2025 Crypto Landscape: Battle of Virtual Machines, Rise of Chain Abstraction, and a New Wave of AI Explosion

Original Article Title: 5 narratives to watch in 2025.
Original Article Author: 0xNairolf, Crypto Kol
Original Article Translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: This article looks ahead to key trends in the crypto space for 2025, including the rise of altVMs and Chain abstraction technology driving cross-chain transactions and a more user-friendly experience. Next-gen L1 platforms and Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) will continue to evolve, with AI technology, especially AI agents, playing a crucial role in more applications. Meanwhile, projects like pendle fi and nillionnetwork will also see new breakthroughs, injecting fresh vitality into the crypto market.

Below is the original content (lightly reorganized for readability):

What I'm most excited to see develop in 2025 is:

altVMs

altVMs have had a strong showing this year. The fuel network has successfully launched its mainnet, cartesiproject continues to progress, and MoveVM has seen some adoption with support from Aptos, SuiNetwork, and movementlabsxyz. 2025 could be the year of promise for altVMs, ushering in the next wave of on-chain applications.

fluentxyz and its hybrid execution approach will play a key role in this space, with Fluent possibly becoming the preferred solution for developers looking for the most comprehensive and flexible way to build applications by integrating EVM, SVM, and Wasm in one execution environment. The coolest part? This design is scalable, meaning any VM can be added, making it potentially the "ultimate BOSS" of VMs.

Chain Abstraction

Chain abstraction shone brightly in 2024, initially just a rough idea: create a user experience that enables smooth operation even with hundreds of chains working together, allowing users to interact as seamlessly as with a single chain. No more need to switch wallets, manage multiple gas tokens, or worst——deal with cross-chain bridges.

UniversalX, released by ParticleNtwrk, allows you to transact any token on any chain through a single interface, resembling Binance. However, on-chain, many new products will emerge, and more importantly, many existing projects will start using these solutions. This narrative is highly worth watching, showcasing true collaboration between EverclearOrg, SOCKETProtocol, NEARProtocol, sedaprotocol, and routescan io. 2025 will be the year to onboard users onto these new solutions.

L1s

A crypto year is not as exciting without new L1s, and Sui and Aptos are clearly the stars of 2024 in this space. For 2025? We have much to look forward to. monad xyz, berachain, and HyperliquidX could form the "holy trinity." The release of Hyperliquid's HyperEVM is noteworthy, especially given the recent buzz around Hyperliquid. How the entire Hyperliquid ecosystem connects with exchanges will be an exciting aspect to watch.

RaaS

This is a less-discussed narrative; why is that? Perhaps because it's a mundane industry, but looking back, the mundane industries are often the most fascinating. In 2024, Rollups and L2s have been hot topics in the crypto space, spoiler alert: this trend isn't changing anytime soon. As inkonchain and AbstractChain roll out in the coming months, the debate about L2 will continue, but one thing is clear: L2 will be on the rise.

Whether general-purpose or application-specific, the digit speaks for itself. Platforms like Calderaxyz, a Rollup-As-A-Service, have already onboarded about 100 chains this year, offering numerous integrations and customizations from day one. conduitxyz and alt layer are also following the same pattern. The demand for RaaS providers is hard to ignore.

AI

According to kaitoai's data, AI has captured over 40% of the spotlight this year, which is just insane. My gut feeling is that this is only the beginning. The Eliza GitHub repository from ai16zdao has been one of the most popular projects in recent months. Could this be a pathway to onboard new developers into the crypto space? Time will tell, but it certainly looks like an interesting Trojan Horse.

We've already seen the first real-world use case of the aixbt agent, built by virtuals io, gaining significant attention in the CT community while providing very accurate information. Will our future revolve around the idea of interacting with AI agents? Who knows, but by 2025, more AI agents will take on tasks once performed by humans.

Other mentioned projects:

pendle fi continues its exponential growth and can now be seen as a DeFi OG. $10B TVL by 2025?

kaitoai is leading the charge in InfoFi, what will the future hold? Perhaps next year can give us an answer.

Polymer Labs will emerge as a strong contender in the interoperability space, which I believe will be a key topic in 2025.

OndoFinance is bringing major players onto the chain, and RWA and tokenization will continue to exist, but they have not yet broken through.

Will 2025 be a more regulatory-friendly year?

nillionnetwork's mainnet is set to launch in February, and with increasing focus on privacy concerns, this could be a significant breakthrough. Bonus point? It could trigger a new wave of on-chain application frenzy.

See you in 2025

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