DWF Ventures 2025 Predictions: DeFi, AI, Stablecoins, and Consumer Applications Will Be the Key Narratives

Author: DWF Ventures

Translation: Fu Ruhe, Odaily Planet Daily

In 2024, the crypto industry attracted significant attention from institutional investors, with ETFs and stablecoins experiencing steady growth. As a result, DWF Ventures holds an optimistic outlook for the overall crypto sector in 2025 and anticipates capital inflows shifting on-chain. Key trends DWF Ventures is watching for 2025 include:

• Stablecoins

• DeFi

• Consumer-facing applications

• AI

Stablecoins

Tether and Circle have long dominated stablecoin growth. While stablecoins are primarily used as mediums of exchange and payment, we believe their role as assets is also gradually strengthening. The profitability of Tether and Circle has drawn more traditional fintech companies into the stablecoin space.

• Stripe’s acquisition of Stablecoin further demonstrates traditional fintech players’ strong interest in this market.

• PayPal is focusing on PYUSD and driving its adoption on Solana by offering yields as high as 20%.

• USDtb, launched in partnership with BlackRock, provides exposure to RWA yields via the Usual platform, while the launch of iUSDe marks a further convergence—bringing regulated, high DeFi yields into traditional finance for the first time.

In addition, DWF Labs is incubating Falcoin Stable, a high-yield stablecoin project scheduled to launch this year.

Therefore, we believe that with institutions accelerating their entry, stablecoin applications will experience explosive growth in 2025, and yield growth will benefit all users.

DeFi

Alongside stablecoin growth, DeFi has also made notable progress. Usage across many DeFi protocols has surged rapidly, with protocol revenues for Aave and Pendle reaching new highs.

Spot and perpetual contract trading volumes on both DEXs and CEXs have doubled since the beginning of the year, primarily driven by platforms such as Uniswap, Raydium Protocol, and Hyperliquid.

As more liquidity flows into the ecosystem, we expect to see greater innovation, particularly in yield layers and lending mechanisms.

With technological advancements in throughput, latency, and execution, along with upcoming projects like Monad, MegaETH, and Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM, momentum for DeFi innovation will further accelerate.

Consumer-Facing Applications

Consumer-facing applications aim to lower the barrier to entry for non-crypto-native users.

TON's mini-apps are one example, allowing users to get started quickly via the Telegram platform without needing to create wallets or back up seed phrases, ultimately guiding them into the on-chain world.

Mobile-first experiences are gaining traction, with well-known protocols like Jupiter, as well as trading tools such as Moonshot, Photon, BONKbot, and ApePro, becoming increasingly popular. Therefore, in 2025, protocols that enhance user experience and incorporate stronger retention mechanisms will capture larger market share.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In recent months, AI agents have exploded within the crypto community, with aixbt consistently topping popularity charts. These bots process information and generate content at astonishing speeds, operating around the clock without rest, far surpassing human capabilities.

Currently, AI agents are involved in multiple domains, including discovering security vulnerabilities, evaluating code, no-code frameworks, data analysis, and fund investing. We believe that with OpenAI's release of o1 enabling more human-like behavior, the next wave of innovation will unlock even more compelling use cases, especially in commercialization.

The number of AI agents will continue to grow, and competition will intensify. Finding product-market fit (PMF) will be key to standing out. With widespread adoption of AI agents, decentralized AI infrastructure will rapidly develop across all layers of the crypto ecosystem.