OKX Ventures Annual Report: 60+ Project Layout and 14 Major Trend Forecasts

In 2024, amid intense shifts in the global financial landscape, the crypto industry experienced profound ups and downs and restructuring. After six months of consolidation and recovery, the total industry market cap surpassed $3.8 trillion by year-end, with Bitcoin reaching a historic high of $100,000, declaring its core position in the global asset system. This is not merely a price surge — it marks the beginning of structural transformation: a US dollar liquidity cycle has taken shape, with Bitcoin at its core as an asset, ETFs and US stocks serving as fund bridges, and US-listed companies as the institutional carriers.

Bitcoin is rising to become the world's largest US dollar-denominated financial asset, serving as a key tool for hedging against US fiscal deficits and Treasury debt crises. This financial transformation has not only shaped an entirely new asset value system but also injected sustained growth momentum into the blockchain industry. The entire blockchain industry benefits from this, and OKX Ventures participates deeply in this wave of transformation with a forward-thinking attitude, remaining consistently optimistic about blockchain products' subtle yet profound impact on the traditional world over the next decade.

Part I, Looking Back at 2024: 60+ Project Portfolio, Broad布局 Across Multiple Tracks

This year, OKX Ventures has been actively increasing investment in the industry, committed to accelerating innovation and development in the crypto sector. The total cumulative investment throughout the year exceeded $100 million, covering over 60 projects and funds, with a strong focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in Solana, SUI, Aptos, TON, and BTC ecosystems, deeply excavating quality projects. From the perspective of investment distribution, infrastructure, AI projects, and BTC ecosystem account for the highest proportions, while also maintaining broad布局 across multi-chain ecosystems, DeFi, and multiple ecosystem funds.

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Beyond that, **OKX Ventures has also actively partnered with TON Ventures, Ankaa, TGH, and other fund and accelerator ecosystem partners to jointly build a thriving innovation ecosystem. Through providing capital support, strategic guidance, and technical resources, these collaborations aim to empower global entrepreneurs and help them transform ideas into reality faster and more reliably. **Whether in startup-stage incubation or growth-stage acceleration, OKX Ventures has always placed innovation at its core, committed to promoting the adoption and application of blockchain technology and injecting more vitality and possibility into the industry.

OKX Ventures deeply recognizes that the future of the blockchain industry is not merely a matter of capital investment, but rather about how to efficiently integrate global resources, pool industry wisdom, and empower innovative enterprises on that foundation. While capital serves as a driving force, it must rely more on strategic vision and systematic布局 to propel the industry forward across multi-dimensional technological innovation, ecosystem development, and market expansion. Every investment decision is not merely the flow of funds but a profound insight into the industry's prospects and support for innovative forces. From infrastructure construction to ecosystem expansion and cutting-edge technology exploration, OKX Ventures has always arranged its布局 around the industry's evolution over the next decade, striving to provide a solid foundation and broad space for the wide application and profound transformation of blockchain.

At the same time, innovation in blockchain technology cannot rely solely on capital market drivers — it depends more on visionary entrepreneurship and the continuous exploration of technical teams. OKX Ventures' mission is to help entrepreneurs who contribute value to the industry build great companies and drive their continuous breakthroughs in technology, market, and operations. This is not merely support for individual projects or teams, but laying the foundation for the entire industry's future ecosystem.

OKX Ventures believes that success in the blockchain industry does not lie in the success of a single technology or single platform, but in building an industry ecosystem that is highly inclusive, rich in innovation, and capable of self-evolution. It is this profound industry understanding and future vision that enables us to maintain a forward-looking approach amid the currents of this era's transformation, propelling the industry toward a more mature and sustainable future as it continuously evolves.

Part II, Looking Ahead to 2025: 14 Predictions, Insight into the Future

Forecast 1: Global Blockchain Will Further Compliance, Leading to a More Standardized Industry

In 2025, the regulatory environment for the blockchain industry will see significant progress, laying a solid foundation for healthy industry development. The number of licensed institutions will increase substantially, providing users with safer and more reliable services. OKX CEO Star pointed out that OKX has become the world's first cryptocurrency trading platform to obtain a full operational license in the UAE.

The custody wallet sector will see regulatory innovation, resolving the contradiction between self-custody and regulation. Star believes that OKX is launching a self-custody wallet with compliance controls for retail users, including features such as KYC trading monitoring. This innovation not only enhances user experience but also meets increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, bringing new development directions to the industry.

The macro regulatory environment will trend toward being more positive, creating favorable conditions for industry development. The UK government plans to consult on a stablecoin and crypto assets regulatory framework in early 2025, indicating that the global regulatory environment is moving toward greater clarity and support. National strategic Bitcoin reserves may also become a reality in 2025.

Institutional investor participation will increase significantly — as of December 17, Bitcoin spot ETF scale exceeded $114.97B, and MicroStrategy's Bitcoin holdings reached 439,000 coins, with a total investment cost of approximately $27.1 billion. Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the crypto industry.

The integration of technology and compliance will reach new heights, elevating standards across the entire industry. Star predicts that by 2025, compliance standards at many crypto companies will match or even exceed those of the traditional financial industry. OKX's three major business lines — OKX Exchange, OKX Web3, and OKX Simple — cover a wide range of services from trading to decentralized applications. This full-spectrum service model will become an industry standard, promoting the application and adoption of blockchain technology in more fields.

The blockchain industry in 2025 will present a more mature, standardized, and innovative face. As Star said, crypto finance is entering a new stage — one that will witness the deep integration of traditional finance and blockchain technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the global financial system.

Forecast 2: AI Agents Will Become Important Market Participants, Participating in Asset Creation, Asset Issuance, and Asset Trading

With the rapid development of extra-large language models (xLLMs) and extra-large multimodal models (xLMMs), new AI agents (AI Agents) will gradually emerge.

Agents will become the protagonists. According to research reports, the global AI agent market is expected to reach $18.11 trillion by 2030, contributing approximately $16 trillion to global GDP. The future of agent AI goes beyond traditional tools - they will become key participants in the blockchain world, capable of autonomous decision-making and action.

We expect to see more innovative AI agent application scenarios in 2025. For example, agent-to-agent interaction will become an important area, with blockchain's transparency and composability providing an ideal foundation for this. We may see agents sending funds to each other, jointly issuing tokens, or even creating new social scenarios. Additionally, decentralized agent organizations (DAOs) may also become a hot topic, with multi-agent systems working collaboratively to complete tasks, solve problems, and manage protocols.

AI agents possess high adaptability, clear goal-setting capabilities, and self-correction abilities, enabling them to make independent decisions in complex environments. In the future, these agents will have their own digital wallets, proactively create and publish content, participate in asset trading to maximize returns, and automatically issue assets based on market demand. This shift signals that AI agents will play increasingly important roles in markets and social platforms. The emergence of AI agent frameworks like Eliza, combined with agent platforms represented by Myshell, will drive this trend forward.

Finally, we expect to see more innovations in AI agent trading intentions and next-generation user trading interfaces. This may include using natural language for trading, or developing new trading systems and tools specifically designed for AI agents. As these technologies develop, the "wallet as browser" concept may eventually be realized, fundamentally changing how users interact with blockchain and AI systems.

Outlook 3: Security Projects Helping Solve AI Safety Issues

Blockchain's verifiability can indeed become an important solution for addressing AI security issues. With the rapid development of AI technology, cybersecurity issues are becoming increasingly prominent, especially in areas such as impersonation and deepfakes. Therefore, establishing "human identity verification" mechanisms is particularly important to ensure interactions between users and real individuals. 61% of organizations report that deepfake attacks have increased over the past year, with expectations of a 50% to 60% increase in the future. The complexity of AI security issues mainly manifests in two aspects: dynamic attack vectors and prompt injection vulnerabilities. The rapid iteration of AI models means new vulnerabilities emerge constantly. For example, different versions of models may exhibit vastly different behaviors, making attack methods continuously evolve.

Blockchain projects, with their decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics, can effectively address these challenges:

1. Data tracking and source verification: Blockchain can record and track data sources, ensuring the authenticity of content generation through cryptographic signatures, combating AI-generated deepfakes and fake news while safeguarding data transparency and traceability.

2. Protecting training data: Protecting datasets required for AI model training, preventing tampering or attacks, thereby ensuring data integrity and security while reducing single points of failure.

3. Recording and monitoring AI model usage: Preventing unauthorized misuse, sharing models or data on secure platforms without worrying about information leakage or tampering. Users can audit and verify AI behavior, thereby increasing trust.

OKX Ventures believes that more AI security projects will emerge in the blockchain space, enhancing user trust in AI systems.

Outlook 4: AI Penetrates Existing Sector Projects, Changing Industry Paradigms

In 2025, the deep application of AI technology will significantly transform multiple industries, including gaming, NFTs, DeFi, and social sectors.

The gaming industry may be the most impacted by AI. Global AI spending in gaming is expected to reach approximately $1.1 billion by 2025, indicating the industry's recognition of AI's potential. This includes: 1) Generative design: using algorithms to generate game content, improving development efficiency. 2) Personalized experiences: AI will analyze player behavior to provide tailored game recommendations and challenges. 3) Enhanced interactivity: intelligent NPCs will become more realistic, enhancing game immersion. 4) Smarter AI agents that improve how players interact with games, reducing the experience burden on players themselves;

Social projects are also witnessing numerous innovations. AI not only plays an important role in content generation and community interaction but also drives innovation in tokenization and decentralized economic models. In 2024, we saw AI agents like Clanker and Larry on platforms such as Farcaster introducing new asset issuance methods, demonstrating significant community engagement and economic potential, with Clanker's market cap once surpassing $100 million and LUM reaching $70 million. In the future, AI will: 1) Enable social monetization: users can earn crypto rewards through content creation and interaction. 2) Build community economies: using blockchain technology, users can directly participate in platform governance and return distribution. 3) Enhance security: protecting user privacy through decentralized identity verification.

DeFi benefits from the efficiency improvements and interaction model transformations brought by AI. 1) AI agents will become important participants in the DeFi ecosystem - these autonomous software entities can automatically execute complex trading tasks, optimize investment strategies, and monitor market dynamics in real-time. 2) AI-driven investment platforms and trading tools can also lower user entry barriers, integrating DeFi protocols across multiple chains to provide users with automated liquidity investment strategies, reducing the threshold for user participation in DeFi and improving asset management efficiency. 3) AI-assisted security will play a key role in smart contract vulnerability detection and optimization. Through deep learning and pattern recognition, AI can establish baselines for normal trading behavior and issue alerts upon detecting anomalous behavior, thereby enhancing DeFi platform security. By 2025, decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume is expected to reach $4 trillion, with total value locked (TVL) exceeding $200 billion. OKX Ventures believes there may be over 1 million AI agents active on-chain, further driving the development of the DeFi ecosystem.

OKX Ventures predicts that 2025 will be a year of deep integration between AI and various industries. As technology develops and infrastructure matures, these fields will welcome new opportunities and challenges, providing users with richer and safer experiences.

Outlook 5: Blockchain Enhances Matching Efficiency for AI Elements

Blockchain technology is improving the matching efficiency of AI elements across multiple dimensions, primarily including: data elements, computing power elements, model elements, and capital elements. Taking the data market as an example, AI's demand growth for data far lags behind supply. ChatGPT training used 300 billion words, while the latest model DBRX used 12 trillion data points. AI training's demand for public human text count

According to demand, it may exceed the total existing supply as early as 2026.

OKX Ventures is optimistic about better matching of data factor resources, having invested in projects such as Space and Time, Privasea, 0G and CARV. Space and Time provides a decentralized data warehouse, efficiently indexing and querying on-chain and off-chain data. Privasea conducts AI computational analysis through FHE encryption, protecting privacy. CARV provides a modular data layer, supplying high-quality user profiles and behavioral data for AI. 0G can also significantly enhance blockchain's ability to process data in the AI era. These projects all improve AI data acquisition, processing and utilization efficiency.

In other areas, such as computing power, io.net can optimize the allocation of large-scale distributed computing resources required by AI. The AI chip market is expected to maintain steady growth. In 2023, data center AI chip sales reached $154 billion, with projected growth of 41% in 2025-2026. Edge computing AI will become an important trend, supporting faster data processing and better privacy protection.

OKX Ventures is optimistic that more outstanding AI startups will improve AI factor matching efficiency across multiple levels such as data sharing, computing power allocation, and model collaboration, providing strong support for further AI development. This synergy will drive AI to achieve breakthrough applications in more fields, bringing profound impact to all industries.

Outlook 6: Babylon and BTC L2 Welcome Bitcoin's DeFi Summer

Looking ahead to 2025, Bitcoin ecosystem TVL and DeFi activity will achieve breakthroughs. As of October 2024, Babylon has locked over 57,288 Bitcoin, with a total value of $6 billion. As a leading project in the BTC ecosystem, Babylon has become a key bridge connecting Bitcoin with various PoS chains. Projects such as Sat Layer and Lombard, as components of the Babylon ecosystem, will further unleash Bitcoin's potential by deploying smart contracts. Bitlayer, Merlin, Bsquared Network and Arch Network are exploring innovative scaling solutions, providing more powerful infrastructure support for Bitcoin DeFi.

Meanwhile, technologies such as UTXO Stack are dedicated to enhancing Bitcoin's smart contract functionality. These innovations will greatly improve transaction throughput, reduce fees, and pave the way for building more complex DeFi applications.

The Bitcoin DeFi field will see richer and more diverse application scenarios. Bounce Bit, Corn and Merlin are developing on-chain lending and innovative liquidity provision mechanisms. Platforms such as Solv Protocol and Bedrock will provide Bitcoin holders with more diverse return generation pathways. Zeus and Lombard are exploring how to more deeply integrate Bitcoin's value into the DeFi ecosystem. By 2025, Bitcoin DEX trading volume may exceed $4 trillion, accounting for 20% of spot trading volume on centralized exchanges.

User experience improvement will be another focus. Wallet projects such as Unisat are dedicated to simplifying user interaction with Bitcoin DeFi. Arch Network and Sat Layer are developing innovative cross-chain solutions, enhancing cross-chain interoperability, enabling users to transfer and use assets more conveniently between different blockchain ecosystems.

Overall, the Bitcoin ecosystem in 2025 will present a more diversified and interconnected landscape. Innovations from infrastructure to application levels will drive Bitcoin's transformation from pure value storage to comprehensive financial infrastructure, providing users with richer and more efficient financial service options.

Outlook 7: Diversification and Deep Development of Bitcoin Native Innovation

At the technical level, expansion of Bitcoin's scripting language is an important direction. Beyond the widely discussed OP_CAT, Bitcoin core developers are actively exploring the introduction of opcodes such as OP_GROUP, OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) and OP_TLUV. These new opcodes will greatly enhance Bitcoin's programmability, laying the foundation for more complex smart contracts and application scenarios. For example, OP_GROUP may allow creation of fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, while CTV is expected to enable pre-signed transactions, significantly improving transaction efficiency.

The Lightning Network, as Bitcoin's second-layer scaling solution, is expected to welcome important upgrades in 2025. The introduction of channel factories may allow batch creation of payment channels, significantly reducing opening costs. Improvements to the bidirectional fund injection mechanism will increase channel fund utilization efficiency. Additionally, integration of Taproot Assets is expected to achieve more private and efficient asset transfers, further expanding the application scope of the Lightning Network.

Privacy enhancement is another important direction that the Bitcoin community has been actively researching. Improving transaction privacy without sacrificing auditability is key to future development. Confidential Transactions technology may be introduced to hide transaction amounts, while optimization of CoinJoin mixing technology will further enhance transaction anonymity. Meanwhile, application of zero-knowledge proof technologies such as zk-SNARKs on Bitcoin is also being actively explored, which may bring revolutionary privacy protection capabilities to Bitcoin.

At the application level, the Bitcoin network is fostering diverse innovations, covering decentralized social networks, gaming and the metaverse, as well as open scientific research. These applications integrate technologies such as micropayments, decentralized identity, content verification, Ordinals, and RGB protocols, not only bringing new business models to social media and gaming industries, but also enhancing research transparency and credibility through transparent fund management, data integrity protection, and decentralized evaluation mechanisms. These diversified applications demonstrate Bitcoin's immense potential as decentralized infrastructure, far beyond traditional finance, laying a solid foundation for the future of the digital world.

Outlook 8: Dual Breakthroughs in Ethereum Ecosystem Technology and Ecology

In 2025, the Ethereum ecosystem is expected to experience significant development, with notable breakthroughs at both technical and ecological levels. In scaling, the number of L2 and L3 solutions is expected to exceed 2,000, with Ethereum truly achieving 200x scaling. After the Pectra upgrade, increased blob capacity will further reduce rollup costs, driving daily trading volume to surpass 100 million transactions. These improvements will provide stronger processing power for the Ethereum network, laying the foundation for supporting large-scale users.

The widespread adoption of account abstraction technology will also be an important advancement. Implementation of EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 will enable over 25% of on-chain transactions to adopt account abstraction methods, allowing users to pay gas fees with arbitrary tokens. After EIP-5003 achieves full account abstraction, it will change how users interact with smart contracts, improving the usability of Web3 applications. This change will make it easier for ordinary users to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem, driving the adoption of decentralized applications.

In staking mechanism optimization, EIP-7251 allows validators to stake more than 32 ETH to earn additional returns. Meanwhile, permissionless staking pools through EIP-6110 and EIP

The implementation of EIP-7002 has made it possible for the total Ethereum staking amount to potentially exceed 30 million, with stable annual returns between 3-4%. This mechanism not only enhances network security but also attracts more users to participate in staking.

Zero-knowledge proof technology will see widespread application in the Ethereum ecosystem. Universal zk VMs can generate block proofs within 30 seconds and are integrated into mainstream L2 networks, supporting privacy computing functions and achieving "privacy as a service." While enhancing privacy protection, these technologies maintain security synchronization with the Ethereum mainnet, providing users with more options.

In terms of network efficiency, through Verkle Trees, EOF optimization, and Peer DAS improvements in the Amsterdam upgrade, Ethereum validator storage burden will be reduced and EVM execution efficiency enhanced. Network throughput is expected to increase by more than 10 times. These technical updates will significantly strengthen Ethereum's performance and support the development of future modular blockchain architectures.

Ecosystem integration will also be an important direction for 2025. Native interoperability ZK stacks become standard for new rollups, and efficient validity proof clusters gradually form. Measures such as EIP-7623 increasing calldata costs and EIP-7639 discontinuing service for specific historical data will optimize network resource allocation. These improvements lay the foundation for modular blockchain networks and drive Ethereum's transformation from technology-driven to application-driven.

The Beam Chain upgrade will bring important changes to the Ethereum consensus layer, including block production time reduced to 4 seconds, staking threshold lowered to 1 ETH, and the introduction of zero-knowledge proof technology. These changes not only improve network performance but also enhance decentralization, providing more possibilities for future development.

Outlook 9: RWA and Ethereum RWA Prospects

The Ethereum ecosystem is ushering in a new leap forward. Improvements in network performance, technological innovation, and ecosystem expansion complement the explosion of the RWA market, driving Ethereum to new heights. As more real-world assets are tokenized and migrated on-chain, Ethereum not only solidifies its position as a leader in decentralized applications and smart contract platforms, but also plays a key role in connecting traditional finance with decentralized finance. As of the end of 2024, the total market value of on-chain tokenized assets exceeded $14 billion, with Ethereum occupying nearly 80% of the market share, becoming the core driving force for development in this field.

**The Rise of Tokenized Assets.** Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and UBS are accelerating their embrace of tokenized financial assets. Ethereum, with its mature technical architecture, security, decentralization, and stability, has become the infrastructure platform of choice for institutions. The tokenized treasury market has become a core component of the on-chain DeFi ecosystem, with its total value locked exceeding $3 billion, accounting for 21.38% of the total RWA market value. This market is providing low-risk, high-collateral for DeFi, driving the rapid development of decentralized lending and derivatives markets.

Through smart contract platforms and distributed validator networks, Ethereum provides a secure, efficient, and transparent migration path for traditional financial assets. Tokenized assets can achieve faster and lower-cost trading and settlement on-chain, thereby significantly improving the efficiency of financial markets. As Ethereum infrastructure continues to upgrade, network trading costs are further declining, providing stronger support for RWA applications.

**Impact on Ethereum Economic Model.** The expansion of RWA is not only an expansion of ecosystem scale but also injects new momentum into Ethereum's economic model. On-chain activity and trading fees will become important revenue sources for Ethereum in the future. According to market data predictions, fees from RWA-related on-chain activities are expected to exceed $100 billion annually. This figure is 40 times the current annual revenue of Ethereum and will significantly enhance ETH's value capture capability, becoming an important pillar of the Ethereum economic system.

Data from the end of 2024 shows that RWA TVL grew 25% year-over-year to reach $8.4 billion, with Ethereum contributing $1.7 billion in a single month, the highest increase during the year. Stablecoins play an important role in this trend, with a total market value exceeding $200 billion. Synthetic Dollar category growth is particularly significant, with a monthly growth rate of up to 60% and TVL reaching $1.62 billion, accounting for 52% of the overall RWA market. Innovative stablecoins such as Ethena and Usual are deeply integrated with RWA, not only driving innovation in on-chain lending and liquidity markets, but also further strengthening Ethereum's dominant position in high-value trading.

**Policy and Market Drivers.** Further clarification of regulation will provide strong support for the rapid expansion of RWA. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to take a more crypto-friendly stance in 2025. In addition, regions such as Singapore and Europe are also actively advancing regulatory frameworks for tokenized financial assets, injecting more compliance and transparency into the market and removing obstacles for institutional capital to enter the RWA field. This policy shift will attract more institutional participation to the Ethereum ecosystem, driving explosive growth in on-chain assets and trading volume.

Outlook 10: Solana's Continued Leadership

Solana continues to solidify its leading position in the high-performance public chain sector through its technological advantages. By upgrading Gulf Stream parallel processing technology, its TPS is expected to exceed 100,000 in 2025. Meanwhile, the application of state compression technology reduces the hardware threshold for validator nodes, cutting cost burden by 30%.

Solana ecosystem activity reached new heights in 2024, with daily on-chain trading volume approaching $200 million, total active wallets of approximately 250 million, and daily active addresses hitting a record high of 8.8 million. Its unique state rent mechanism and validator voting fees provide value support for SOL beyond trading fees, with weekly fee revenue reaching $36.8 million, a 62% year-over-year increase. Among them, Jito contributed over 55% of fee revenue through MEV activity, further driving Solana ecosystem growth.

Solana's developer ecosystem performance is impressive, with 2,500-3,000 monthly active developers, and developer three-month retention rates improved from 31% to over 50%. In terms of tech stack, over half of developers have at least 3 years of blockchain development experience, ensuring higher quality application output in the ecosystem. Leading protocols such as Jupiter and Raydium are expected to break through $20 billion in TVL in 2025, occupying over 35% of total network DEX trading volume.

Solana is increasingly being seen as a chip in the AI-driven casino, and its application scenarios combined with Agents may further deepen, especially in speculative trading, DeFi, and more dApp innovations, becoming a core driver for user growth and technology application.

Outlook 11: The Rise and Diversification of Move-based Public Chains

Sui and Aptos, as representative public chains of the Move language, will achieve important breakthroughs in 2025. **Sui demonstrates clear advantages in gaming, social, and especially financial application scenarios through its unique parallel execution engine and object-level ownership model.** As of Q4 2024, Sui's TVL has exceeded $2 billion, growing 2,700% year-to-date, leaping to blockchain networks

```html TVL ranked eighth.On-chain trading volume of nearly 8 billion transactions, 68 million total accounts, demonstrating strong ecosystem activity, primarily driven by protocols like Navi Protocol and Cetus. With Circle introducing native USDC and over $400 million in stablecoin inflows, Sui's liquidity has significantly improved. Sui's zkLogin feature lowers the barrier to entry for Web3 users, allowing users to log in to dApps using credentials from networks like Google or Facebook, showing immense potential in DeFi and on-chain gaming. Meanwhile, the release of the Sui Play 0x1 game console further expands into hardware, supporting on-chain games while being compatible with traditional gaming platforms (such as Steam, Epic Games Store), attracting more traditional gamers into Web3.

Aptos, leveraging its improved Move virtual machine and LayerZero cross-chain infrastructure, has built a complete ecosystem in DeFi, with daily active users expected to surpass 1 million. Aptos experienced explosive growth in 2024, with TVL increasing 19x year-over-year to reach nearly $2 billion, and the on-chain stablecoin ecosystem continuing to expand, including the deployment of native USDT and USDC further enhancing liquidity. Additionally, Aptos has gained widespread recognition from institutional investors, with BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin's FOBXX deploying on the Aptos chain, and a Spanish bank even allocating 2% of its fund to the Bitwise Aptos Staking ETP listed on Switzerland's SIX. In terms of developer ecosystem, Aptos' developer count grew 96% year-over-year, with on-chain contract deployments reaching 3,000, showcasing ecosystem vitality.

The market cap of both chains' native tokens is poised to enter the global top ten, with total value locked (TVL) expected to reach more than 5x current levels.

Outlook 12: Emerging Chains - Monad and Berachain Bring Hope

Monad, representing the new generation of parallel EVMs, is rapidly rising, with its ecosystem development and technical innovations garnering significant attention. In the Devnet phase, Monad achieved real performance testing of over 10,000 TPS, with block times of just 1 second and single-slot finality, fully demonstrating the potential of its efficient architecture. Monad's core optimizations include the Monad BFT consensus mechanism, optimistic parallel execution, asynchronous execution (delayed execution), and the Monad DB database optimized specifically for EVM storage patterns. These technological breakthroughs not only significantly improve throughput and trading speed but also markedly reduce network costs. Furthermore, Monad's integration with cross-chain protocols like LayerZero and Wormhole enhances cross-chain interoperability and further enriches its ecosystem.

The recently established Monad Foundation focuses on decentralized governance and ecosystem development, promoting a validator-led governance model and supporting community-driven improvement proposals. The Foundation also provides developers with detailed documentation, technical resources, and marketing support to drive dApp building and ecosystem collaboration. Nearly 100 independent protocols and dApps have committed to building on Monad, with ecosystem size expected to double at mainnet launch.

Berachain is rapidly rising, with its ecosystem already attracting commitments from over 270 projects, mostly consumer applications, covering DeFi, GameFi, Social, and DePIN, demonstrating diversity and vitality. In the testnet phase (B2), Berachain achieved over 14 million transactions, with active addresses surpassing 600,000 and unique addresses reaching 1 million. Its core innovation lies in the unique PoL (Proof of Liquidity) consensus mechanism, which significantly boosts TVL through liquidity staking while providing strong growth momentum for ecosystem projects.

Berachain's modular design further enhances scalability, supporting chain abstraction and combining with infrastructure like Particle Network to provide developers with flexibility and efficient tools. Additionally, its economic model deeply aligns the interests of users, developers, and validators through staking mechanisms and built-in incentives, ensuring sustainable ecosystem development.

In 2025, the Layer1 market will form a multi-tiered competitive landscape. Ethereum continues to top the market cap rankings, while next-generation chains like Solana, Sui, and Aptos will continue growing their market share. Emerging chains like Monad and Berachain inject new vitality through technical innovation and unique ecosystems, bringing more possibilities to the industry.

Outlook 13: TON and Kaia's Demonstration Effect Will Bring More Internet Companies

The success paths of TON and Kaia represent the core models of next-generation Web3 applications: "user-traffic-centric hyper-financialization innovation" and "seamless integration of Web2.5 experience". TON leverages Telegram's global 900 million user base, achieving imperceptible migration of on-chain functionality through its mini-app ecosystem and TON Space wallet, becoming a representative of blockchain mass adoption. In 2024, TON's market cap surpassed $25 billion, on-chain trading volume reached $300 million/day, active wallets exceeded 36 million, and daily active addresses even briefly surpassed Ethereum, opening new models for mass adoption of on-chain services. TON's mini-apps are driving geometric growth in user engagement, while laying the foundation for broader Web3 application scenarios through support for stablecoins and cross-chain payment mechanisms.

Kaia, as a blockchain platform launched through deep collaboration between Kakao and Line, rapidly attracts users and developers by deeply cultivating the mobile super-app ecosystem in the Asian market. Kaia already has 30 million unique wallet addresses, has processed over 1.3 billion transactions, with peak daily on-chain trading volume reaching tens of millions of dollars. Its ecosystem integrates DeFi, NFT, payment, and AI services, hosting over 420 dApps with up to 7 million active users. Kaia's on-chain DEX swap trading volume has surpassed $400 million, and more DeFi infrastructure is being introduced to enhance liquidity support.

The success of TON and Kaia not only demonstrates that Web3 applications have the potential to rapidly expand from social platforms to financial and utility scenarios, but also shows how, under Web2.5 logic, billion-dollar projects can be incubated through existing traffic platforms. The mini-app model not only effectively lowers the barrier to entry for Web3 but also drives high-frequency on-chain trading and scenario diversification through the traffic advantages of super-apps. We predict that ecosystems relying on high user bases and traffic conversion capabilities will spawn more projects with billion-dollar market caps—from on-chain payments and decentralized commerce to asset management and RWA (real-world assets), the combination of new application innovation and liquidity will become the next growth engine.

Outlook 14: Decentralized Science (DeSci): New Force Reshaping Research Economics

For a long time, the traditional research system has faced issues such as centralized resource allocation, data opacity, and hindered innovation. Decentralized Science (DeSci) is reshaping research funding, collaboration, and intellectual property management through blockchain technology and tokenization mechanisms, injecting new vitality into the research economy.

The core innovation of DeSci lies in fund allocation and intellectual property management. IP-NFT not only provides legal protection for research achievements but also enables researchers, communities, and inv ``` investment investors jointly participate in funding and return distribution. For example, Molecule has allocated $20 million through the IP-NFT protocol to support multiple biomedical research projects, while its ecosystem's TVL has reached $30 million and continues to grow.

In the medical data sector, De Sci projects have also demonstrated tremendous potential. Amino Chain is developing a decentralized biosample marketplace through a $50 million funding round, helping patients gain control over their data usage rights and profit from it, while also reducing sample acquisition costs for research institutions. Similarly, Genomes DAO leverages a decentralized genomic database to provide solutions for personalized medicine and data privacy.

In scientific publishing, Research Hub has completed 2,800 peer reviews through token rewards, reducing the average turnaround time to 9 days, far superior to traditional journals' 70-98 days, significantly improving scientific transparency and efficiency.

Additionally, research DAOs such as Vita DAO enable community-driven scientific funding through governance tokens, reducing intermediaries and minimizing fund waste. As the regulatory environment gradually clarifies and institutional participation increases, on-chain scientific funding is expected to further scale, driving intellectual property commercialization, open publishing, and further advancement in medical data management.

The rise of decentralized science is propelling scientific research from closed to open, from centralized to democratic. De Sci's transparent mechanisms, efficient collaboration, and data-sharing models will bring far-reaching impacts on global scientific innovation.

In Closing, About OKX Ventures

OKX Ventures is steadfastly committed to embracing the future of decentralized development, far beyond mere financial returns. In our view, decentralization is not merely a direction for technological innovation—it is a force that disrupts tradition and reshapes industry order, carrying profound reflections on individual freedom, value distribution, and social structure. We deeply understand that the true force driving decentralized development is not solely financial support, but rather comprehensive resource empowerment, strategic collaboration, and the advancement of technological innovation to genuinely achieve the落地 of decentralized ideals. OKX Ventures takes a long-term perspective and consistently places serving decentralized innovation at the core of its investment philosophy, rather than pursuing short-term financial returns.

We are not traditional investors in the conventional sense. We are not merely "capital providers." We are partners who "provide services," "offer resources," and empower entrepreneurs. In this regard, OKX Ventures is dedicated to being a long-term supporter and advocate for projects, accompanying every entrepreneurial partner through every step of growth. We are committed not only to discovering excellent teams, products, and technologies, but more importantly, through resource integration and deep empowerment, helping these innovative projects gain a firm footing in the market and genuinely unlock their potential.

At the same time, OKX Ventures also plays the role of a connector, serving as a vital bridge between projects and the OKX Group. Through deep collaboration with the OKX ecosystem, OKX Ventures provides projects with a multi-dimensional support platform, including OKX Web3 Wallet, NFT Marketplace, X Layer, and more, helping projects gain strategic support across technology, market, users, and ecosystem dimensions. OKX Ventures leverages OKX's years of industry积累 and deep cultivation to provide platform resources and industry chain support for the rapid development of blockchain projects, helping them stand out in intense competition.

What we focus on is the intrinsic development of the industry itself, rather than short-term market fluctuations. OKX Ventures places greater emphasis on genuine innovation within the industry—not just theoretical breakthroughs, but new applications with operational feasibility, tangible user growth, and steady expansion of the overall industry scale. We believe that as blockchain technology matures and application scenarios continue to expand, the decentralized industry will usher in a profound period of红利 over the next 3 to 5 years, with tremendous market opportunities following. OKX Ventures will continue to stand at the forefront of this trend, leveraging deep industry insight, strong resource advantages, and long-term strategic vision to empower industry innovation and drive the widespread application and far-reaching impact of blockchain technology globally.

Disclaimer

This article may contain product-related content not applicable to your region. This article is only committed to providing general information and does not accept responsibility for any factual errors or omissions herein. This article represents only the author's personal opinions and does not constitute the views of OKX. This article is not intended to provide any advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to purchase, sell, or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Holdings in digital assets (including stablecoins) involve high risk and may fluctuate significantly, or even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. For questions regarding your specific circumstances, please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals. The information contained in this article (including market data and statistical information, if any) is for general reference purposes only. Although we have taken all reasonable precautions in preparing such data and charts, we assume no liability for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in its entirety, and excerpts of 100 words or less may be used, provided that such use is non-commercial in nature. Any reproduction or distribution of the full article must prominently state: "Copyright © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article name and include attribution, for example: "Article name, [author name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX." Some content may have been generated or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Derivative works and other uses of this article are not permitted.

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