Interpretation of Messari’s 2025 Crypto Market Outlook Report

I. Overview

Messari’s latest 190-page report covers the current state of the crypto market, analysis of various sectors, and analysts’ views. The report employs analytical frameworks such as blockchain space economics, ecosystem valuation, and narrative economics.

II. Macroeconomic Environment

1. Economic and Regulatory Outlook

2025 will be a crucial year for the reform of U.S. encryption policy. FIT21 and the stablecoin bill are expected to drive the standardization of the global crypto market regulatory framework. However, there is still uncertainty regarding future policy directions.

Multiple institutions predict that the market trend in 2025 will present a “banana shape”: Q1 will reach a new high in the first half, Q2 will undergo significant adjustments, and Q3 and Q4 will recover to set new highs for the year.

2. Institutional Trends

In 2024, institutions will mainly focus on Bitcoin/ETH spot ETF applications and operations, as well as promoting RWA business primarily based on tokenization of US Treasury bonds. The boundaries between fintech, payments, and encryption are becoming increasingly blurred.

Institutional investors mainly adopt the “barbell strategy” of artificial intelligence and DePin, with financing amounts in these two areas growing approximately 100% and 300% year-on-year, respectively.

3. User Distribution

It is estimated that there are about 30 to 60 million real monthly active users among active addresses. Users are mainly distributed across Phantom wallet, stablecoins, Telegram mini-programs, prediction markets, a certain trading platform, and a certain DEX.

In 2025, the growth of on-chain users will rely more on the product capabilities of Dapps, rather than on events such as new Bitcoin highs or the explosive rise of popular tokens.

3. Track Analysis

Bitcoin

• Inscriptions/Runes are expected to regain attention with the resurgence of the NFT market.
• The BitVM2 project will make progress.
• BTC staking projects should focus on increasing the participation of BTC holders.

Ethereum

• The status of ETH spot ETF is more solid after being approved.
• The upgraded Blob pricing mechanism in Cancun makes it difficult for L1 to effectively capture DA fees from L2.
• The Ethereum ecosystem remains the strongest L1 ecosystem.

Solana

Key events for Solana in 2025 include:

• Firedancer client released
• The MetaDAO prediction market governance protocol is widely adopted.
• The new large-scale DePin project has landed.
• The rise of AI agent applications
• SOL Spot ETF Approved

Other L1 and infrastructure

• High-performance monolithic L1s such as Monad and Sonic will join the competition.
• Excess supply of block space, enhanced voice of developers
• The focus of modular public chains has shifted from DA to cross-chain interoperability.
• The new generation of high-performance L2s such as Mega and UniChain will be launched.
• New developments will occur in ecosystems such as Avalanche and Cosmos.

DeFi

• The proportion of PerpDEX trading volume is expected to increase.
• RWA will focus on the tokenization of US debt and on-chain yield output.
• In terms of points finance, Pendle occupies a key ecological position.
• A new model of anti-MEV solutions has emerged

AI x Crypto

• Decentralized computing networks, coordination platforms, AI tool services, and other segmented tracks are worth paying attention to.
• AI agents will achieve on-chain implementation, distinguishing themselves with AI-related tokens.
• The open-source AGI project SentientLabs is gaining attention.

DePin

• Divided into Physical Resource Network ( PRN ) and Digital Resource Network ( DRN )
• The prospects for PRN projects such as renewable energy and geographic information, as well as DRN projects like Filecoin, are promising.
• Some trading platforms will challenge Solana’s dominance in the DePin space.

consumer application

• Web3 game mechanics shift from Play2Airdrop to Pay2Airdrop
• Popular token issuance platforms are trending towards gamification and personalized design.
• The NFT market is expected to revive, and consumer chain projects are worth looking forward to.