Author: arndxt Source: As the year ends and 2025 arrives, I reflect on my crypto journey and draw inspiration from discussions at OpenGuild Vietnam, conversations around Ethereum and Optimism Superchain. What follows is an in-depth analysis of the key technical and strategic developments that are shaping the future of Polkadot and Ethereum.

Crypto Market Overview

Overall, the market is at a critical juncture of regulatory and technological change, particularly in Vietnam and at the intersection of AI and crypto.

1. Legalization of encryption in Vietnam

Vietnam plans to complete encryption by May 2024 The development of a legal framework for currencies may herald the rise of a wave of legal crypto businesses.

•Regulatory clarity can reduce uncertainty and attract higher-quality projects and institutional investment interest.

•If structured correctly, Vietnam could become a hub for blockchain startups, connecting Southeast Asia’s vibrant tech ecosystem to the global crypto market.

2. Stablecoins and user adoption

The use of stablecoins has grown significantly and is expected to Continuing this trend. Enhanced stablecoin infrastructure could drive wider adoption, especially in regions with volatile local currencies.

Stablecoins are one of the most powerful entry applications in the crypto field. By providing a secure medium of exchange, stablecoins facilitate daily transactions and protect value during local currency fluctuations. Continuing improvements, such as more efficient access to and from funds, could further embed stablecoins into the global financial system.

3. AI agent ecosystem

AI and cryptographic solutions since late 2024 The rise of AI has attracted the attention of more and more investors and incubators (such as Y Combinator). AI agent ecosystemSystems (e.g., fully autonomous trading bots, decentralized AI modules, on-chain AI oracles) promise to simplify tasks that have traditionally required human intervention. As these systems mature, they can raise complex legal and technical questions about governance, liability, and data privacy.

4. Proof of Personhood

The integration of AI and encryption naturally triggers concerns over identity verification, especially with the proliferation of deepfakes and AI-generated personas. Proof of Identity is based on a decentralized identity solution designed to ensure unique human identity verification.

If AI can simulate human behavior on the chain, a strong identity mechanism will become particularly important. Proof of identity could become standard for social applications, DAO membership, or token airdrops. Further innovations in cryptographic methods, such as zero-knowledge proofs, are expected to maintain privacy while verifying authenticity.

Ethereum Ecosystem

In 2025, Ethereum’s evolution will focus on chain abstraction and protocol-level upgrades designed to improve network efficiency, L2 throughput and User experience.

1. Pectra upgrade

The Pectra upgrade is a major milestone for Ethereum, focused on improving wallet infrastructure and solving broader challenges in the ecosystem. As chain abstraction becomes a core priority across blockchain platforms, Pectra's success could redefine how users interact with Ethereum.

The Pectra upgrade on Ethereum is a key milestone focused on wallet infrastructure improvements and solving broader ecosystem challenges. As chain abstraction becomes a key priority for blockchain platforms, Pectra's success could redefine how users interact with Ethereum.

From my perspective, the Ethereum mainnet is at a crossroads. The rise of powerful L2s like Optimism, Arbitrum, and zkSync has increased pressure to maintain Ethereum’s status as the “gold standard.” Pectra has the potential to fill a critical gap – simplifying the wallet experience by solving pain points such as high gas fees, transaction bundling and user authentication. If implemented effectively, it can significantly enhance user onboarding while solidifying Ethereum’s dominance in an increasingly competitive ecosystem. To me, this is Ethereum doubling down on user-centric innovation, a move that secures its place in the blockchain hierarchy.

2. EIPs worth paying attention to in 2025

•EIP-2935: Historical areas Block hashes are stored in the state

•Function: Store block hashes over a period of time, simplify the node query process, improve efficiency and reduce overhead.

•Analysis: This is a "network fundamental" improvement that is unobtrusive but crucial to node operators. The improved data retrieval mechanism also reduces chain reorganization and node synchronization time.

•EIP-7702: Set single transaction code for EOA account

•Function: Inject code into Externally Owned Accounts (EOA) through special transaction types, supporting features such as transaction bundling, paying gas fees (sponsorship), and permission downgrades (without changing addresses).

•Analysis: This proposal blurs the boundaries between EOA and smart contracts, potentially promoting more complex contract wallets (such as ERC-4337-based solutions) . If widely adopted, it could lead to more user-friendly features such as transaction sponsorship or advanced multi-signature schemes.

•EIP-7691: Increase Blob throughput

•Feature: Based on EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding) improvements, increasing the number of blobs per block, further reducing L2 fees and enhancing throughput.

•Analysis: Co-scaling of L1 and L2 is crucial to Ethereum. By scaling blob capacity, Ethereum reaffirms its commitment to maintaining a low-cost L2 environment. This improvement may accelerate user adoption of L2 solutions.

Polkadot Ecosystem

Polkadot continues to be a hot spot for cross-chain experimentation in 2025, with multiple developments aimed at solidifying its role asHigh-throughput and interoperable decentralized application infrastructure.

1. JAM Chain and its innovations

JAM Chain is the next generation blockchain protocol. It has attracted widespread attention in the Polkadot ecosystem. If successful, JAM could demonstrate Polkadot’s commitment to a plug-and-play multi-chain architecture.

Milestone 1 and JAM SDK An important milestone for the JAM team is the completion of [JAM Milestone 1], which includes the launch of a development toolkit called the JAM SDK. This SDK should simplify building on JAM, potentially attracting a wider range of developer types (from traditional backend engineers to professional blockchain developers).

JAM CoreVM The introduction of JAM CoreVM has the potential to redefine how real-time transactions and application execution are handled. JAM CoreVM aims to provide near real-time finality by replacing the traditional block finalization method with an "[optimize-accumulate]" mechanism. This approach can significantly reduce latency, a long-standing challenge for blockchains to achieve fast confirmations without sacrificing security. If executed effectively, it could encourage more latency-sensitive dApps (such as high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, or event-driven DeFi) to migrate to or launch Polkadot parachains powered by JAM.

After CoreChains and CorePlay complete the virtual machine layer, the JAM team plans to expand functions through CoreChains and CorePlay. While further details are limited, these solutions appear to extend JAM's architecture, potentially targeting niche use cases such as gaming ecosystems or enterprise-grade blockchains where modular design is crucial. The concept of Polkadot revolves around specialized parachains. JAM’s approach to building CoreChains suggests a possible shift toward industry-specific functionality. If these specialized chains each solve unique challenges (such as compliance, gaming, or data management), it can enrich Polkadot's value proposition as a multi-chain network.

2. Polkadot network-wide improvements

In addition to JAM’s initiatives, Polkadot itself will also undergo significant upgrades to reflect network stress testing and community efforts over the past year Lessons learned from feedback.

Polkadot Hub (Plaza) was built to consolidate ecosystem tools, infrastructure, and documentation. Analysis: As the ecosystem expands, a unified hub makes sense for both new and experienced developers. Pooling resources can significantly reduce complexity, which is an important step in attracting more developers and end users in the fierce competition with other L1s and L2s.

XCM v5 Cross-chain Messaging (XCM) is key to Polkadot’s vision of interoperability. The arrival of XCM v5 is expected to enable stronger cross-chain communication and better user experience. Analysis: Cross-chain operability remains the holy grail of the cryptocurrency space. While existing solutions like Wormhole and LayerZero help connect the ecosystem, XCM is a Polkadot-specific tool. Making XCM more efficient and secure can make inter-parachain operations feel “native,” potentially reducing friction for users and developers.

Elastic Scaling After a severe spam attack on Kusama in December 2024, Polkadot's elastic scaling mechanism demonstrated the ability to reach 143k TPS. This achievement highlights Polkadot’s ability to adapt under high load. Analysis: A chain's ability to handle sudden traffic spikes is critical. Successfully responding to spam attacks can be a marketing boon, demonstrating resiliency and reliability. The real test, however, will be managing legitimate traffic surges — especially if Polkadot-based dApps gain mainstream popularity.

3. Chain abstraction and network-wide development

Polkadot's overall strategy increasingly revolves around making the network more accessible to developers and users, ensuring that the underlying complexity Still behind the scenes.

Uniform address format By providing a single address format across parachains, Polkadot aims to eliminate the confusion caused by multiple wallet standards. Simplifying addresses is no easy task, but it’s a foolproof way to reduce friction in cross-chain interactions. This is reminiscent of how large ecosystems, such as Apple's iOS, unify the user experience across multiple apps and services.

Omni-node and Polkadot SDK Maintaining the latest node software for dozens of parachains requires a lot of resources. Omni -node is designed to optimize resource allocationSimplify this process. From a developer's perspective, less operational overhead is always welcome. However, the complexity of Polkadot’s multi-chain approach will likely require ongoing improvements in developer tools, and thus iterative enhancements beyond Omni-node.

Final Thoughts

At the same time, broader market trends, including regulatory initiatives in Vietnam, the enhancement of stablecoins, and artificial intelligence-driven agent systems, are highlighted the rapid development of the encryption field.

Ethereum continues to iterate with Pectra upgrades and new EIPs, solidifying its L1 position as a reliable settlement layer for the thriving L2 ecosystem.

On Polkadot, innovations such as JAM Chain, Omni-node, and improved XCM aim to improve cross-chain usage and scaling.