol; at the same time, it also provides a unified abstraction of the liquidity layer and the rewards extracted by various partners. The combination of these protocols has grown more mature over the past six months. However, recent Solv controversy, and questions about how BTCFi TVL is calculated and how promised gains are delivered, cast a shadow on BTCFi’s start in 2025.

An important focus this year is finding ways to enable pledged assets to be efficiently utilized and circulated rather than being idle. Projects like Yala, along with other lending and stablecoin programs, are leveraging the infrastructure native to the Bitcoin blockchain. Supported by the market's bullish trend towards BTCFi, these projects are expected to usher in significant growth and development opportunities. However, on the other hand, with the rise in capital costs in the bull market, this has also brought considerable challenges to the project's listing strategy. Being able to mobilize Bitcoin liquidity more flexibly and support protocols with richer asset classes will have a greater chance of success.

3.Ethereum

Although ETH ETF was launched in the United States on July 23, 2024, its performance failed to replicate the success of Bitcoin ETF pioneers, nor The ETH/BTC ratio has dropped from 0.054 in January to 0.037 in December, highlighting the interest of institutional investors in Bitcoin far exceeds Ethereum. In addition, since the Dencun upgrade, gas fees on Layer 2 have been significantly lower than Ethereum, which has led to more capital flows into Layer 2 projects such as Base, which recorded a net inflow of approximately $3.2 billion in 2024, and Ethereum has a net outflow of nearly $8 billion.

However, driven by a crypto-friendly Trump in 2025, the Ethereum ETF hit its best in December, setting about 20 A net inflow record of $100 million. At the same time, EVM remains the most dominant and active virtual machine in the ecosystem, prompting many developers to continue to build EVM-compatible networks and applications, such as MegaETH and Monad, the two most anticipated launch projects in 2025. one. Given Solidity’s simplicity, combat-tested security, and Ethereum’s vast ecosystem, we believe that Ethereum and its EVM ecosystem will continue to dominate in 2025, although competitive alternatives may gradually erode their market share. .

3.1 L2s

Since the introduction of Dencun upgrade to blob data storage, the transaction fees of rollups have been reduced by more than 90%, making leading such as Base, OP Mainnet and Arbitrum Layer 2 achieved net inflows of $3.5 billion, $2.1 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively. Therefore, the use of rollups has increased significantly in 2024: Layer 2's daily transactions increased from 5.18 million to 16.86 million, an increase of more than 325%, and the number of daily active addresses also increased from 989,000 to 2.18 million. These mainstream rollups are full of optimism, highlighting users' preferences for low cost and high efficiency. In contrast, although zk rollups have a relatively high cost, their cost is relatively high.

Source: L2Beat, HashKey Capital

Base's significant capital inflows can be attributed to multiple factors, including a smooth consumer experience, a strategic partnership with Coinbase, and popular consumer applications such as Farcaster and Virtuals Protocol Launched, these apps have attracted a large number of users to join Base. The number of daily active users has surged from 68,324 to 1.6 million. In 2024, DeFi activity on Base increased significantly, with its stablecoin market growing from US$178 million to US$3.6 billion, and daily decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume also soaring from US$21.6 million to US$1.7 billion. In addition, Base has announced a significant collaboration with Stripe. According to the cooperation, Stripe will add support for USDC on Base to its crypto payment products and add USDC to its fiat currency to crypto channel. At the same time, Coinbase Wallet will also integrate Stripe's coin listing function, allowing users to seamlessly use credit cards Buy cryptocurrency. Looking ahead, we believe that the success of consumer applications on Base will attract more consumer-centric innovations and developmentThose will also use the strategic partnership between Base and Coinbase to further expand the market.

At present, Arbitrum, the largest rollup in TVL, is also one of the main beneficiaries of the L2 transfer. The launch of Arbitrum Stylus has enabled developers to easily write smart contracts in a variety of developer-friendly languages ​​such as Rust, C, C++, and this advance has opened the door to more than 10 million developers around the world. Upgrades such as ArbOS 32 and Nitro v3.2.0 have further enhanced network security and effectively prevent potential denial of service attacks. The future development roadmap of the protocol covers measures such as multi-client support, adaptive pricing, chain clustering, and sorter decentralization. This will promote the network to achieve higher degree of collaboration between Arbitrum track chains and create accumulation for the Arbitrum community Sexual value.

In the second half of 2024, OP Superchain continued to have a strong momentum. With new chains such as Unichain, Ink, Sonieum and other companies joining the ecosystem, by the end of the year, OP-Stack-based The total number of chains has reached 56, accounting for 43% of all L2/3 chains, while Superchain's transaction volume accounts for more than 56% of all L2 transaction volumes. The number of active developers on the OP Stack chain has also surged from less than 900 to 3,446, and these data are positively strengthening the network effect built by OP Superchain. However, most of the activity is still dominated by Base, which has firmly ranked as a top Superchain member. New entrants such as UniSwap's Unichain, Kraken's Ink and Sony's Sonieum can also take advantage of their respective network effects and are expected to get a share of the pie from Base. Overall, we believe that the competition between OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit and zkSync's Hyperchain will further intensify in 2025, each of which will compete for a virtuous cycle of network effects with unique and competitive value propositions.

While the Dencun upgrade has benefited many L2 networks, whose blob capacity is close to target utilization since November, this upgrade has also triggered whether it is for Ethereum itself Discussions that constitute erosion. With the Pectra upgrade expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025, the goal is to bring the target/maximum blob capacity fromWith 3-6 up to 6-9, we expect the L2 network with unique positioning and value propositions to be further integrated and improve user stickiness, thus becoming an important competitor to the alt-L1 network.

Source: Dune analytics (@hildobby) p>3.2 Re-pled

In 2024, the number of pledged Ethereum was on an overall upward trend, reaching a peak of 34.5 million as of November 10, 2024; at the same time, The yield has been declining all the way, falling to 3% by the end of the year, highlighting the inverse relationship between the reward rate and pledged Ethereum.

This phenomenon prompts users to seek alternative returns in the form of liquid re-staked tokens through liquid provision or lending activities. As a result, restaking agreements such as Eigenlayer attracted a large number of TVL, although its growth momentum weakened in the second half of 2024, TVL fell from 5.11 million ETH to 4.44 million ETH at the end of the year. We believe this is mainly due to delays in the rollout of the cut mechanism, which is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.

In the second half of 2024, Karak, as a re-staking platform, performed mediocrely, while Symbiotic's total lock-up value (TVL) achieved a significant increase from 3.07 $100 million surged to $2.12 billion, an increase of more than five times. This growth highlights the attractiveness and competitiveness of Symbiotic's flexible re-staking mechanism, attracting a wider and more diverse stakeholders.

As the importance of restaking as a key economic and infrastructure pillar becomes increasingly consolidated, future catalytic factors will depend on the successful launch of the cut mechanism, as well as the AVS , stakeholders and node operators provide flexibility that enables the best balance between economic security and the benefits provided.

3.3 Ethereum Future Roadmap and EIP Proposal

2025 will be one of the most important years in the development of Ethereum as it plans to undergo a major upgrade ——Pectra. The upgrade is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, but it was not smooth at first as clients and researchers raged around multiple EIP proposals. The implementation of these EIPs is extremely difficult, which makes the original time faced a challenge. However, after multiple rounds of discussion, the EIP version that was included in Pectra was finally determined. If it can be implemented smoothly, the Pectra upgrade is expected to be completed as planned. Here are several key EIP proposals that have a profound impact on Ethereum adoption and scalability:

Key EIP proposals

EIP-7691: Extend the Blobs target capacity and reduce L2 fees

This upgrade plan will remove the target blobs of the Ethereum block from 3 Increase to 6, further reducing L2 transaction fees. Since November 2024, blob expenses have approached the target ceiling and are likely to grow exponentially as demand exceeds the target blob capacity. Therefore, the upgrade helps control the cost of the L2, allowing it to compete with the Alt-L1 more competitively in 2025.

EIP-7702: Implementing the smart contract function of EOA accounts

This proposal replaces earlier EIP-3074, designed to introduce smart contract functionality for EOA (external owned account). Because ERC-4337 requires additional adaptation of applications and protocols, it is slower to adopt. And EIP-7702 will greatly improve the user experience by integrating account abstraction natively in the underlying network. We are excited about this, it can lead to better wallet UX and enhanced security mechanisms that prevent users from accidentally signing fraudulent transactions.

EIP-7251: Optimize validator management and reduce network load

This proposal aims to Easing network load, increasing the maximum Ethereum staking cap for validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH to reduce the number of active validators. This will reduce the consensus layer pressure on Ethereum and improve network efficiency.

Looking forward, Ethereum's core research team has reorganized Ethereum's long-term development roadmap, with the goal of carrying out a major upgrade in 2029 and introducing zero knowledge Proofs and post-quantum cryptography to completely change the consensus layer of Ethereum.

At present, Ethereum is in net inflation for most of 2024 as L1 transaction fees continue to decline. Therefore, Ethereum needs to adjust on the issuance curve of staking rewards in the future, while attracting high-throughput applications to run on its platform to create greater value for holders.

Source: Glassnode

Source: Artemis.xyz

Other infrastructure

Sorter

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Sorting

In 2024, Metis became the first Ethereum Rollup to implement decentralization of the sorter. Currently, the main players in the decentralized sorting track include Astria, Espresso, Rome Protocol, etc. As adoption of decentralized sorting increases, the sector is expected to see greater growth in 2025, with Rollup projects such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Linea have announced plans to decentralize their sorters. Other innovative sorting designs are also being explored, such as the Solana shared sorter proposed by Rome Protocol, which leverages Solana's localized expense market and high-performance network, which may gain greater attention.

The future success of decentralized sorting will depend on the Rollup ecosystem's demand for decentralization, including: censorship resistance, value redistribution, and enhanced network activity and at the same time, it is necessary to delay transactionsBalance with economic incentive alignment and other aspects to effectively manage distributed sorter networks.

Data Availability and Modular Blockchain

Data Availability Track remains by Ethereum Blobs, Celestia, Avail and EigenDA possession. As RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) makes Rollup deployment more seamless, the demand for data availability solutions continues to grow. Currently, 23 Rollups have adopted Celestia, of which Eclipse is its largest customer and consumes the largest data availability blobs. At the same time, EigenDA is also included in the list of leading RaaS providers. Altlayer also has deep integration with the Rollup stack architecture. EigenDA currently has a throughput of 15MB/s, with a goal of reaching 1GB/s in the future, but is still limited by the trust assumption of its Data Availability Committee (DAC).

Ethereum's current DA is costly and slower, which provides a market opportunity for data availability solutions that can increase data throughput and reduce costs to solve this problem. In the long run, Ethereum’s vision is to provide a low-cost data availability solution, starting with the Pectra upgrade and ultimately implementing PeerDAS. Therefore, keeping aligned with the Ethereum ecosystem will be a favorable strategy for data availability solutions for Rollup.

Source: HashKey Capital

Intent and chain abstraction

Chain abstraction in the Web3 field remains an important narrative, especially in ecosystems In the process of evolution from a single, isolated network to a modular network architecture, each layer of technology stack is optimized to improve performance. However, with the continuous development of this innovation, the problem of fragmentation of cross-chain liquidity has once again surfaced. To address this challenge, Chain Abstraction Coalition was established last year and includes Arbitrum, Berachain, Linea, BNMore than 60 blockchains including B. Other major players such as Particle Network and Xion have also launched Universal Accounts and Meta Accounts, respectively, which have promoted the popularity of chain abstract solutions. Particle Network's UniversalX (a trading platform based on Universal Account) has been integrated with 12 EVM networks and Solana. Xion's Meta account user number has also exceeded 4 million, fully demonstrating the need and importance of chain abstraction.

One ​​of the most important advances in the field of cross-chain interoperability in the second quarter of 2024 was the launch of the ERC-7683 proposal. ERC-7683 aims to solve the urgent interoperability challenges faced by blockchain networks, and supports the shared liquidity layer by building a universal filler network. The introduction of this standard is expected to become an important milestone in cross-chain interoperability. We believe that ERC-7683 may be favored by more protocols seeking to improve user experience and gain wider adoption on its platform.

AI proxy and intent-driven DeFi transactions

In August 2024, Circle Research published A study was conducted to explore the feasibility of using large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo to execute Intent-based Transactions. With the continuous enhancement of the inference capability of large language models and the maturity of AI Agents (AI Agents) technology, this field is innovating rapidly, bringing new breakthroughs to the DeFi transaction experience. In the future, innovations in this direction will expand the boundaries of DeFi transactions based on AI agents and significantly improve the user experience. A case worth noting is the AI ​​proxy Griffain, which can automatically execute transactions through users' natural language requests, further lowering user operation thresholds and improving the availability of cross-chain DeFi.

4. Solana

In 2024, Solana performed well, with price growth of about 75%, mainly due to the improvement in competitiveness with Ethereum, and its SOL/ETH The ratio rose from 0.04 to 0.06, making it one of the best blue chip performances. Relying on its unique SVM architecture – supports localized fee markets and parallel transaction processing – Solana provides lower fees and higher throughput. As a result, many high-performance decentralized applications choose to be built on the network, and this influx of innovative applications has greatly improved Solana's fundamentals. Developments in DeFi in 2024 include the launch of cbBTC on Solana, incentive activities for the use of PYUSD, and the Solana liquidity re-staking model to help improve the platform's liquidity. As a leading indicator of network adoption, stablecoin market value has increased more than triple in 2024 to $5.1 billion. In addition to its growing popularity among retail users, Solana has also achieved significant growth in developer adoption. According to the latest report from Electric Capital, Solana has attracted more new developers than any other blockchain in 2024, surpassing Ethereum for the first time. The agency adoption of Solana is also becoming more obvious, and the collaboration with Shopify and Visa further strengthens the growth of the network.

Obviously, Solana has shown lasting competitiveness in several areas, including DeFi, NFT, DePIN, payments, consumer-facing applications, and others Many fields have attracted many important projects and partners. In 2024, the focus of the Solana ecosystem is mainly in DePIN, meme, PayFi and other fields:

DePIN

In early 2023, the top DePIN project Helium was officially moved to Solana, with the help of Solana The advantages of low network fees and high TPS promote the connection and management of communication devices, becoming one of the world's largest IoT wireless networks, and also leaving a strong user community in the Solana ecosystem. The HNT token FDV reaches a maximum of $2.2 billion, which is completed. Solana DePIN boilerplate. Since then, another major DePIN leading project, Render Network, has also migrated to the Solana network, and also provides decentralized computing and rendering services with the help of Solana's platform advantages. Token FDV once exceeded $8 billion, and network revenue increased by 3 times in 2024. In addition, with the continuous development of artificial intelligence, the capabilities of various multimodal large language models are becoming increasingly apparent. This growth, and the increasing number of applications based on these large language models, in turn drives a greater demand for computing resources such as GPUs. As one of the most influential computing power projects in 2024, io.netThe native token $IO has been highly anticipated since its primary market financing and mining incentive program started. After its launch, its full dilution valuation (FDV) has exceeded US$4.8 billion.

Based on such a strong user and community foundation, a large number of highly-watched DePIN projects have emerged in the Solana ecosystem in 2024, such as: Hivemapper, Cudis, Grass, XNET wait. In addition to the platform's performance advantages, the popularity gathered by these DePIN projects is also an important reason why Solana has become the preferred platform for DePIN projects.

Meme

2024 can be said to be the first year of Memecoin. The status of Memecoin in this cycle can even be compared with the Defi in the previous cycle, closely connecting the new cultural and social forms with Crypto. In combination, it also imports a large number of users for the crypto industry. Because of Memecoin's low threshold and frequent user transactions, it requires a platform like Solana with high TPS, low transaction fees and stable fees to provide users with the most friendly trading environment. At the same time, it also needs an active community to quickly gain community attention, which are the advantages Solana has.

It is worth noting that Pump.fun, as the memecoin launch platform, has achieved great success, with multiple memecoin (such as PNUT, FARTCOIN, MOODENG and GOAT) in Solana Contributed considerable trading volume, Solana's trading volume has largely surpassed Ethereum since the fourth quarter of 2024. Solana/Ethereum weekly DEX volume increased from 48.85% to 137.47%.

On the other hand, data analysis platforms are also important for early discovery of Meme investment opportunities. In addition to general platforms such as Dexscreener and Dextool, the Meme craze has been launched. GMGN.ai provides more and more direct functions, such as Pump.fun line chart service, address tracking, SmartMoney/KOL wallet tracking and other functions, which better adapt to the needs of Memecoin investors. At the same time, a large number of TG bots have emerged, providing users with timely transaction reminders through on-chain or community sentiment analysis, such as Solana Early Birds and Pump Alertwait.

Solana's Memecoin proves to everyone again and again the activity of Solana's ecology, and at the same time proves the rationality of Memecoin's existence. It is not air, but A culture and value are a carrier of community forces with much more fluidity than NFTs.

PayFi

PayFi is a new concept proposed by Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, aiming to build a brand new financial market around the time value of money, which integrates With the advantages of web3 unique to crypto payment's efficient programmability, transaction and lending, and other defi behaviors, it hopes to bring more traditional assets into web3, establish a new financial market, and make global financial payment activities more convenient and low cost.

Solana Ecology has a big difference or advantage from other ecology. It has many infrastructure that are out of the circle, such as Solana Pay. Solana Pay’s goal is not just to “pay in cryptocurrency”, but to create a new era of payment and commerce. Solana enables users to pay merchants with almost instant confirmation at the lowest and predictable fees. Solana Pay can be used as an integrated plug-in option in Shopify-supported storefronts. In addition, Solana has also cooperated with VISA to open up offline payment channels.

Looking forward

Although Firedancer has not been activated yet, future activations and applications will further improve the performance and security of the network, allowing it to seize more from Ethereum market share. The Solana plug-in was released in early 2024 and provides higher fine-graining, greater flexibility and greater programmability in token issuance, which we believe will drive more institutions to adopt on-chain while maintaining enterprise-level Security. The potential of the Solana ETF approved, the growth of the stablecoin market, institutional adoption and the increasing DeFi activity will all bring positive catalytic effects to the Solana ecosystem.

Ethereum vs Solana DEX volumes

Source: Artemis.xyz

Solana's fundamentals (2024)

Source: Artemis.xyz

In the next year, we will continue to focus on the following aspects:

Solana itself: Solana has two potential benefits in 2025. One is that the SOL ETF may be launched, and the other is the launch of the Firedancer client. These two points will be a long-term positive for Solana. Of course, there will be a huge number of SOLs unlocked in the secondary market in the short term. For SOL tokens, you can invest in time.

Solana SVM and Layer 2: Solana's current TPS may not support future ecological prosperity. In addition to the mainnet's own Firedancer upgrade, SVM is also an opportunity. Of course, Solana's Layer 2 not only solves the problem of network scalability, but can also serve as a bridge for Solana ecosystem, and settles the applications of other ecosystems on the Solana main network, bringing more transaction volume and ecological activity to Solana.

Application

Community-driven applications: Solana's community is undoubtedly the most active in the crypto industry community. If Ethereum is driven by the technology community and is easy to produce new infra innovations, then Solana is driven by the user community and is easy to have phenomenal applications. Even application scenarios like Meme that have no practical purpose have attracted countless users' attention, and this kind of attention is the most valuable resource for making applications.

Expand applications: Solana is obviously working hard to become popular in all fields. It solves payment and deposits and withdrawals in infrastructure, and has also launched Solana mobile phones as an application. and Payfi carriers; users have already made influence in the traditional world through meme, DePIN, etc.; in terms of business, many traditional partners such as VISA and Shopify are supported. If there is any ecosystem in the Crypto industry that can make the fastest appearance, it must be Solana. The Mass adoption pursued by the currency circle will also first occur in the Solana ecosystem.

5. Alt-L1s

Alt-L1 continues to gain strong attention in 2024, providing investors with a different experience than Ethereum and in multiple aspects Contend with competition, such as a more active ecosystem, lower latency, higher throughput and lower transaction fees. Here are some important and emerging Alt L1s to watch for in 2025.

Berachain

Unlike traditional PoS networks, Berachain introduces a completely new consensus mechanism. Through a unique Proof of Liquidity (PoL) mechanism, Berachain rewards liquidity providers with governance tokens, ensuring incentive alignment between validators, dApps, and users while remaining decentralized. Berachain's BeaconKit modular consensus client is also EVM-compatible, allowing it to access the huge Ethereum ecosystem, while providing competitive features such as Single Slot Finality and Optimistic Payload Building. Before going online on February 6, 2025, Berachain has gained significant attention, with its TVL (total locked value) exceeding $1.5 billion, which is mainly derived from pre-deposited vaults from its multiple partners. After going online, with its massive and craziest community support, Berachain has jumped to the eighth largest network measured by TVL, surpassing Sui and Avalanche. The future success of the network will depend on how it meets demand through innovative incentives and applications.

TON

One ​​of the most eye-catching narratives of 2024 is TON, especially in Q2 and Q3. With over 900 million Telegram monthly active users (MAU), TON has attracted a lot of attention in 2024. Among them, the highly anticipated game Catizen has 4.7 million monthly active users, making it one of the hottest Telegram mini games in 2024.

Most blockchain networks face cold start problems and incentive mechanism problems, and TON relies on Telegram's in-depth integration and has a natural competitive advantage, which makes a huge user base It can be done through TON wallets (such as UXUY), TON trading robots and Telegram mini game seamlessly enter the chain interaction. This advantage is verified on the data:

TON Daily Active Users (DAU) grew from 27,725 to 293,539 in 2024

TON DeFi TVL has grown more than 10 times since the beginning of 2024, from $13.51 million to $261.7 million

But since Q4 As market attention began to turn to other hot spots, TON's ecology and performance were lower than expected, and its underlying architecture caused many difficulties in the migration of projects such as the top DeFi protocols, which also led to a decline in TVL at the end of the year. In 2025, TON's growth will rely on closer partnerships with Telegram and explore innovative channels beyond the simple click earning model to attract new users and activate its ecosystem.

Kaia

Kaia is a new blockchain platform formed by the merger of Klaytn and Finschia blockchains, and was officially launched on the main network on August 29, 2024. As a fully EVM-compatible platform, Kaia seamlessly integrates LINE and KakaoTalk—the two world's largest messaging applications, with a total user base of more than 250 million.

Kaia has solved common cold start problems in Web3 projects, but having a good user experience is also crucial. To simplify user linking, Kaia provides a series of optimization measures:

Account Abstraction Support

Gas Fee Delegation

Keyless MPC Wallets to reduce the technical complexity of retail users

Keyless MPC Wallets

Keyless MPC Wallets

Since the launch of the Internet, Kaia's total lock-in value (TVL) has increased from US$37 million to 6,000 $10,000, shows that the network's user engagement and adoption are increasing. Although Kaia integrates LINE and KakaoTalk gains a huge advantage, and its success still depends on how the app effectively acquires and retains users. To promote ecological prosperity in all areas of Web3, Kaia and LINE NEXT jointly launched the Kaia Wave program, a $10 million incentive program, including: NEXT WEB SDK access, LINE NEXT's Dapp Portal integration, marketing resources, funds Support, etc.

Although there are good user bases, the difference between Kaia and TON is that the Kaia user groups are mainly concentrated in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand; the GTMs of both sides It is also different from the ecological support strategy. Therefore, at the current stage of Kaia ecosystem, more data and quality of the project are still needed before investing. As Kaia launches its first 32 Web3 services under Kaia Wave program, accelerating the expansion of its mini dApp ecosystem, we remain optimistic about the future of Kaia.

Move

The Move ecosystem received wider adoption in 2024, with the number of monthly active developers based on Move language development growing from 1,014 to 1,500 by the end of 2024 Many people. Move is a Rust-based open source programming language developed by Facebook (Diem team), with its advantages in security, scalability and ease of use. In the Move ecosystem, two blockchains occupy the main market perception: Sui and Aptos. Both are positioned as high-performance L1, however, Sui significantly outperforms Aptos on several key indicators in 2024, including FDV (full dilution valuation), TVL (total locked value), net capital inflows, and DEX trading volume .

Source: Artemis.xyz

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Source: Artemis.xyz

Sui recorded a net inflow of US$1.2 billion in 2024, with its native token price soaring nearly 500%. The market value of stablecoins on Sui has achieved significant growth in 2024,From less than $10 million to $370.77 million, mainly due to Sui's support for native USDC, FDUSD and USDY. Since the launch of native USDC on Sui, its TVL has grown by more than 70%, reaching $1.6 billion by the end of 2024. With the growth of the stablecoin market size, DEX trading volume has also increased significantly. Cetus DEX was on the Binance list in November, driving its trading volume to a significant increase. Other DeFi protocols such as Navi, Bluefin and Haedal also benefited from this trend, with TVL and trading volumes rising. In the Sui ecosystem, we can continue to pay attention to the application of crypto-native. Looking ahead, we believe that Sui will continue to attract capital with increasing DeFi activity, institutional adoption of asset tokenization, and the rise of consumer applications.

Aptos also achieved significant growth in 2024. In 2024, Aptos' TVL grew from $117.81 million to $975.52 million, an increase of more than 8 times. Meanwhile, the market value of stablecoins on Aptos has also increased by more than 12 times in 2024, from $49.27 million to $633.22 million. Aptos' daily active users have increased from 88,000 to 1,100,000. But Aptos focuses more on institutional directions such as RWA tokenization, stablecoins and BTCFi. Leading asset managers such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have deployed their tokenized funds in Aptos. After the team is adjusted, it remains to be observed in 2025.

Movement is another network worth paying attention to besides Sui and Aptos. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Movement announced the launch of its mainnet beta version of M2, its Ethereum expansion solution based on the Move language. M2 combines the advantages of MoveVM while allowing applications to take advantage of Ethereum's security and deep liquidity.

Movement Network also provides a modular toolkit that supports the deployment of Move-Rollups, and developers can freely choose: data availability solutions, using the M1 shared sorter (Shared) Sequencer)Chain atomic settlement, using fast final settlement (FFS). (Fast Finality Mechanism).

In the narrative context where the current modular architecture is the mainstream trend, whether M2 and Move-Rollups can compete with existing Rollups with their unique architecture will become The focus of attention in 2025.

MegaETH

MegaETH is an EVM-compatible blockchain with transaction throughput of up to 100,000 TPS, powerful computing power, and millisecond block time, enabling development Those who can build applications with low latency and high computing requirements. Although many new chains emerge in the blockchain industry, existing blockchains still face significant limitations in transaction throughput and computing power. MegaETH solves these challenges by introducing Node Specialization, which separates the roles of Sequencer, Prover, Full Node and Replica Node to optimize overall performance. . This innovative architecture enables each node type to match dedicated hardware requirements, thereby improving execution efficiency while maintaining decentralization. MegaETH also focuses on real-time transaction processing and state synchronization, which is crucial for high-frequency and low-latency applications. The discussion about MegaETH is very hot, detailing its innovative real-time blockchain technology that is expected to improve Ethereum’s scalability and attract high-performance applications. It is exciting to see how MegaETH will compete with competitors like Monad and Solana in attracting high-performance applications after its upcoming launch.

Monad

Monad is an L1 blockchain that achieves optimistic parallel transaction execution across multiple EVM instances while maintaining the word "Ethereum" Section code compatibility. The core of this technological breakthrough is its customized consensus mechanism - MonadBFT. MonadBFT is different from HotStuff BFT, and its focus is on reducing latency and thus improving transaction confirmation speed. In addition, Monad also integrates MonadDB, its proprietary database, which natively implements Patricia Tree Structure, optimizes data storage at the disk and memory levels and reduces computing bottlenecks. Monad also supports asynchronous I/O (Async I/O), allowingThe CPU executes other transactions in parallel while processing the current transaction, thereby greatly increasing throughput. This architecture enables Monad to achieve up to 10,000 transactions per second, providing 1 second block time and 1 second finality. Given the strong support the Foundation has given through various hackathon activities, it is worth noting to observe Monad’s development. The Monad Foundation continues to play an active role in ecosystem development, organizing 65 builder events worldwide in 2024 and accelerating 46 early stage projects through Mach and Jumpstart. We are optimistic about the launch of Monad and the growth of the ecosystem in the future.

The competitive landscape

It is obvious that the narrative in 2024 is no longer limited to the dispute between Ethereum and Solana. More alternative L1 projects are emerging – we believe they are expected to gain greater market share in 2025.

L1 Competition Landscape

Source: CoinMarketCap, DeFi Llama, artemis.xyz, and relative website information, based on latest available data as of 11 Feb 2025. As Berachain recently launched, the statistics are incomplete.

6. Other tracks 6.1 Meme

In 2024, the Meme track became the best performing crypto sector, with an overall increase of 218%, further highlighting Meme’s role as a barometer of attention economy and culture-driven economy. Among them, Ethereum, Base and Solana are the three most active public chains in the Meme ecosystem. The launch of Pump.fun has become a milestone in the crypto industry, with its standardized token issuance framework completely abstracting the technical complexity of creating and issuing Meme coins, greatly releasing retail demand and greatly increasing the volume of Meme coins on Solana. In addition to Pump.fun, the prosperity of Solana Ecological Meme is also due to the ecological support of the Solana Foundation. Meanwhile, Memes on Ethereum, such as Pepeand SHIB, still have a very sticky community, while the Base ecosystem Meme tends toward AI themes, which is reflected in the success of Virtuals Protocol. Similar to Pump.fun, Virtuals Protocol provides retail users with the ability to seamlessly create and issue AI Agents (AI Agents), further extending Meme narrative.

Urgent from the Meme coin boom, new tools continue to emerge to help retail users seize market opportunities more efficiently. For example, Kaito is an AI-driven analytics platform, providing users with deeper market insights. Photon and GMGN.AI both focus on efficient sniping and trading, taking advantage of the high volatility of the Meme currency market.

Although most Meme coins fail and have a short life cycle, the Meme track has become an important part of the industry and is expected to continue to grow. In the future, Solana and Base will remain leading in this field with their already established Meme community.

6.2 AI

In 2024, the AI ​​field is one of the hottest areas. From infrastructure at the beginning of the year to the outbreak of agents in the second half of the year, the development of AI in crypto covers the upstream and downstream industries of AI. As shown in the figure below, Agents+applications, as the end close to end users, meets the pace of rapid development of developers in the crypto industry. At the same time, due to the cost and development cycle of AI, the upstream of AI is more difficult for crypto teams. Agents is therefore welcomed in the second half of the year. A big explosion.

Ecological flow chart, source: HashKey Capital compiled< /p>

Agents' outbreak in the second half of the year was catalyzed by the successful transformation of Virtuals Protocol in the second half of 2024, with the project launching several quite successful Agents, such as AIXBT. This is the first time agents are positioned as an asset, not just as a tool. With people's high interest and speculation in trading AI agents, Virtuals Protocol is based on this coreBe firmly stand in the leader in this field.

At present, the functional categories of Agents cover more than a dozen types, and the popular ones in the crypto market are social media robots, on-chain execution and VC agents. We do not expect agents to remain diversified.

Agents functions and application scenarios, source: HashKey Capital compiled

However, these agents with different functions/application scenarios have not been truly mature and most of them are still in the narrative stage. However, the popularity of the development framework for agents has lasted for more than two months, indicating that this enthusiasm is not only at the level of speculative trading. Among them, ElizaOS is the framework with the highest development completion rate, and it is the core framework of ai16z. Other development frameworks vary in development languages, such as the RIG framework launched by @arcdotfun is a Rust-based system, and ZerePY is an open source python framework based on Zerebro. There are also monographs on the development framework of resource API interface scheduling, such as FXN.

Due to the prevalence of meme culture, the combination of AI tokens (including AI Agents) and meme has also become a hot topic in the community. Although the valuation of these memes is mostly between $1M-$5M and the price fluctuations are huge, you can still find that narrative hotspots are becoming more and more professional, such as virtual towns, anti-learning, jailbreaking, multi- agents etc.

The huge paradigm shift brought by AI has led us to believe that this technology can be applied to multiple fields, including Crypto, so we will continue to focus on the implementation of Agents and Agents collaborative work between, such as multi-agents infra, tools and economy.

6.3 RWA

The value of the RWA market has increased by 63% since the beginning of the year, from US$8.36 billion to US$13.67 billion, with most of the tokenized assets mainly Spread in two main asset classes: private credit and U.S. Treasury bonds. By the end of the year, more than 66,93 asset holdersThere are 1 person, more than 115 asset issuers, including famous institutional issuers including Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, etc.

There are several key events this year that have helped shape the RWA's narrative, including BNB, Tether, Hedera, Visa and others, announcing the launch of tokenized services. This year also saw the establishment of Tokenized Asset Coalition, an industry organization aimed at bringing the next trillion-dollar assets to the chain.

We seem to be at the inflection point of RWA tokenization, and this new momentum can be attributed to the continuous maturity of tokenization technology, the clear regulation and the The awareness of using blockchain technology to improve efficiency is increasing. In addition to private blockchains used by institutions, public blockchains are also becoming an increasingly popular choice. Among them, Ethereum is still the dominant public blockchain favored by asset issuers because of its practically tested security and mature ecosystem. Other popular RWA blockchains include Plume Network, Stellar, Polygon, Solana and Avalanche.

Private equity credit

In the field of Web3 RWA (physical assets), private equity credit has achieved significant results Growth, its total locked value (TVL) has increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of the year to over $16 billion. The main protocols in this field include Huma Finance, Maple, Centrifuge and Goldfinch. Maple Finance has been issued more than $5 billion in loans, while Centrifuge and Goldfinch have been issued more than $560 million and $168 million respectively. Huma Finance, as a promoter of cross-border payment financing, has contributed to more than $1.4 billion in transactions in the first year of its operations. Although these figures are only the tip of the iceberg compared to traditional private credit markets, they also highlight the market's demand for such platforms. However, the growth in demand for private equity credit does not mean that the field is exempt from default risks, which is no stranger to participants in decentralized private equity credit agreements. Therefore, careful underwriting and collateral management, and execution in a transparent manner, will help strengthen confidence in the field. Finally, through a keen understanding of the laws of each region, KYC/AML and identity resolution are implemented through privacy protection of soul-bound tokens or zkTLS.The plan may also become the key to driving the industry's next stage of growth.

U.S. Treasury

Overall, TVL in this sub-sector has been in progress since the beginning of this year. From US$769 million to US$3.96 billion as of December 31, 2024. In March this year, BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, launched a tokenized fund called BUIDL, backed by money market securities such as cash, treasury bills and repurchase agreements. In 2024, its asset size managed (AUM) has exceeded US$648 million. Probably the most well-known decentralized RWA protocol, Ondo, has accumulated more than $620 million in AUM in the two products, namely USDY (a yield stablecoin with an annualized yield of 4.65%) and OUSG for institutional investors only (backed by short-term US Treasury bonds, annualized yields of 4.6%, and supports 24/7 minting and redemption). Ondo has grown more than 200% since the beginning of the year due to strong demand for tokenized U.S. Treasuries, and is leading the market in terms of the number of token holders. Factors that contributed to this growth include growing demand for yield-based stablecoins, PayPal's collaboration with Ondo, which enables users to seamlessly exchange between PYUSD and OUSG, low barriers to entry for retail investors, and the agreement multi-chain strategy adopted (and thus extensive integration of their products in different ecosystems). At present, competition in the tokenized treasury bond field is extremely fierce, and major participants have completely canceled subscription fees, redemption fees and performance fees. Coupled with their strong reputation and network effects, it makes it difficult for small players to enter and get a share of the pie.

Source: rwa.xyz, data as of 31 December 2024 em>

stablecoin

stablecoin becomes one of the most important use cases in 2024 , provides an entry for on-chain adoption. As of December 31, 2024, the total market supply of stablecoins has increased by 56% since the beginning of the year to $203.73 billion, a record high. The transaction volume of stablecoins has also largely eroded the share of traditional payment networks. Adjusted stablecoin transactions exceeded 5.5 in the past 12 monthstrillion USD, up 50% from 2023, compared with Visa’s trading volume in 2024 of $15.7 trillion, up 7% year-on-year. As of December 2024, the average monthly active stablecoin address increased by nearly 50% year-on-year to 37.83 million. It is obvious that this highlights the importance of stablecoins as mainstream payment methods in our daily lives. Since the transaction fees of stablecoins are much lower than those of traditional payment networks, they are highly economically feasible for many companies. Looking ahead, we expect more small and medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises to adopt stablecoins to improve operational efficiency. Most stablecoins are still dominated by the US dollar at the moment, but we also expect to see more stablecoins in other currencies, such as EURC.

Another area of ​​demand growth in 2024 is RWA support and income stablecoins. Ethena is a stablecoin that generates revenue through staking and Delta neutral strategies, with strong demand since its public offering in February 2024. By the end of 2024, USDe's TVL quickly exceeded US$5.8 billion, surpassing DAI to become the third largest stablecoin. In addition, USDY, another RWA-backed stablecoin launched by Ondo, also grew from $15.64 million to more than $400 million at the end of the year, highlighting the market’s demand for truly sustainable returns. As the adoption of stablecoins in the mainstream payment field continues to rise, regulators are also regulating the development of stablecoins through legislative frameworks. Stablecoins that meet regulatory requirements will gain more market attention in the future.

6.4 Trading Robot

A dashboard on dune shows relevant statistics for trading bots, as shown in the figure below, before January 2024, Mastro (in the figure Light blue) has always accounted for the largest market share, with Banana Gun (dark yellow in the picture) and Unibot (purple in the picture) entering the market successively in mid-2023, and each accounting for 20% of the market transaction volume.

After entering 2024, competition in the trading bots market began to intensify. Bonkbot (gray in the picture) emerged from the market, with its market trading volume reaching 80% for only 2 months, and then remained around 15-20% with Maestro. Another outstanding performance in 2024 is the Trojan trading bot shown in the light yellow in the picture. The trading volume has been stable at around 30-40% for a long time since April 2024, and has gradually becomeIt is the largest trading bot. In addition, Bloom (purple and red in the picture) appeared at the end of 2024, and its market trading share has steadily increased, which is worth paying attention to.

Source: Dune Analytics (@whale_hunter) p>

Source: Dune Analytics (@whale_hunter)

But this dashboard does not display the relevant data of GMGN.AI. Combined with the two data statistics in the figure below, the transaction volume of GMGN.AI was approximately 2025 Trojan is 1/2, but after entering 2025, its trading volume has reached 2/3 of Trojan.

Source: Dune Analytics (@adam_tehc) p>

Source: Dune Analytics (@whale_hunter)

6.5 DeSci

DeSci, meaning Decentralized Science (Decentralized Science), a relatively emerging field, aims to use blockchain technology to address the challenges facing the current scientific community. These challenges include an opaque review process, insufficient funding and interest in underexplored areas, and ensuring equitable opportunities and compensation for participation for contributors. Currently, there are approximately 100 DeSci projects distributed in biotechnology, space, humanities and other academic fields, although biotechnology dominates the DeSci field and has obtained it after its recent investment in Bio Protocol by Binance Labs More attention. However, as we mentioned in previous articles, DeSci still faces many challenges, such as insufficient funding compared to traditional science, potential legal risks, andThe mismatch incentive is often accompanied by when launching speculative tokens.

6.6 DePIN

As of December 31, 2024, the total market value of DePIN reached US$50 billion, up from US$18.1 billion at the beginning of the year, an increase of more than 176%. As of December 31, the number of projects has grown to over 295. This year, AI has dominated the industry narrative, with some of the largest DePIN projects at the intersection of AI and DePIN. Although Ethereum and Solana dominate the DePIN ecosystem in terms of market capitalization, blockchains focused on DePIN (such as Peaq and IoTeX) are also gaining increasing attention, with 46 and more than 50 projects built on it, respectively. . The topic of DePIN is widely discussed and can be roughly divided into two categories: more "physical" intensive, usually requiring hardware and capital infrastructure investments (such as energy networks), or areas that rely less "physical" on them, such as Storage and computing, etc. However, the common feature of DePIN is the need to use token incentives to overcome cold start problems and establish a viable business model. Looking ahead, some sub-tracks in the DePIN field in 2025 deserve continued attention.

Energy Network

Decentralized energy networks are built using blockchain technology from renewable Energy-driven power grids that improve energy efficiency and address infrastructure challenges such as transmission losses and system aging. This approach is driven by trends such as electrification and carbon neutrality goals, deploys distributed energy resources (DERs) with token incentives, and promotes grid modernization through virtual power plants (VPPs) and demand response providers (DRPs). Although global annual investment in solar energy has exceeded $500 billion, achieving net zero emissions by 2050 requires $21 trillion in grid modernization. Some of the challenges that are still facing include: weather-dependent renewable energy, grid instability caused by two-way energy flow, regulatory support, and insufficient public awareness of virtual power plants. Early projects such as Project Zero and Plural Energy showcase opportunities in this area, but unlocking its full potential still requires a lot of innovation, education and regulatory support.

Wireless Network

Decentralized Wireless Network (DeWi) makes individuals an Internet service Provider, providing affordable and extensive network services, thus solving the problemTraditional operators have long faced problems such as insufficient accessibility and network congestion. Unlike traditional telecom operators, DeWi networks can thrive in areas where environmental or economic factors are not conducive to traditional operations. Helium is a representative project in the DeWi field, with a year-to-date increase of 21.5%, and a comprehensive dilution valuation (FDV) of US$1.85 billion, showing its potential, although it is still much smaller than the traditional telecommunications industry. As of the end of the year, Helium Mobile had more than 124,000 mobile users and reached commercial partnerships with several large mobile operators to carry out operator traffic offloading projects. The global 5G market contains huge investment opportunities, and the number of 5G user subscriptions is expected to grow from 2.17 billion in 2023 to 5.56 billion in 2030. Emerging economies such as Latin America and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are expected to achieve exponential growth, with adoption rates expected to increase by more than ten times, showing considerable market expansion and value creation potential.

Geospatial Network

This field consists of geospatial positioning, image and map networks. Decentralized positioning service providers encourage communities to provide location information through token incentives to extract valuable insights for different stakeholders. Projects in this field usually deploy physical sensors in vehicles, properties and other places to obtain relevant data and provide valuable services including map data, meteorological data and high-precision real-time data. In the geospatial positioning subfield, one project worthy of attention is Geodnet. The project aims to solve the problem of positioning inaccurate in GPS technology by building a global navigation satellite system network and using real-time dynamic positioning technology (RTK) to improve positioning accuracy. This not only helps to increase the demand for precise positioning in industries such as agriculture and construction, but also brings higher returns to companies that turn to more economical solutions. By the end of 2024, Geodnet has recruited more than 10,000 satellite miners to open up revenue generation opportunities for its RTK positioning service, which now generates more than $2 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

In the field of map mapping, the traditional map industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, with Google Maps alone earning more than $11 billion in 2023. However, traditional map drawing is often expensive, inefficient, and sometimes not even accurate enough. As a decentralized alternative, Hivemapper aims to address these challenges by outsourcing map mapping efforts to 156,000 contributors worldwide who have helped map over 10 million miles in just over two yearsmap.

The key to success in this field is whether a network of devices can be established worldwide and sufficient in terms of data quantity and quality scale, thus entering the stage where revenue can be generated (not counted in node sales revenue to more accurately measure the actual demand for such services). By focusing on areas that are overlooked and lack high-quality positioning data, while adopting optimal manufacturing and distribution strategies, projects can quickly activate serving markets and meet scale needs. One of the main risks facing this field is the scalability challenges posed by complex device setup processes.

Computing network

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly pushed up the computing The demand for capabilities puts pressure on the supply of high-performance infrastructure such as GPUs and advanced data centers. Decentralized computing networks provide economically viable solutions to SMEs and AI researchers blocked by traditional supplier pricing by leveraging idle computing resources tracked by blockchain. Representative projects in this field include Aethir, Akash Network, Hyperbolic, Compute Labs, and Render. As one of the largest decentralized computing services providers, Aethir has built a decentralized network of more than 360,000 GPUs and generated over $80 million in annual recurring revenue. To achieve long-term success, projects need to address challenges such as task verification, privacy issues, and latency posed by consumer devices, and also to build solid partnerships with traditional Web2 businesses.

6.8 Games

In 2024, the gaming industry showed significant resilience and growth. As of the end of the year, the average daily active wallet number had exceeded 7.6 million, which was the 5 in 2023. More than twice. Key games that drive mainstream users to enter include LOL, World of Dypians, Treasure Ship Game, Pixudi and Age of Dino, and the average daily active wallet (UAW) of the above games all have more than 250,000. Card game platforms like Forge play a key role in serving as a Web3 game distribution channel, with over 1 million users and partnering with more than 65 games.

From the perspective of daily active wallets, the main game chains include opBNB, Ronin, Xterio, Skale, TON and XAI. Ronin's influence in the gaming community continues to increase, with peak daily active users reaching 2.27 million, more than 10 times that of 2023. Throughout 2024, Ronin Forge plans to access 7 games, with a total of 17 new games released on the network. Ronin games like Pixels Heroes are also ranked first in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, highlighting the increasing popularity of Web3 games.

The challenge remains, and the industry still has difficulties in financing, with blockchain gaming investment falling 38% year-on-year, marking its worst year since 2020. Nevertheless, the gaming industry remains resilient, demonstrating its characteristics that are not entirely relevant to the overall market environment. Looking ahead, we are optimistic about the next phase of growth in the gaming industry with diverse distribution channels and unique gameplay that can match or surpass Web2 gaming experiences.