Author: a16z crypto partner; Compiler: 0xjs@金财经

a16z recently released a comprehensive list of "Big Ideas" that technology builders may solve in the next year. These big ideas come from AI, Partners for American Vitality, bio/health, crypto, enterprise, fintech, gaming, infrastructure and other sectors.

Here are some crypto Big Ideas that have a16z crypto partners excited about 2025.

AI needs its own wallet to take agent actions

As AIs transition from NPCs (non-player characters) to protagonists, they will begin to act as agents. However, until recently, AI could not truly act as an agent. They remain unable to participate in markets—exchanging value, revealing preferences, coordinating resources—in a verifiably autonomous (i.e., free from human control) way.

As we can see, AI agents like @truth_terminal can transact using crypto, which opens up all kinds of creative content opportunities. But there is greater potential for AI agents to become more useful—either fulfilling human intentions or becoming independent network participants. As networks of AI agents begin to take care of their own crypto wallets, signing keys, and crypto assets, we will see interesting new use cases emerge. These use cases include AI operation or verification of nodes in DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network) – for example, helping with distributed energy resources. Other use cases include AI agents becoming truly high-value game players. We may even eventually see the first blockchain owned and operated by AI.

—Carra Wu @carrawu on Twitter | @carra on Farcaster

“Decentralized Autonomous Chatbot”

In addition to the AI ​​with the wallet, there is also a running TEE (trusted Execution environment) AI chatbot. TEE provides an isolated environment in which applications can execute, allowing for more secure distributed system designs. But in this case, TEE is used to prove that the robot is autonomous and not controlled by a human operator.

By extension, the next Big Idea is what we call a decentralized autonomous chatbot or DAC (not to be confused with a decentralized autonomous company). Such chatbots can engage fans by posting engaging content, whether entertaining or informative. It will attract fans on decentralized social media; generate revenue from audiences in various ways; and manage its assets in cryptocurrency. The relevant keys will be managed within the TEE running the chatbot software - meaning no one but the software will have access to these keys.

As risks expand, regulatory guardrails may be necessary. But the key point here is decentralization: the chatbot operationRunning on a permissionless set of nodes and coordinated by a consensus protocol, it could even become the first truly autonomous billion-dollar entity.

—Dan Boneh, Karma, Daejun Park and Daren Matsuoka @danboneh on Twitter

@0xkarmacoma on Twitter | @karma on Farcaster

@daejunpark on Twitter< /p>

@darenmatsuoka on Twitter | @darenmatsuoka on Farcaster

As more and more people use AI, we need unique proof of personality

In a world rife with online imposters, scams, multiple identities, deepfakes and other realistic but deceptive AI-generated In the world of content, we need “proof of character” – something that helps us know we’re interacting with a real person. The new problem here, however, is not fake content; the new problem is that this content can now be produced at a much lower cost. AI radically lowers the marginal cost of producing content that contains all the clues we use to judge whether something is “real.”

So now more than ever we need ways to connect content to people in a private way. “Proof of personality” is an important part of establishing a digital identity. But here it becomes a mechanism to increase the marginal cost of attacking an individual or compromising the integrity of a network: Obtaining a unique ID is free for humans, but costly and difficult for AI.

That’s why the property of privacy-preserving “uniqueness” is the next big idea in building a web we can trust. It not only solves the personality proof problem, but also fundamentally changes the attack cost structure of malicious actors. Thus, “uniqueness”—or Sybil resistance—is a non-negotiable property of any character certification system.

—Eddy Lazzarin@eddylazzarin on Twitter | @eddy on Farcaster

Everything from prediction markets... to better aggregation of information

With the 2024 U.S. election coming up, prediction markets will But as an economist who studies market design, I don’t think prediction markets themselves will be transformative in 2025. Instead, prediction markets lay the foundation for more information aggregation mechanisms based on distributed technologies—mechanisms that can be used in applications ranging from community governance and sensor networks to finance.

The past year has proven this concept, but be aware that prediction markets by themselves are not always a good way to aggregate information: they can be unreliable even for global "macro" events; "Micro" issues, pre-The pool of funds may be too small to obtain meaningful signals. But researchers and technologists have decades of design frameworks for incentivizing people to (truthfully) share what they know in different information environments—from data pricing and purchasing mechanisms, to " Bayesiantruthserum”—many of which have been applied to crypto projects.

Blockchains have always been a natural choice for implementing such mechanisms - not only because they are decentralized, but also because they help enable open, auditable incentive schemes. Importantly, the blockchain also makes the output public so everyone can interpret the results in real time.

—Scott Duke Kominers@skominers on Farcaster | on Twitter

Businesses will increasingly accept stablecoins as payments

Stablecoins have found product-market fit over the past year— — This is not surprising as they are the cheapest way to send money and enable fast global payments. Stablecoins also provide a more accessible platform for entrepreneurs building new payment products: no gatekeepers, minimum balances, or proprietary SDKs. But large businesses have yet to realize the massive cost savings – and new profits – that can be made by switching to these payment channels.

While we are seeing some corporate interest in stablecoins (and early adoption in peer-to-peer payments), I expect 2025 to see a larger wave of experimentation. Small and medium-sized businesses (e.g. restaurants, coffee shops, corner stores) with strong brands, loyal audiences and painful payment costs will be the first to switch from credit cards to stablecoins. They don't benefit from credit card fraud protection (given in-person transactions), and transaction fees hurt them the most (30 cents per cup of coffee is a big chunk of lost profit!).

We should also expect large enterprises to adopt stablecoins as well. If stablecoins do indeed speed up banking, businesses will try to disintermediate payment providers – directly adding 2% to their profits. Businesses will also start looking for new solutions to problems that credit card companies currently solve, such as fraud protection and identification.

—Sam Broner@sambroner on Farcaster | on Twitter

Countries explore the possibility of putting national bonds on the blockchain Monitoring issues for CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). These products can unlock new sources of demand for the use of collateral in DeFi (decentralized finance) lending and derivatives protocols, further enhancing the integrity and robustness of these ecosystems.

So, as pro-innovation organizations around the world further explore the benefits and efficiencies of public, permissionless and immutable blockchains this year, some may pilot issuance of bonds on-chain. exampleFor example, the UK has explored digital securities through the sandbox of its financial regulator FCA (Financial Conduct Authority); the UK Treasury has also expressed interest in issuing digital gifts.

In the U.S. — with the U.S. SEC set to require next year to clear Treasury bonds over legacy, cumbersome and expensive infrastructure — expect to hear more about how blockchain can improve transparency, efficiency and participation in bond trading Degree of discussion.

—Brian Quintenz@brianquintenz on Twitter | @brianq on Farcaster

We will see wider adoption of “DUNA,” the new industry standard for U.S. blockchain networks

In 2024, Wyoming passed a new law recognizing DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) as legal entities. DUNA (decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association) or “decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association” aims to achieve decentralized governance of blockchain networks and is the only viable structure for U.S. projects. By incorporating DUNA into a decentralized legal entity structure, crypto projects and other decentralized communities can give their DAOs legitimacy—allowing for greater economic activity and insulating token holders from liability and managing taxation and compliance needs.

The DAO (the community that governs the affairs of the open blockchain network) is an essential tool to ensure that the network remains open, does not discriminate, and does not unfairly capture value. DUNA can unleash the potential of DAO, and multiple projects are currently being implemented. As the United States prepares to promote and accelerate the progress of its crypto ecosystem in 2025, I expect DUNA to become the standard for American projects. We also expect other states to adopt similar structures (Wyoming was an early mover; they were also the first state to adopt the now ubiquitous LLC)…especially as other decentralized applications outside of crypto such as physical foundations the rise of facilities/energy grids).

—Miles Jennings @milesjennings on Twitter | @milesjennings on Farcaster

Online fluid democracy moves into the real world

As dissatisfaction with current governance and voting systems grows, now Opportunities to experiment with new technology-enabled governance—not just online, but in the real world. I’ve written before about how DAOs and other decentralized communities enable us to study institutions, behavior, and rapidly evolving governance experiments at scale. But what if we could apply these learnings to real-world governance through blockchain?

We can finally use blockchain for secure, private election voting, starting with low-risk pilots to limit cybersecurity and auditing issues. But the important thing is,Blockchain also allows us to experiment with “liquid democracy” at a local level – a way for people to vote directly or by proxy. The idea was originally proposed by Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland and a prolific voting systems researcher); however, it was impractical on a large scale...until now. Recent advances in computing and connectivity, as well as blockchain, enable new forms of representative democracy. Crypto projects are already applying this concept, generating a wealth of data on how these systems work – see the results of our recent research – that localities and communities can learn from.

—Andrew Hall@ahall_research on Twitter | on Farcaster

Developers will reuse, not just retrofit infrastructure

Over the past year, teams have continued to work on blockchain Reinventing the wheel in the chain stack - yet another custom validator set, consensus protocol implementation, execution engine, programming language, RPC API. The results sometimes show slight improvements in specialized functionality, but often lack broader or basic functionality. Take SNARK's dedicated programming language as an example: while an ideal implementation might allow ideal developers to produce higher-performing SNARKs, in practice it might be less efficient in compiler optimizations, developer tools, online learning materials, and AI programming support. Other aspects cannot reach the level of general language (at least for now)...and may even cause SNARK performance to degrade.

This is why I expect more teams to leverage the contributions of others and reuse more off-the-shelf blockchain infrastructure components in 2025 - from consensus protocols and existing staked capital to proof systems . Not only does this approach help builders save a lot of time and effort, it also allows them to relentlessly focus on differentiating the value of their products/services.

The infrastructure is finally ready to build primetime-ready web3 products and services. As in other industries, these products and services will be built by teams that can successfully navigate complex supply chains, not those that scoff at “you didn’t invent it.”

—Joachim Neu@jneu_net on Twitter

Cryptocurrency companies will start with the end result (user experience) rather than letting the infrastructure determine the user experience

While blockchain technology infrastructure is interesting and varied, but many cryptocurrency companies are not just choosing their own infrastructure – to some extent, when it comes to user experience (UX), the infrastructure is being chosen for them and therefore for them. Their user choice. This is because specific technology choices at the infrastructure level are directly related to the end-user experience of the blockchain product/service.

But I believe the industry will overcome the implicit ideological hurdle here: technology should determine the ultimate user experience, not the other way around. By 2025, moreCrypto product designers will start with the end-user experience they want and then choose the appropriate infrastructure from there. Crypto startups no longer need to hyper-focus on specific infrastructure decisions before finding product-market fit—they can focus on actually finding product-market fit.

Instead of getting hung up on specific EIPs, wallet providers, intent architectures, etc., we can abstract these choices into a holistic, full-stack, plug-and-play approach. The industry is ready for this: a rich programmable block space, mature developer tools, and chain abstractions are beginning to democratize cryptocurrency design. Most technology end users don't care what language the product is written in when they use it every day. The same thing will start to happen in the cryptocurrency space.

—Mason Hall@0xMasonH on Twitter | @mason on Farcaster

“Hidden wires” could help usher in web3’s killer app

The advantages of blockchain technology make it so special , but has so far hindered its mainstream adoption. For creators and fans, blockchain unlocks connectivity, ownership, and monetization… but the industry jargon (“NFTs,” “zkRollups,” etc.) and complex designs set the stage for those who stand to benefit most from these technologies obstacles. I’ve seen this firsthand in countless conversations with media, music, and fashion executives interested in web3.

Many mass adoptions of consumer technology have followed this path: start with technology; a few iconic companies/designers abstract away the complexity; this move helps unlock some breakthrough applications. Think of the origins of email, where the SMTP protocol was hidden behind a “send” button; or of credit cards, payment channels that most users don’t consider today. Likewise, Spotify revolutionized music not by showing off file formats—but by delivering song playlists to our fingertips. As Nassim Taleb observed, "Overengineering breeds fragility. Simplicity breeds scale."

Here's why I think our industry will adopt this ethos in 2025: "Hiding the wires". The best decentralized apps have focused on more intuitive interfaces, making it as easy as tapping the screen or swiping a card. By 2025, we will see more companies designing simply and communicating clearly; successful products don’t explain but solve problems.

—Chris Lyons@chrislyons on Twitter | on Farcaster

The crypto industry finally has its own app store and discovery

When crypto apps are replaced by centralized platforms like Apple’s App Store or Google Play When blocked, they get top-level usersThe user's capabilities will be limited. But we are now seeing new app stores and marketplaces offering this distribution and discovery without restrictions. For example, Worldcoin’s World App marketplace — which not only stores identification but also allows access to “mini-apps” — made multiple apps available to hundreds of thousands of users in just a few days. Another example is the free dApp Store for Solana mobile users. These two examples also show that hardware (not just software, like phones, orbs) could be a key advantage for crypto app stores... just like Apple devices were for the early app ecosystem.

Meanwhile, there are other stores within the popular blockchain ecosystem that host thousands of decentralized applications and web3 development tools (such as Alchemy); as well as serve as game publishers and distributors Blockchain for merchants (see Ronin). However, it's not all fun and games: if the product has an existing distribution method (such as on a messaging app), it will be difficult to port it on-chain (exception: Telegram/TON network). The same goes for applications with heavy web2 distribution. But we may see more of these transplants in 2025.

—Maggie Hsu @meigga on Twitter | @maggiehsu on Farcaster

Cryptocurrency owners become cryptocurrency users

Cryptocurrency as a movement has seen significant growth in 2024, with major enactments Researchers and politicians have a positive attitude towards this. We also continue to see it grow into a financial movement (see, for example, how Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs are expanding investor access). In 2025, cryptocurrencies should further develop into a computing sport. But where will the next wave of users come from?

I think it’s time to re-engage currently “passive” cryptocurrency holders and convert them into more active users, as only 5-10% of cryptocurrency holders are active Use cryptocurrencies. We can bring the 617 million people who already own cryptocurrencies onto the chain - especially as blockchain infrastructure continues to improve and transaction fees for users decrease. This means new apps will start appearing for both existing and new users. At the same time, the early applications we’ve seen — spanning categories such as stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, gaming, social, DePINs, DAOs, and prediction markets — are also starting to become more accessible to mainstream users as communities become more Focus on user experience and other improvements.

—Daren Matsuoka@darenmatsuoka on Twitter | on Farcaster

Various industries may begin to tokenize “unconventional” assets

As the crypto industry and other emerging technologiesAs technological infrastructure matures and costs continue to fall, the practice of asset tokenization will spread widely across various industries. This will make it possible for assets previously considered inaccessible due to high cost or lack of recognition of value to not only achieve liquidity but, more importantly, participate in the global economy. AI engines can also use this information as unique data sets.

Just as fracking unlocked oil reserves once thought unreachable, tokenizing unconventional assets could redefine revenue streams in the digital age. As a result, seemingly sci-fi scenarios become more possible: For example, individuals could tokenize their biometric data; the information could then be rented out to companies via smart contracts. We are already seeing early examples of this, such as DeSci, a company using blockchain technology to bring more ownership, transparency and consent to medical data collection. We haven’t yet seen how a future like this will play out, but these types of developments will allow people to leverage previously untapped assets in a decentralized way – rather than relying on centralized intermediaries to provide them with these assets.

—Aaron Schnider@aaronschnider on Twitter