Introduction

So the bustling year 2024 has passed, a series of events that played a pivotal role in the blockchain decade have been established. Bitcoin, Ethereum spot ETF were approved, Mr. Donald Trump became the President of the United States, along with the appointment of a series of crypto supporters into the government apparatus. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler resigned, ending the days of suppression. It is not an exaggeration to say that 2024 is a pivotal year for the next decade of the cryptocurrency market.

If 2024 is the pivotal year, then 2025 will be the year of the first results of previous efforts. 2025 is equal to 2+0+2+5 = 9, according to numerology, number 9, the last number in the 0-9 series, symbolizes completion, results, the end of a cycle to open a new beginning.

It is quite similar to our market where the years of efforts to bring Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market from worthless to a nationally recognized asset class.

Views of large organizations

To kick off the “fruitful year” of 2025, we will name 25 notable coins, but first, let's get to the market commentary from major organizations.

Most organizations believe that the macro situation in 2025 will be positive for the financial market in general. The Fed's monetary easing policy and support from the US government will help the crypto market become more liquid. ETFs continue to be the destination for capital flows from traditional investors, along with laws gradually being approved to bring the crypto market into a framework, creating conditions for project development.

Fed's expected interest rate target for 2024-2027. Source: US Federal Reserve

Besides Bitcoin being the destination of cash flow as a store of value, organizations also believe that Ethereum will continue to be competed by other layer-1s such as Solana, Sui, TON.

Looking at market niches, Binance, Coinbase, Messari, and a16z all identified stablecoins, payments, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, AI, and user experience improvement as areas with positive growth this year.

This is quite reasonable when these pieces are related to the law and have been held back for a long time, they will be released when the legal corridor is clear. As for user experience, it is an almost mandatory criterion to bring crypto and blockchain to the mainstream.

↑↑: very bullish; ↑: buillish; -: neutral or no opinion

The new wind AI Agent, although undergoing a major adjustment after a period of hot growth, is still highly appreciated and promises to become an alternative application layer for previous generation software, and crypto plays the role of AI currency.

The following is a list of 25 notable projects in 2025, the selection criteria include suitability to the market context and the level of prominence compared to projects in the same industry. Note that the term “notable” is used to show that these projects have outstanding features and is not synonymous with potential for price appreciation or investment opportunities.

1. Bitcoin (BTC)

Bitcoin (BTC) is not only the first cryptocurrency but also the symbol of the entire cryptocurrency market. Over the past 16 years, Bitcoin has been declared dead countless times but it has persistently developed, from a worthless thing to a national strategic reserve asset.

Following the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF in 2024, we have seen a huge influx of capital. At the end of December, the total value of Bitcoin under management by US ETFs surpassed that of gold ETFs with AUM reaching $129.25 billion.

Asset value held by gold ETFs compared to Bitcoin ETFs. Source: K33 Research

2025, the first year of President Donald Trump's term, is expected to be a good time for the crypto market. Although there is still no Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as expected, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to establish a US cryptocurrency working group, along with the establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) which is expected to buy Bitcoin and other US-origin cryptocurrencies.

Additionally, without waiting for an official national strategic reserve fund, US states are accelerating to have their own Strategic Bitcoin Reserves such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, North Carolina.

While Bitcoin trading has previously been limited to small investors and funds, it is now igniting at the national level. Imagine if major economies treat Bitcoin like gold and start a strategy of acquiring it, an unprecedented race will take place.

Because similar to gold, those who hold the majority will control the market. Its impact is not only limited to the crypto market but also the economy and politics. It is also worth remembering that to reach this beautiful vision, Bitcoin and the market still have many ups and downs, challenges.

The prospect of a "Gold Rush" similar to the old days

In addition to the promotion of stored value, the BTCFi ecosystem is also being built every day. Developers are constantly looking for ways to expand the network through various solutions such as State Channel, Rollups or OP_CAT and have achieved certain successes. BTCFi promises to be a breath of fresh air in this aging ecosystem, adding color to Bitcoin and more applications in 2025.

2. Ethereum (ETH)

In contrast to the image of a king firmly on the throne, the queen of Ethereum (ETH) is being criticized more than ever. Despite being the second cryptocurrency to be approved for a spot ETF, its poor performance is making even the most loyal investors waver.

"The first time BTC hit $100k, ETH was $3k9The second time BTC hit $100k, ETH was $3k8
Third ETH $3k7
Fourth ETH $3k4
The fifth time ETH is only $3k2
The sixth time BTC touched $100k, ETH was only $2k8."

“World computer” is what Ethereum is aiming for but perhaps this computer is still running “Win95 operating system”, while the market demand is for a high-speed, high-throughput, low-cost computer to handle thousands of transactions per second.

Although Layer 2 solutions have helped improve the core network, they have caused problems of liquidity fragmentation and user fragmentation. Ethereum users are divided into factions, competing and fighting each other instead of working towards a common goal of building an ecosystem, and gradually they have started to migrate to other vibrant and consistent ecosystems.

Ethereum is Fragmented in Both Liquidity and Users

The reason why Ethereum still holds the "king" position is because of its decentralization. If you are looking for a safe destination for large capital flows, there is no better address than Ethereum than Bitcoin, your money on Ethereum will be yours if it is not illegal. That is why large projects, projects related to legal issues often choose to deploy on this network. Currently, Ethereum is playing the role of a B2B chain or "whales chain", perhaps this role will continue to be maintained in 2025 and many years after.

Coming back to the issue of liquidity fragmentation and user experience, Chain Abstraction solutions are accelerating faster than ever. They help users remove blockchain concepts and focus only on product features, thereby eliminating user competition at the blockchain layer. Developers focus on product features and finding users like traditional applications, chains focus on convincing developers to use their chains. This may be the key factor that helps Ethereum get back on track for mass adoption with other non-EVM networks.

On the other hand, in addition to being one of the two approved spot ETFs, Ethereum is also the coin that President Trump's project chose to deposit gold. Since Q4 2024, ETH has been continuously accumulated by World Liberty Finance, reaching 67,000 ETH before sending almost all of it to Coinbase Prime (WLF announced this as a treasury management move).

Recent personnel changes at the Ethereum Foundation and founder Vitalik Buterin himself also show signs of wanting to keep up with the market of this No. 1 DeFi ecosystem. Hopefully we will have a beautiful 2025 for Ethereum.

3. Solana (SUN)

Solana (SOL) has had an impressive breakout year, going from the brink of collapse to becoming a direct competitor to Ethereum.

High speed, low fees, high liquidity, these factors have created a Solana cycle that never knows when to stop, one game after another keeps users hooked. The most successful is pump.fun, a platform that allows users to create memecoins in seconds at almost zero cost.

If Ethereum is like a B2B chain, then Solana is now like a B2C chain. With the qualities of mass adoption, Solana is capable of serving up to 65 thousand transactions per second at extremely low costs. Everything that is needed for ordinary users, Solana can meet.

Overall, Solana's achievements, in addition to having a loyal community and developer team, are also due to its good fortune. The extremism in its design has helped it achieve its current success.

The impossible trilemma - blockchain trilemma

In the blockchain industry there is a concept called blockchain trilemma or impossible trinity, when you want to achieve one or two of the three, you have to sacrifice the other.

Bitcoin takes decentralization and security to the extreme. While it cannot scale, its simple code and cumbersome authentication system keep the network secure. Bitcoin has become a store of value.

Solana, on the other hand, chooses the extreme of scaling. While the network is not very decentralized, it has high speed, high scalability, and super low cost, which makes Solana a retail chain.

Ethereum has it all, decentralization, security, scalability, but it doesn't excel in any of the triangles. Not secure enough to compete with Bitcoin as a store of value, nor scalable enough to compete with Solana and other next-generation blockchains for mass adoption. As the most decentralized smart contract, Ethereum is becoming a business chain.

In 2025, Solana is expected to continue to maintain its retail chain role. Besides the memecoin specialty, other groups such as AI, DePIN, NFT, Gaming, and Social are developing rapidly in this ecosystem. 2025 will also be the year the Solana Phone is expected to launch.

Another big event for Solana this year is an ETF. Grayscale recently became the fifth major company to announce a Solana ETF proposal, following VanEck, 21Shares, Canary, and Bitwise. The approval deadline is around August.

Crypto ETFs awaiting SEC approval. Source: Bloomberg (January 31, 2025)

However, the price of SOL tokens has increased quite a bit compared to the bottom of 2022, you should consider the profit risk before investing.

4. Ripple (XRP)

The "storm harbinger" is no longer a storm harbinger. As the third-ranked coin in the capitalization rankings, mentioning Ripple (XRP) means mentioning a series of lawsuits with the SEC, mentioning the founder dumping tokens, and mentioning the omen of a market crash every time XRP increases in price.

After many years, the SEC finally gave in, the US court ruled that XRP is not a security, Trump was elected president and SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announced his resignation, creating growth momentum for XRP. In just 2 short months, XRP increased more than 6 times to reach a new ATH of nearly 3.3 USD.

XRP price movement over the past year. Source: CoinGecko (February 13, 2025)

Ripple's main product is a cross-border payment network. RippleNet aims to become the backbone of the global financial system, replacing SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications). To date, Ripple's partner network is quite large, some big names include: Central Bank of Bhutan, Central Bank of Montenegro, SBI Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank, Banco Santander. In addition, RippleNet is also exploited in the fields of supply chain management, insurance, and energy.

Ripple is one of the few projects working on CBDC and Payment, this is a field with a lot of potential for development not only in 2025 but many years after that. In a future scenario, the entire global financial system operates entirely on blockchain, pioneers will have an advantage over the rest.

5. BNB (BNB)

BNB is the core coin of the Binance ecosystem. Although activities on BNB Chain have decreased significantly compared to the 2020-2021 period, as the largest global exchange, BNB is still in the top market capitalization.

The biggest use case for BNB for investors is probably joining the Binance exchange launchpool. In 2024, 21 projects will be launched to help BNB token holders earn a lot of profit for free.

List of projects launching on Binance in 2024

However, being too dependent on the influence of Binance and its Launchpool product is also not sustainable in the long term. The disappointing listing performance of recent projects on Binance is causing the community to question whether Binance is a launch pad or a place to get liquidity. BNB needs to create more utilities from the ecosystem to balance and develop sustainably. However, as long as Binance continues to maintain its position as the top exchange, BNB will still be a force in the cryptocurrency market.

In addition, the periodic BNB burn activity also reduces the circulating supply, causing the value to increase over time.

Acting as a bridge between the real world and blockchain, Chainlink (LINK) has maintained its dominance since its inception, and will probably continue to do so for many years to come with the project's performance.

Oracles are an essential piece of the puzzle for almost every blockchain project. Token prices, forex prices, stocks, commodities, interest rates, weather data, sports results, elections, IoT data, traffic, real estate prices, housing conditions…etc. all need a trusted entity to be put on-chain.

Oracles are not just providers of information, but also accurate and fast information. If the input data is incorrect, the effects can be unpredictable and possibly irreversible in highly decentralized networks. In a sense, oracles act as arbiters of right and wrong, which is why Chainlink is often referred to by the community as “The God Protocol.”

Another bullish point for Chainlink in 2025 and beyond is the regulatory-related pieces such as CBDC, Payment, Insurance, and RWA. Once the regulatory corridor is clear, these pieces will accelerate growth, and these are all pieces directly related to Chainlink, especially RWA and Payment.

In the XRP section above, we learned that RippleNet is designed to replace the System for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), but Chainlink doesn't think so. The project believes that convincing organizations to change their decades-old infrastructure to a new technology is not feasible, so Chainlink's approach is to design a protocol that is compatible with the old system and gradually convert.

In fact, SWIFT has been working with Chainlink since the CCIP solution was not yet on mainnet to test cross-border remittance activities. After that, when CCIP was on mainnet, SWIFT and a series of large financial institutions were still actively testing to move towards the stage of widespread application.

Chainlink and SWIFT Collaboration Model

For those who don't know, SWIFT stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global financial communications network that connects more than 11,500 financial institutions in over 200 countries. Swift is the backbone of the cross-border financial system, and has been in operation for over 51 years.

SWIFT provides a secure and standardized communications platform for conducting international financial transactions such as money transfers, letters of credit, and securities transactions.

Last year, Chainlink also participated in the payment test of Project Guardian organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a series of large banks and financial institutions.

Chainlink has executed 15.7 billion transactions with a volume of $18.2 trillion

Chainlink is one of the first coins to be accumulated by the Trump family investment fund - World Liberty Financial. In addition, its American origin gives Chainlink the potential to be included in the portfolio of the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF).

7. Dogecoin (DOGE)

Dogecoin (DOGE) started out as a joke mocking the crypto market, but the humor caught on and quickly spread. With insane growth and big names backing it, DOGE has become the memecoin of choice.

Not stopping there, with the full support of Elon Musk a.k.a Dogefather, Dogecoin has reached national level when the name DOGE was approved by President Donald Trump to become a department of the United States - Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Note, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will cease operations on July 4, 2026 unless further changes are made by decree.

If there is ever a memecoin that gets ETF approval, Dogecoin should be the first. In a supercycle where even the US President issues a memecoin, a memecoin ETF is not far off.

List of crypto ETFs that have filed applications with the SEC. Source: Bloomberg (January 22, 2025)

Aside from its speculative nature, Dogecoin has also been used as a means of payment. There are rumors that Elon Musk will allow Doge to be used as a means of payment on X alongside Tesla and SpaceX. Overall, 2025 will be a very remarkable year for Dogecoin.

8. Baby (BABY)

Pepe (PEPE) is a new generation memecoin, launched in April 2023. Pepe sparked a memecoin wave on Ethereum for months in the midst of a gloomy market.

Inspired by the green frog Pepe The Frog, a symbol of explosive growth that has long been a popular meme in the financial market. It didn't take long for PEPE to reach the billion dollar capitalization mark, especially after being listed on the Binance exchange. In addition to the many "shills", there are also many side stories between Pepe and Elon Musk, especially the number 420 69, which are numbers often mentioned by Elon Musk and are also the total supply of PEPE. This story spread so much that later almost all memecoin projects chose a total supply starting with 42069.

Today, Pepe has become the most popular meme in the crypto market, the community's devotion has reached the level of belief rather than just a normal love, wherever there is a meme, there is Pepe.

While Doge is the leader of the OG memecoin group, Pepe is the leader of the new generation memecoin group. As long as the bull market is not over, as long as the memecoin supercycle is still going on, there is a high chance that the leader group will continue to grow.

Besides Pepe, in this memecoin supercycle we witnessed many new and impressive coins.

First up is the SPX6900, which was created during the stock meme movement in mid-2023. SPX6900 initially memes the S&P500 index but has since evolved into more than just a stock meme. With its y2k vibe, the crypto flip stocks story has built a loyal following. Its breakout moment was after KOL Murad shilled it at the Token2049 event, and since then, SPX6900 has maintained an impressive performance.

Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS) is also a notable memecoin as it was the first name that Elon Musk changed his personal page name to X. Although Elon Musk changed his name many times later, the impact of KEKIUS was much more outstanding. Perhaps because this coin was modeled after Pepe and was the first surprise, it gained a lot of attention. In addition, Kekius' style was inspired by the ancient Roman Empire, a civilization that Elon Musk loves very much.

After the hype, KEKIUS is currently facing a major correction wave. Hopefully, in 2025 or later, this coin will maintain its culture, rebuild the community to enter a new growth period.

The last notable memecoin I want to mention is none other than TRUMP. Issued by the 47th President of the United States himself right before his inauguration. TRUMP quickly gained attention, at its peak the TRUMP token was trading at a market capitalization of 14.5 billion with a FDV of 72 billion USD, these were achieved on the 2nd trading day after listing, something no other memecoin has done.

This is a coin that is on the notable list because it was issued by Mr. Trump whose 4-year term has just begun. However, you should also know that after the 3rd month, the remaining 80% of the supply will be gradually unlocked over time, this is the airdrop for owners of Trump card NFT collections.

TRUMP Token Unlock Schedule

TRUMP needs time to accumulate and absorb the huge supply that is about to be unlocked, the accumulation time could be his entire term.

9. Uniswap (UNI)

The Automated Market Maker (AMM) model can be considered a wonder of the cryptocurrency industry, Uniswap (UNI) is the first and most successful project in applying AMM to open the era of DeFi.

Market share of trading volume of DEX exchanges. Source: Dune (February 12, 2025)

Dominating nearly 68% of the total decentralized finance market volume, Uniswap has always been the liquidity pillar of DeFi since its inception. This is thanks to the continuous improvement of the development team. AMM, CLMM, TWAMM, UniswapX, ... each update has become the market standard. Over the years, other Dex exchanges have done little, just waiting for Uniswap to deploy new features and then fork.

Uniswap recently developed a new product called layer 2 Unichain, which is built on the OP Stack toolkit focusing on DeFi applications. The UNI token will play an important role in Unichain's transaction validation process.

However, the most notable point in 2025 of Uniswap is the story of revenue sharing for UNI holders. As we all know, the US and the world are entering a period of crypto support, when the legal corridors are clear, it is also the time when projects can comfortably legalize the issue of revenue sharing without fear of lawsuits. At that time, holding UNI tokens is like holding shares of the world's largest decentralized exchange.

It should also be added that UNI is currently in a state of inflation, and the EVM ecosystem is constantly losing market share to other groups such as SVM and MoveVM, so we always need to be on guard against negative scenarios.

10. Ethena (ENA)

Ethena (ENA) is a groundbreaking project in the stablecoin group. Instead of issuing according to conventional standards such as USDT, USDC, the project brings a completely new approach to creating yield-bearing stablecoins. This mechanism not only helps to keep the value stable but also allows users to accumulate profits passively.

The core of Ethena's operating model lies in its delta neutral strategy. Accordingly, stablecoins are issued by collateralizing decentralized assets in the allowed portfolio including BTC, ETH, ETH LST, SOL and stablecoins. Users will receive USDe tokens equivalent to the deposit amount. These assets are then used to open a non-leveraged short position on partner exchanges. This strategy aims to keep the total value of assets + short positions always equal to 0, it is called delta neutral.

Ethena's position on exchanges (February 12, 2025)

USDe holders will receive a yield source from collateralized assets including: liquid staking yield and funding rate (in positive case).

After a successful year of operation, Ethena is taking bold steps to expand into the traditional market. iUSDe is expected to launch in Q1/2025 with customizations suitable for the traditional financial market, along with cooperation activities with partners such as investment funds, private credit funds, and brokers to popularize iUSDe, promoting the convergence of DeFi, CeFi, and TradFi. The project also plans to expand the ecosystem with Ethereal - a spot and derivatives exchange, Derive - an options protocol.

In addition, the ENA token is also in the portfolio of the World Liberty Finance project of US President Donald Trump.

ENA Token Unlock Schedule. Source: CryptoRank

The project's weakness lies in tokenomics, ENA is one of the tokens with the lowest Market Cap/FDV ratio, also known as low float high FDV. Initially the project only unlocked 9% of the total supply, currently around 21%, in the coming years the token inflation is huge.

11. Hyperliquid (HYPER)

Hyperliquid (HYPER) is a project that made a big splash in the late 2024 period because of the huge airdrop amount. 31% of the total HYPE supply was allocated to the community at the time of listing, if calculated at the current value, the amount of allocation is up to 8.2 billion USD, because of this, the community honored Hyperliquid as "Living Buddha", a life-changing deal for many airdrop farmers.

Besides, the project is also very sensitive in grasping the market situation. In the context of "VC coin" being shunned, Hyperliquid decided to choose a strategy of no VC (or no announcement), thereby making the project more sympathetic to users.

Currently, Hyperliquid is in the number 1 position in the decentralized derivatives trading segment with more than 57% market share of daily trading volume, total accumulated volume of over 900 billion USD. A dream number for a new exchange.

Market share of trading volume of decentralized derivatives exchanges. Source: DefiLlama (February 15, 2025)

Liu Bei once said, "Winning the hearts of the people is winning the world." He used humanity to win a third of the world. Now Hyperliquid uses airdrops to win the hearts of the community to take the top 1 position in Perp Dex.

That being said, the truth is that in addition to a great community strategy, Hyperliquid also has a great product suite behind it. Because attracting good users with a bad product is counterproductive.

Hyperliquid positions itself as a DeFi ecosystem with a vision of mass adoption. Its two core products are a layer 1 blockchain and a decentralized derivatives exchange.

Hyperliquid layer 1 is optimized for high performance to serve about 100 thousand transactions per second, the project also mentioned that it is continuing to work on some bottlenecks to scale throughput up to millions of transactions.

Thanks to this speed, Hyperliquid's Perp Dex platform provides a Cex-like experience, with buy, sell, and liquidation orders matched almost instantly. In addition, the integration of account abstraction enhances the user experience, making it even more user-friendly for ordinary users.

Hyperliquid User Interface

In general, in this growth cycle, we see that projects that target the general user group often have certain success. Gone are the days when blockchain was only for experts, now besides a good product quality, it is necessary to improve the user experience.

Not only in 2025 but in many years to come, the trend of shifting from Cex to Dex will continue to expand in scale. If Dex brings a good experience, why do users need to use centralized exchanges (Cex) with many complicated KYC procedures and especially not being able to hold their own assets.

Later projects can fork Hyperliquid but cannot fork the “heart of the people” and even more so cannot fork the huge amount of liquidity it possesses. The coming year 2025 may continue to be a profitable year for Hyperliquid if the market remains beautiful.

12. Ondo (ONDO)

Tokenization of real assets is a hot topic along with the regulatory corridor. In recent years, we have seen the main development of government bond tokenization groups, which are only a very small part of Real World Asset. Real estate, stocks, private credit, commodities and many other product groups are waiting to be tokenized.

Ondo Finance (ONDO) is one of the leading projects in the field of government bond tokenization and is a partner of many large traditional corporations such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management. Ondo's total tokenized asset value is always at the top with a current value of about 678 million USD.

Tokenized asset value of protocols. Source RWA.xyz (February 16, 2025)

In addition to the product suite related to government bond tokens, Ondo recently announced the development roadmap for two other strategic products, Ondo Global Markets and Ondo Chain.

While Ondo Global Markets is a platform that enables 24/7 trading of tokenized assets such as bonds, stocks, and ETFs on a global scale, Ondo Chain is a layer 1 network designed to optimize the management of these assets. In addition to providing a seamless experience, Ondo Chain also designs a “public permissioned” mechanism that provides organizations with high-level control and security to comply with legal regulations.

A good product suite, a tight workflow, legal compliance, and a large partner network will provide growth momentum for Ondo Finance in 2025 and beyond.

Ondo Finance Token Unlock Schedule. Source CryptoRank (February 16, 2025)

Another point to note is that currently the ONDO token is only 33.9% unlocked, there are still many large unlocks from now until 2029.

Besides Ondo Finance, the RWA segment also has many other notable names such as: Mantra (OM), Realio Network (RIO), Centrifuge (CFG), Goldfinch (GFI), Maple (MPL), Backed Finance.

13. Virtual (VIRTUAL)

Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) is the infrastructure and launchpad platform for AI Agents. From late 2024 to early 2025, Virtuals has been growing strongly to lead the entire Agent wave, at its peak, the VIRTUAL token was traded at a market capitalization of up to 4.6 billion USD.

Along with Ordinals/Inscription and memecoin, AI Agent is one of the biggest trends in the market. Although it has gone through a period of hot growth and reversal, AI in general and AI Agent still show their huge application potential.

December was a period of explosive growth in the number of Agents deployed on Virtuals. Source: Dune (February 17, 2025)

There is no denying that, alongside robots and blockchain, AI is one of the world-changing technologies. AI completely changes the way we approach the application layer, and even the way we operate our daily lives.

After a period of storming the Base network, Virtuals has recently officially expanded to the Solana ecosystem. At the same time, 1% of transaction fees will be converted into SOL tokens for the long-term strategic reserve fund.

This can be considered a strategic move by Virtuals when the project can access the most liquid land in the current market. It is estimated that if Virtuals had deployed on Solana from the first day, the achievements would have been many times greater than the present.

Besides Virtuals Protocol, there are some other notable names in this field.

Ai16z (AI16Z) is the first project launched on the dao.fun platform, backed by Marc Andreessen, founder of a16z investment fund. It started as an AI investment management project, but later evolved into an AI infrastructure called Eliza. It has become the most popular agent framework in the current crypto market. In 2025, the project announced the launchpad feature and then the layer 1 blockchain for AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

Griffain (GRIFFAIN) is another project operating on the Solana network, Griffain provides on-chain interaction solutions through AI. If previously users had to go through dry interfaces to execute buy and sell orders, Griffain helps turn them into natural language, just give orders and AI will execute, this is the DeFAI model that is being supported by many organizations.

Overall, AI will be a notable trend in 2025 and the long term, but it will likely take a long, long time to build up after the recent downturn.

14. World (WLD)

We are still praising the benefits of AI every day, but we forget its dark side. As AI develops, the line between humans and machines becomes more fragile.

Do you think that one day we will not be able to distinguish between humans and robots using artificial intelligence, or even the world will be dominated by robots? You don't have to imagine it, because 41 years ago director James Cameron portrayed it in great detail and vividly in the movie Terminator. Terminator tells the story of the war between humans and Skynet - a super-intelligent artificial intelligence that has become self-aware.

Terminator 1984 movie poster

Sam Altman is the creator of OpenAI - the most powerful and popular artificial intelligence today. More than anyone else, Sam understands the dangers and unpredictability of AI, so he is the one who created the "anti-AI" tool called World.

World (WLD) (formerly Worldcoin) is an identity verification project through biometric verification technology, specifically iris scanning. Among the popular biometric authentication methods today such as fingerprints and faces, iris scanning is probably the most reliable and the most difficult to confuse or fake with AI. In addition, the need to scan with a specialized device, Orb, further enhances security.

World's performance (February 17, 2025)

Despite facing privacy objections in many countries, World's DID (Decentralized Identity) system is still growing. Every week, there are about 200,000 registered accounts, the total number of people completing retina scans at the moment is about 11 million people in 160 countries. A rather modest number compared to the total population of 8 billion worldwide, there is still a lot of room for World's development.

Besides the World ID identity authentication system and the World App ecosystem access application, World also has two other products: Worldcoin and World Chain.

Worldcoin (WLD) serves as the ecosystem's main currency, used for attracting new users by rewarding them after verification, and is also a means of payment and network governance.

World Chain is a layer 2 blockchain network built on Optimism's OP Stack with the goal of improving the speed and efficiency of identity verification. However, when this news was released, the community reacted in the opposite direction, perhaps because they wanted World's position to develop a layer 1 network dedicated to "humans" rather than layer 2.

In conclusion, proof-of-human is crucial in the AI ​​mass-adoption scenario and World is the top 1 project in this field, the future for the project's development is extremely vast.

In terms of application and development potential, however, when it comes to investment, World's "WLD" brings many concerns. WLD is worthy of being the "ancestor" of low cap, high FDV. At the beginning, the project only unlocked 5.22% of the total supply, causing the project's FDV to be pushed up to 119 billion USD. Currently, WLD has unlocked about 27% of the total supply, the remaining amount will be gradually unlocked until the end of 2038.

WLD Token Unlock Schedule. Source CryptoRank (February 17, 2025)

15. Optimism (OP)

Optimism (OP), also known as OP Mainnet, is a project to scale the Ethereum network using the Optimistic Rollup solution. This model offers high speed, low cost, and importantly, is fully compatible with the current EVM system. It does not take much time for developers to move their applications to layer 2, which is why Optimism Rollup is a popular choice for projects.

Amidst the fragmentation of the Ethereum ecosystem due to too many layer 2s, Optimism has made a strategic move to unify the Superchain block. The SuperchainERC20 standard was released to bring a seamless experience between all chains in the ecosystem.

SuperchainERC20 is a token standard that enables fast, secure cross-chain transactions without the need for wrapped tokens or creating multiple token pools across multiple chains, optimizing efficiency and saving costs.

On another note, Made in USA is also a small advantage for Optimism, with large US-based organizations like Base, World, Kraken, and Uniswap all choosing OP Stack as their product toolkit.

In the Superchain ecosystem, besides the long-standing prominent projects as listed above, we are seeing the rapid development of a number of other names. One of them is Ancient8 - layer 2 for gaming that is having quite impressive growth.

Ancient8 (A8) is a layer 2 platform built on Optimism’s OP Stack, a network designed to optimize gaming applications. More than just the technical infrastructure, the project includes an ecosystem that supports gaming studios from product development to go-to-market.

Number of accounts and transactions growing steadily on Ancient8 (February 17, 2025)

Besides a series of quality games that are about to be deployed such as Stellar Forger, Zone Nine, Onchain Clash, the ecosystem has also seen other pieces such as Very.Fun (a meme launch platform similar to pump.fun but with SuperchainERC20 standards), Kaori Intelligence (the first project on AI platform belonging to Superchain).

In addition, at the end of last year, Ancient8 also received a grant worth 500,000 OP tokens from Optimism's OP Grant program, promising that 2025 will be a promising year for the project and the Ancient8 ecosystem in general.

16. Bio Protocol (BIO)

DeSci (decentralized science) is a fairly new keyword for the crypto market, appearing since early 2023 but only recently attracting attention.

DeSci - Decentralized Science is a blockchain technology application model to solve problems inherent in traditional scientific research such as intellectual property rights, data sharing, fairness and transparency in funding. DeSci encourages community participation, creating conditions for users to directly contribute, fund and at the same time benefit from scientific innovations.

This trend has many implications for the development of society, it is receiving support from many big names in the industry including Changpeng Zhao (CZ - founder of Binance), Brian Armstrong (CEO Coinbase) or Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum).

Bio Protocol is a pioneering project in the field of decentralized science, Bio Protocol focuses on biotechnology. More than just a fundraising platform, Bio Protocol aims to be a comprehensive ecosystem from project incubation, management, development support to providing resources and tools for projects to enter the decentralized space. Bio Protocol is also the first DeSci project invested by Binance Labs and CZ.

Although still in its infancy, the DeSci team’s potential to transform the paradigm of research and knowledge sharing is enormous. With the growing participation of the community, scientists and investors, DeSci promises to usher in a new era of science where knowledge and innovation are shared.

Overall, if the DeSci trend explodes in the near future, leading projects like Bio will benefit. The project's token BIO, after being launched on many major exchanges, is still "probing the bottom", and the amount of inflation in the coming years is very large, you need to consider before making investment decisions.

In this DeSci group, there are some other notable names such as Research Hub (RSC), Pump.Science.

17. Story Protocol (IP)

In today's modern world, besides the common assets such as currency, gold, silver, and real estate, there is a huge but rarely mentioned category of assets: intellectual property.

In fact, in a report by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), IP-based industries accounted for 41% of domestic economic activity, equivalent to $7.8 trillion, and they also provided 44% of all US jobs in 2019.

Intellectual property is all around us.

Despite its large market value, this group has remained largely confined to the enterprise layer due to many limitations such as legality, complexity in registration and implementation. The founders of Story Protocol quickly saw the problem and began developing a blockchain-based intellectual property infrastructure system to solve this problem.

Story Protocol (IP) is a layer 1 blockchain network optimized for intellectual property architecture, its goal is to modularize intellectual property, making it programmable, licensable, and reusable, while helping owners earn royalties from their intellectual property. In addition, the tokenization of separate ownership and commercial rights helps open up the IPfi economy for intellectual property.

Story Protocol's funding rounds. Source CryptoRank (February 18, 2025)

Story Protocol is also one of the projects that raised a lot of capital in 2024, the total amount through rounds reached 134 million USD with the participation of many famous funds such as a16z, Polychain, Hashed.

Intellectual property is not a new topic in the blockchain industry, but there has never been a complete solution to circulate these assets in the crypto economy. Story Protocol is a pioneer in solving this problem. Although the network has been put into operation, the IP token has been listed, but it will take a long time to be accepted and widely used by the community, proving its applicability. Hopefully, with its expansion strategies in 2025, we will see a dynamic IPfi economy by Story Protocol.

18. Ethervista (VISTA)

Ethervista (VISTA) is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and memecoin issuance platform on Ethereum.

Ethervista created a remarkable wave at the end of 2024 when it caused gas prices to suddenly increase thanks to the excitement of meme coins on this platform, but then along with the decline of VISTA tokens, the entire ecosystem gradually cooled down.

As a latecomer to Dex, Ethervista understood that it would not be able to compete with giant predecessors like Uniswap without differentiating itself. So the project revamped its product and launched a completely new AMM model.

The project argues that a major challenge facing traditional AMMs is the lack of mechanisms to create long-term incentives for crypto projects. Projects tend to focus on price action, which leads to stealth token dumping or rapid liquidity withdrawal. The same goes for Liquidity Providers, who are not sufficiently incentivized to provide liquidity over the long term.

From there, Ethervista introduced a new AMM model, or more precisely, a new mechanism for collecting and distributing transaction fees to stabilize the interests of projects and liquidity providers. Instead of charging transaction fees based on A/B token liquidity pairs, Ethervista charges a fixed fee in ETH. Users pay a fee in ETH on top of each transaction, which is then redistributed to the project team and liquidity providers.

This mechanism helps stabilize the revenue stream and also encourages the project side to generate more transaction volume to collect more fees. The longer the project lives, the more transactions are made, the more fees are collected.

The second product that Ethervista is offering is the meme coin issuance platform Etherfun, its operating mechanism is similar to pump.fun but the only difference is that the trading pairs are then traded on Ethervista instead of Uniswap.

The idea is good, but the sky-high gas fees are not a good thing for “meme coin spam” platforms on Ethereum. While users can create a meme coin with almost zero cost on Solana, BNB or other layer 2 networks, the gas fees on Ethereum do not allow them to do that. When the network is busy, users can have to pay hundreds of dollars for each transaction, this barrier makes meme coins on Ethereum not for “novices”, this is the stage for professional teams.

In theory, it is like that, but the crypto market is inherently crazy, just need the above meme coins to increase thousands of times, just need the narrative to explode, surely everyone will rush into the movement.

Recently, Ethervista announced a partnership with Ambient AGI to turn Etherfun into a launchpad platform for AI Agents on Ethereum. This is a good move because AI Agents are attractive and not spam, so if they can attract Etherfun developers, it can make this ecosystem vibrant again in the near future. Its limitation is that the project is deployed too late, because the AI ​​Agent trend has declined compared to a few months ago.

Tokenomics is a big advantage of the project. Unlike most tech-coins on the market, Ethervista chose to launch all VISTA tokens fairly, and the fees collected from transactions are used to buy back & burn VISTA, making the token deflationary. As of January 16, 2025, 3.87% of the total supply has been burned.

VISTA token burn progress. Source Dune (February 18, 2025)

19. Meteor

It would be remiss not to include Meteora in the list of notable projects in 2025. Along with the explosion of the Solana ecosystem, Meteora is always a project in the top of the protocols generating the most revenue.

On average, the project earns about 50-100 million USD in transaction fees each week, with total volume on the platform reaching more than 150 billion USD, bringing in 870 million USD in fees. There have been times when weekly transaction fees on Meteora have surpassed the USDT stablecoin protocol.

Transaction Fee Rankings for the Last Month. Source: DefiLlama (February 19, 2025)

Raydium is where pump.fun adds liquidity after a coin graduates, but Meteora is the address that earns a lot of transaction fees for Liquidity Provider, even US President Donald Trump chose Meteora as the liquidity provider for the TRUMP meme, why is that, we will quickly learn about its working mechanism.

Meteora (formerly Mercurial) is a liquidity solution provider on the Solana ecosystem, the project's development team is also the team behind the famous Jupiter exchange.

The product that makes the biggest difference for Meteora is the Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker (DLMM). Unlike other Dexs on the market that use the x*y=k curve model for the price mechanism, Meteora uses a bin system. Each bin represents a price range and is filled with liquidity pairs that operate according to the formula x+y=k.

Comparison between DLMM and CLMM. Source: Meteora

But here is the interesting thing about this bin model, for normal AMMs, the X/Y token pair will be distributed in a price range (for CLMM) or the entire curve with the traditional model, but with DLMM, the X/Y pair will always be contained in a single container (bin). The bins on the left of the active bin will only contain Y tokens (ie sell demand) and the bins on the right will only contain X tokens (ie buy demand).

Token allocation in DLMM bins

In this way, Meteora helps to distribute liquidity extremely deep into the active bin (active price zone), thereby minimizing slippage for users. According to the project's announcement, the liquidity depth achieved is even greater than Uniswap's CLMM model.

In addition, a dynamic fee mechanism is added to enhance price stability, protecting liquidity providers from impermanent loss and arbitrage. Trading fees on Meteora include a fixed fee set by LPs and a dynamic fee based on market volatility. This fee increases when prices fluctuate greatly and decreases when the market stabilizes.

Meteora has many other products that fully serve user needs such as Dynamic AMM Pools, Dynamic Vaults, Multitoken Stable Pool.

Overall, Meteora is a DeFi ecosystem with many technological innovations and has proven its high applicability. Meteora is a notable project in the coming time, both in terms of performance, token launch schedule, and surrounding drama.

20. Babylon

As we know Bitcoin is the most decentralized and secure cryptocurrency, the proof-of-work model uses computing power and a very simple source code that helps eliminate most forms of network attacks.

Realizing the potential of this ultimate security, the development team at Babylon created a defense layer for other blockchain networks based on Bitcoin.

First, Babylon is a layer 1 blockchain built on top of CosmosSDK, its goal is to create a validation layer for interconnected blockchains. The two main components of Babylon are:

  • Bitcoin timestamping: helps other chains create checking points on Bitcoin and verify them.

  • Bitcoin staking: helps Bitcoin holders participate in the security and profit of other networks by staking BTC.

Babylon's operating model

In short, how it works, Babylon is the layer between Bitcoin and 3rd party blockchains that need to be secured.

Babylon's Bitcoin timestamping helps third-party blockchains create checkpoints, which are then stored on the Bitcoin network to inherit immutability. When authentication is needed, Babylon calls these checkpoints back to the third party for verification.

Bitcoin holders act as validators, they stake Bitcoin in Babylon to earn profits from validating. The staked Bitcoin acts as collateral, if the validator behaves maliciously, they will be punished. This mechanism is called using economic incentives to enhance security.

Babylon's Bitcoin Secured Networks has mainneted and received over 55,823 BTC staked equivalent to $5.34 billion.

In the context of the Bitcoin network assets being almost immobile and unable to generate profits safely other than waiting for the price to increase, Babylon is a savior that appeared at the right time. Besides becoming a security layer for other blockchain networks, the project also brings passive income to BTC holders.

Babylon is also one of the projects that raised a lot of capital last year, with a total amount of up to 96 million USD. The list includes many big names such as Paradigm and YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs).

Overall, I am very bullish on Babylon but hope the project is not overvalued in the upcoming listing phase.

Besides Babylon, in the Bitcoin ecosystem there are some other notable names such as: Stacks (STX), Fractal Bitcoin (FB), RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF), BOB.

21. Monad

Parallel Execution is what the new generation of blockchains are aiming for today. As more and more users enter the market, speed and scalability are key factors to keep the network sustainable.

The sequential processing model like the old generation blockchains has shown shortcomings in being unable to meet large traffic, so parallel execution is becoming a solution pursued by many parties.

It would be easier for projects to choose to build a completely new blockchain, but building a parallel transaction processing system that is still compatible with EVM is relatively difficult due to the nature of the sequential processing of EVM virtual machines. Therefore, over the years, not many projects have succeeded with Parallel EVM. Monad is one of the pioneering projects besides Sie.

Monad uses a technique called Pipelining, which breaks down tasks into sequential steps that allow multiple task packages to be processed in parallel. Monad's documentation gives the example that, similar to a laundry operation that involves washing, drying, folding, and putting away the first load of clothes before starting the second load, this can be accomplished by continuing processing the second load as soon as the first load is put into the dryer.

How Monad Works

In addition, combined with many other tweaks such as MonadBFT consensus mechanism, MonadDb, Shared Mempool, Deferred Execution helps Monad achieve parallel processing results with speeds up to 10,000 TPS.

Monad has raised $244 million from several large investment funds in the market, making it one of the largest funded blockchain projects in 2024.

The project has deployed testnet on February 19, you can join the experience and find opportunities to receive airdrops. Parallel EVM and Monad are both very notable keywords in 2025.

22. Particle Network

In this series of articles, I have mentioned the issue of liquidity fragmentation and user fragmentation many times, and also emphasized that user experience is a must to achieve in order to popularize blockchain and crypto.

Of all the solutions in the pipeline, Chain Abstraction is arguably the “end game” for this problem. Chain Abstraction is a concept that simplifies user interactions with multiple blockchains, providing a “blockchain-free” experience. Instead of having to perform complex operations such as transferring assets between chains, managing multiple gas tokens, or switching networks, Chain Abstraction allows users to interact with decentralized applications through a single interface without requiring extensive technical knowledge. This makes the Web3 experience more accessible and convenient.

The Fragmentation Problem of Web3

Similar to when you use popular banking or e-wallet applications, do you know whether they are stored on AWS, Google Cloud or private data center servers, or do you need to care about whether you are connecting to the app via Viettel or FPT network. In short, Chain Abstraction helps users only care about the application's features without needing/not wanting to know about their infrastructure layer.

Particle Network is a leading solution in this field, providing a toolkit that helps application developers escape the dependency on a single chain. This way, developers can focus on building product features, while users can use the application with any balance or connection from any chain.

Modular Chain Abstraction Model of Particle Network

Currently, Particle Network has completed the Universal Account product and the UniversalX exchange, and Particle Chain is coming soon. The project is also implementing a reward program with airdrop opportunities, you can create an account and experience it here.

Being an important piece of the crypto market and being supported by many large units such as YZi Labs (Binance Labs), Animoca Brands, The Spartan Group, 2025 will be an important and remarkable year for Particle Network.

23. pump.fun

It is no exaggeration to say that pump.fun contributed more than 50% to the Solana ecosystem's uptrend season. A total of 7.8 million tokens were created through the platform, with a weekly trading volume of $1-2 billion, bringing in a total of $561 million in revenue to date.

It is worth noting that many sources have recently said that pump.fun will launch their own token, most likely in 2025. Accordingly, pump.fun will conduct a public sale in the form of a Dutch auction. The project is said to be contacting exchanges to negotiate cooperation.

With its position as a top 10 market-making platform, pumpfun users are likely to receive a shower of airdrops. Overall, the listing event will be a milestone to look forward to for pumpfun and Solana users in 2025.

24. OpenSea

Among the group of crypto market giants expected to launch tokens such as Metamask, OpenSea, Phantom, OpenSea is the first project to take the first step.

Once the leading NFT marketplace in the market, monopolizing the NFT trading field for many years before being overtaken by the market share. The young NFT marketplace Blur has shown its seniors the power of tokens.

With a somewhat modern product and a “point farming” strategy, the trading volume on Blur has far surpassed OpenSea since the beginning of 2023. Despite the efforts to improve with OpenSea Pro, it is not enough.

Trading volume of platforms. Source DefiLlama (February 18, 2025)

Later, in addition to Blur, the project continued to be overtaken by Magic Eden, an exchange focused on the Solana ecosystem. At one point, OpenSea's CEO said he was open to receiving acquisition offers.

After a long period of silence, on the evening of February 13, 2025, OpenSea launched OS2, a completely improved version compared to the previous one. OS2 will support multi-chain transactions on 14 blockchains, including Flow, ApeChain, Soneium and Berachain. In addition, the new platform also reduces transaction fees to 0.5% and offers free swaps during the launch period. And the important news is that the SEA token is about to be launched.

The OS2 version came with an XP accumulation mechanism based on user transactions, and similar to Blur, users were rushing to farm points to increase the airdrop. This system is currently on hold due to criticism from users for wash trading.

The token launch is a remarkable event for the giant OpenSea. After this stage, will OpenSea regain and maintain its position as the No. 1 NFT exchange? We will follow up in 2025.

25. Polymarket

Polymarket is a decentralized Prediction Market platform operating on Polygon, where users can bet on the outcome of future events in various fields. If the prediction is correct, the participant will earn a profit, otherwise they will lose the bet amount if the prediction is wrong.

Polymarket is known as the product with the best “product-market fit” in the crypto market, because Polymarket's success comes entirely from the real needs of users, not from price inflation or expensive communication strategies.

Polymarket TVL and trading volume. Source DefiLlama (February 18, 2025)

Total assets locked on Polymarket at one point reached more than 500 million USD, with an average daily trading volume of 30-50 million.

After raising $74 million from many large funds such as Polychain, Dragonfly and Vitalik Buterin, the project expressed its desire to raise another $50 million and hinted at launching its own token.

Message appears on Polymarket website, hinting at possible future airdrop

Despite the legal troubles that have followed the recent US presidential election, Polymarket is still a very interesting project. The need for prediction and betting has existed for thousands of years, and applying blockchain technology to this piece of the puzzle will make everything transparent and autonomous.

Polymarket and its token will be the news to watch in 2025.

Additional: Pi Network

The last project and one that is not on this list that I want to mention is Pi Network, this is probably the most controversial project in the crypto community not only at this time but over the past many years.

There is no denying that, somehow, Pi Network has a more loyal and fanatical community than XRP and Cardano.

The mining mechanism, or in other words, the gameplay of Pi is quite mindless, users just need to download the application and periodically click on the "lightning" icon. But perhaps this simple mining method that even old people can do makes Pi easily accessible to the majority. Over time it becomes a habit and at the same time they do not want to throw away years of effort, so they still check in to check in for lightning waiting for the day to change their lives, and because anyway, it does not cost anything.

Pi Network is also the top project with the most active community in real life, with group activities, parties, roadshows, and even songs written specifically for Pi to show the level of fanaticism.

Image cut from music video: Pi Network my love

But the truth is that most Pi fans are not blockchain-savvy, and those who are blockchain-savvy are less likely to own any Pi. This has caused a lot of controversy in the past between the two camps, but Pi has proven to crypto professors that technology is not everything, community is the most important thing.

After years of pressing the “lightning bolt”, Pi fans are finally getting closer to reaping the rewards. Pi Network developers have completed the construction of the Pi blockchain, a Stellar-based version. On February 20, the PI token will be listed on many exchanges such as OKX, Gate, and even Binance if the community support is strong enough.

If the mindless tap-to-earn movement of telegram with millions of bots can stir up the market with many billion-dollar projects, there is no reason why a project with tens of millions of users ready to KYC cannot attract attention. Pi Network will be a name worth watching in the early stages of 2025.

Conclusion

So we have gone through 25 notable projects in 2025, although there are still many difficulties and challenges, history has proven that the more ups and downs the market becomes, the healthier it becomes and continues to break achievement milestones.

In addition, there are many other noteworthy projects that I do not know about or do not include, you can discuss more in the comments section.

Please note again that the projects mentioned in this article are for informational purposes only and not investment advice. Hopefully the article will help you in your research.

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