Big Ideas from a16z: Top Projects to Watch in 2025
Earlier this month, a16z crypto released their list of big ideas for 2025. Which protocols are already building in these key areas? Let's explore in this new publication.
The year-end is one of my favorite times because the big brains of the Web3 industry begin sharing their lists of high-conviction ideas and predictions for 2025. It's an exciting period to map the potential landscape of crypto mindshare for the coming year.
This time, I want to focus on the article from a16z crypto: "A few of the things we’re excited about in crypto (2025)."
Big Idea #1: AI Agents that Manage Wallets
In short, AI agents have demonstrated their ability to transact independently and operate fully autonomously. Many novel use cases could emerge in this field. AI agents can become new actors in Web3, engaging in trading, investing, bridging, and fulfilling other intents.
In this realm, several projects are on my watchlist:
NEAR Protocol: NEAR is now positioning itself as the ‘Blockchain for AI’. There have been several big things that went live recently including Near AI and Near Intents. NEAR already has some pretty impressive mindshare and they can become one of the leaders in this field in 2025.
Fetch.ai: Fetch.ai is a platform crafted for the AI economy, providing tools to build, deploy, and monetize AI services. Its ASI wallet could incorporate the best features and advancements from Fetch in AI, potentially becoming one of the first implementations of the AI x Wallet integration.
Armor Wallet: It is an AI-powered crypto wallet and trading assistant. Armor Wallet is a non-custodial wallet using AI to trade across multiple blockchains and execute complex trades quickly and easily. Note that Armor is still a relatively early-stage project.
Coin98 Super Wallet: In late November Coin98 revealed their AI wallet with an AI Assistant that recommends tools and streamlines tricky tasks. It also has support for natural, human-like interactions.
Recommended research: “Towards Trusted Autonomy: Robotics, AI, and Blockchain” by Openmind.
Big Idea #2: Enhanced Information Aggregation
This concept revolves around new mechanisms based on prediction markets, designed to aggregate information more effectively and enhance decision-making processes across various sectors.
This is a relatively new idea and in this realm, I recommend that you read “Markets Will Save the World” by Delphi Digital.
Here’s the summary of this great report:
My watchlist:
MetaDAO: MetaDAO is the first project to implement futarchy at scale within a DAO. Futarchy is a governance system that merges prediction markets with democratic voting to facilitate decision-making. In a futarchic system, participants trade based on the outcomes of various policy options. This approach allows them to "vote" with their money on the decisions they believe will yield the best results.
Futarchy: The idea of Futarchy is quite similar to that of MetaDAO: leveraging markets for governance and reflecting potential impacts on shares (token) value.
Big Idea #3: The Big Adoption of Stablecoins
This idea focuses on the increased adoption of stablecoins, which already process more transactional value than Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal. This transition will benefit many market players, including stablecoin issuers, crypto card companies, and crypto acquiring services.
Recommended research: “Stablecoins: The Most Lucrative Business Onchain” by Onchain Research.
To better illustrate the stablecoin landscape, here's the ecosystem map from the research mentioned above. Consider adding these projects to your watchlist.
In this realm, it's crucial, in my opinion, to highlight the infrastructure that will facilitate the growing transaction volume and become the primary beneficiary of broader stablecoin adoption.
A protocol worth highlighting, aside from TRON, which is a well-known USDT transfer engine, is Noble. This new project develops liquidity infrastructure, enabling asset issuers to engage in the Interchain economy.
Big Idea #4: Modular Everything
Modularity isn't new, but a16z crypto predicts that more modules will gain mainstream adoption next year. Several notable verticals come to mind in this realm:
RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service): Gelato, Caldera, AltLayer, Conduit, Bison Labs.
There are many more; overall, the focus on infrastructure solutions in 2025 remains extremely relevant.
Big Idea #5: Finally a Seamless UX
In my opinion, this is one of the strongest bets. Chain Abstraction has been a hot topic all year, and we're finally nearing the point where abstracted user experiences become a reality, not just a concept.
Here’s an awesome Chain Abstraction map from The Defiant:
All are definitely worth your attention, but I'd like to highlight Particle as one of my strongest bets. Their first implementation of Universal Accounts recently went live, allowing users to seamlessly trade assets from any chain through UniversalX.
Another proxy bet in this realm is Everclear, the primary clearing layer of Web3. As the solver economy, crucial for chain abstraction, expands, solvers need to rebalance across chains. Everclear is the most cost-effective facilitator of this process.
Big Idea #6: Crypto Appstores
The original a16z crypto publication highlights several noteworthy developers of crypto app stores, including Telegram apps on TON, Alchemy, Solana's mobile (Seeker) dApp Store, and Worldcoin's mobile app.
Actually, many wallet providers can seamlessly evolve into crypto appstores.
On my end, I’d love to highlight a few more: Glue, DeFi App, and VeBetter.
Big Idea #7: Tokenizing anything
Tokenization is a broad topic, particularly regarding the tokenization of "unconventional" assets. Several noteworthy projects come to mind in this realm:
Kaito AI: Tokenizing influence (attention economy)
GAIB: An economic layer for the AI-driven future by tokenizing enterprise-grade GPUs.
Compute Labs: Enabes fractioned ownerships of GPUs (direct competitor to GAIB).
ShopX: Tokenizing goods and products (RWA for e-commerce)
Eaas: Tokenizing carbon footprint
AI Agents and DeSci: Dolz (tokenization of porn stars), PsyDAO (tokenizing psychedelic science and art), Molecule (biopharma IP tokenization protocol) and many more (high-risk, peak hype curve).
This list features some protocols on my personal watchlist, but I urge you not to limit your research to these alone. The Web3 space is vast, with many protocols that truly deserve your attention!
This is one of the best breakdown of projected ideas in the ecosystem. Nice work!!!