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Hi everyone, happy Friday!
So much has happened in the past week that the GOAT launch feels like a whole cycle ago.
I don't know about you, but my brain feels fried.
Crypto bull markets are both a blessing and a curse. Great for the industry, terrible for your personal health 😂 I was supposed to go to sleep at 11 pm yesterday and found myself trying out a new app at 2 am (more on that below).
I also wanted to apologize to all of you for not sending out a post on Tuesday. I rarely miss a post (this is my second skip since August), but I was pretty sick all of this week and just had too much brain fog and a lot of NyQuill in me.
What I want all of us to do today is take a step back and build a framework on how we should be thinking about this space for the next 6-12 months.
Do you ever feel like even after doing your best to pay attention, you're still behind? Don't worry, you're not alone.
The truth is, it's tough to keep up when the metagame is constantly rotating. Not only in terms of the micro bull and bears of the market but also the actual topic and narratives.
So I thought to myself, I think it's best if we don't think of the "metagame rotation" as something we blindly run after without context as to how it fits in the bigger picture.
That way, whenever we see something new...our first thought should be "okay so where does this fit into crypto map?".
Obviously frameworks themselves change and we have to make sure to update them. But let's get one started for 2025.
Now, one thing I want to clarify is that there's no such thing as a "right framework". Everyone has their own perspective. Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. This holy trifecta I'm discussing below is how it's making sense for me right now, so I'll do my best to explain why.
The 3 buckets that will matter:
UI/UX
Agents / DeFAI
EIP7702 & Wallet modules
Mobile
Hypertokenization
Stablecoins go parabolic
RWAs are no longer a joke
Long tail of tokens
Hardware Coordination
AI x Crypto infra layer
DePin's time in the spotlight
Let's dive in.
Agents & DeFAI
Look, I'm sure a ton of stuff we're seeing in regards to crypto agents is a bit overhyped right now because of prices, but I can confidently say this isn't all just vaporware.
I've said it several times in the past few months: even though most of the projects in the agent vertical will die off, the few that make it through will have a serious impact on crypto. This is no different than what happened with defi and NFT projects.
The biggest bull case from my perspective is the agent layer settling in between the chain and interface layers. Meaning, actions that all the OG crypto users are used to in terms of interacting with smart contracts will start to feel archaic quicker than you think.
As I mentioned in a previous post:
Similarly, as Onchain AI infra improves, we'll be shocked by how we can type anything in the action bar and the results will be receipts saying task x has been done with a link to the proof (i.e. transaction).
tl;dr: the UI that we'll get used to for interacting with the chains will be through agents.
It's worth nothing that this isn't a "new revelation". People have been discussing this since the day after ChatGPT launched in 2022. But, as with any new tech, the right moment takes years of experimentation. Here's my friend Salvino saying the exact same thing but he was about 1.5 years too early.
Another thing I want to point out is that I actually think people still underestimate how much of a superpower it is that "crypto agents" have access to wallets they control and can use the chain to transact.
As I mentioned a few months ago when the agent vertical was starting to take off:
Now, I think the key point here to understand is that the internet of intelligence vision can only be implemented efficiently on crypto rails.
You need agents to be able to permissionlessly use APIs on the social layer, have ownership of funds, be able to transact, show proof of work for their tasks, and work effectively with other agents. This is where smart wallets, stablecoins, decentralized social, tokenization, etc. all have to plug in. By using traditional web2 infrastructure, we would be limiting the capabilities of these agents by a huge factor.
It won't be soon but eventually there will be a point where I believe the capabilities of onchain agents goes far beyond traditional agents because of the enhanced capabilities the onchain infrastructure offers.
And I directionally agree with ThreadGuy here. Crypto gets rightfully made fun of a lot. But I really don't think we're "all that behind" the AI folks who ridicule and dismiss the onchain agent vertical.
Wallet Modules & EIP-7702
I hinted at the importance of this development in my last post, but it's starting to become clear to me that EIP-7702 will be one of the biggest changes to the Ethereum ecosystem since EIP-4844 (blobs).
To keep it simple, right now wallets are not extensible for the most part. EIP-4337 tried to change this but it required users to switch over to smart wallets and was a tough sell.
Now, with EIP-7702, we're basically getting the equivalent of a chrome extension store for wallets.
Here's some examples of modules that Rhinestone put together. Notice how it feels exactly like reading through different chrome extensions. I'm sure once a few modules start to gain attention, devs will rush over to the next gold mine of opportunity.
We'll do a deep dive into the technical specifications in a later post, but if you're interested check out more examples in this Georgios AMA.
Mobile
This past week, I used two crypto mobile apps that were just fantastic.
If you haven't checked them out already, please go try Yapster and Clout. I'm out of Yapster invite codes right now, but go follow the Twitter account and you'll probably be able to grab one.
I actually wrote about Yapster on Tuesday as well, so I'm going to copy that tweet here for all of you to read because I seriously think EVERYONE NEEDS TO TRY THIS APP! In fact, I'm like 99% sure my tweet is the reason a lot of people caught wind of the game. So I really want to make sure all the TOC subscribers aren't late to this.
After playing the first 2 rounds, I can confidently say Yapster is one of the most fun crypto consumer experiences I’ve had and it’ll probably be the first real competitor to pump fun.
tl;dr is that pump fun is for traders and yapster is for…pretty much everyone else who enjoys memecoins & games.
The game
1. Players buy a ticket and submit a meme & ticker beforehand.
2. When the daily game starts, you vote on which memes you think will do the best.
3. At the end of the rounds, the players decide if the ticker should be deployed. If it’s deployed, half of the buy in pot goes to liquidity, other half is proportionally allocated to players.
My thoughts:
- HQ trivia vibes w everyone playing at the same time is a LOT more fair than traders trying to snipe pump fun launches and share “TG alpha”
- Initial deposit / game buy-in process is sooo smooth. Clean UX + Privy magic
- I forget it’s a crypto product till the end when you have to vote on the token deployment
- The attention to detail is insane. Everything from the haptics to the arcade design makes it feel fun no matter how old you are.
- You don’t have to be a great meme maker, it’s still possible to win a huge allocation by being the quickest to decide what the “markets” will find the funniest (memecoin connoisseurs)
- I like the Nouns vibe of “one memecoin a day”
If the product can continue to onboard some of the funniest shitposters / meme makers, then I can easily see Yapster being the default place where the next big memecoins launch Highly recommend trying it out, the first token launched on the app was $YAPSTER a few days ago. Tomorrow’s game is already full
I think we're going see a lot more serious mobile experimentation in 2025.
I mentioned two examples above that are kicking off a new meta of building crypto products and are truly well polished. If you read both of my tweets above, one point I mentioned is how impressive the attention to detail is on Yapster and Clout. The fact that you forget they're crypto apps is in my opinion the true north star metric.
And I have no doubt that one of the upcoming mobile apps will inevitably onboard a ton of normies just because they lean into the gaming and virality nature that web2 consumer apps do so well.
The last thing I want to call out as a bonus for this section is Farcaster.
Most people aren't aware of how game changer Frames v2 is in terms of crypto UX. Things are still mostly quiet there but the core developer ecosystem is working on a ton of interesting applications that definitely have potential to pop off. Another point to note is that the Merkle team has heavily leaned into the token / earning money meta. Anyone who has spent even just a few months on the purple app has found some financial luck just by sticking around (i.e. degen, higher, clanker coins, etc).
To me, it's clear that as the Farcaster community continues to shift over to the "degen" side of crypto a bit more, more and more people will understand why frames v2 is a game changer in terms of taking onchain actions quickly right from the feed.
Before I get into hypertokenization specifically, I just want to address the elephant in the room. It's painfully obvious that stablecoin volume and usage is going to go parabolic this year. In 2024, growth was already hitting levels that seemed impossible a few years ago. But that was just the pregame. I think the real party for stablecoins is just about to get started.
And it's not just about USDC or USDT but more so focusing on the whole ecosystem of companies that are filling in the holes of stablecoin infra. Additionally, I expect we'll get used to announcements of large international companies adopting stablecoins just like SpaceX. And of course, it's not just crypto native companies but also large tradfi players that are quickly trying to find their wedge and double down in the stablecoin space.
I went into detail on this general theme in my post The barbell approach for stablecoins after the Bridge acquisition. But I'm due for a follow up soon - it'll be critical to keep an eye on stablecoin metrics and corporate treasury stablecoin announcements this year.
Okay, now past stablecoins, I think the best way to organize the "hypertokenization" bucket is a two-pronged approach.
At its core, the idea of hypertokenization is that any form of content, product, or idea that accrues attention can be financially valued. Tons of pros. And of course, tons of cons. But the key point to make here is that the floodgates have opened. We're entering a world of hypertokenization whether you like it or not.
So the two sides to this coin are:
Institutional adoption of RWAs
Long tail of "memecoins"
On the first point, check out this headline from a few days ago.
It's pretty self-explanatory. More and more large institutional investors and trillion dollar funds are excited to bring their assets onchain to better their systems and margins.
Why? Well, I think this explanation from DCInvestor is the best:
going to repeat the thesis for why Blackrock wants to put all securities onchain:
Blackrock is the largest asset manager in the world and the leader in ETFs
they want you to buy those ETFs and never sell the best way for you to do that is to be able to borrow against those securities.
there is a ton of untapped collateral value in stocks and other securities and yes, you can get a margin loan for them from your brokerage, but the terms are not often great and middle men are making your money now imagine all securities are onchain, tapped into the largest borrow-lending market in the world with no middleman?
sound compelling? Larry Fink certainly thinks so
I'll admit right now that my knowledge of the RWA vertical is actually pretty limited. But this week has definitely convinced me that I need to spend more time learning what's happening.
On the second point in regards to the long tail of memecoins, I believe that the Trump coin that launched last Friday was a paradigm shift in terms of people launching tokens for anything that is memetic enough to capture value.
We're like in the top of the first inning in terms of people (and companies!) launching their own tokens for all kinds of purposes. Just the other day, Vine co-founder Rus launched the $vine token and has plans to bring the app back in some form.
Expect this to become a norm. What'll be more interesting to follow here is not necessarily the number of token launches but rather how folks find interesting ways to use token crowdsourcing to quickly take their projects to new heights without having to worry about traditional venture lag.
It feels that my post Crypto enabled accelerationism bubble will start to make more and more sense as this year progresses.
I'll keep this last section short and simple.
It's the least flashy one out of the three but in my opinion this vertical will produce one of the most impactful uses cases of crypto over the next 7 years. Mainly because hardware coordination is like the deep tech of crypto.
The whole point of AI x Crypto and DePIN is to efficiently distribute physical infrastructure and their economic upside in a way that can effectively compete with centralized clusters.
Think GPUs, internet bandwidth, energy grids, etc.
These problems take a lot of time to solve but once the products hit an inflection point, there's no going back. The truth is, companies in this ecosystem still haven't gotten proper time in the spotlight. Maybe you've heard of Grass, Daylight, Hivemapper, and Bittensor but that's probably about it.
Some projects are trying to totally build things from ground up. And others are trying to tap into the current physical infrastructure that exists.
One section I thought was practical from this Messari report was realizing that decentralized model training can focus on the long tail of specialized projects rather than competing with generalized models (i.e. GPT, Claude). It just seems more practical for crypto x hardware projects to find a wedge that doesn't have to directly compete against the optimizations of big tech (or big energy & utility) fundraising and resources.
I also thought this take from Kyle Samani was interesting. To me, just reading the term "DePIN Robotics" was new so I'm realizing there's definitely a big blind spot in terms of my knowledge in this sector.
It's not clear yet as to which playbooks will end up working the best, but my take here is that we're actually getting very close to seeing one of these projects really grab broader attention.
Okay so if you asked me to make a prediction related to crypto x hardware, here's what I would say with my limited knowledge...
In 2025, when we see the eventual choppy price action period once post-Trump euphoria dies down a bit, I believe attention will shift to this sector because of the interesting utility that's starting to bubble faster and faster. There will be a moment where a large DePIN or DeAI company has a breakthrough GOAT type moment and everyone will be running to start breaking down the entire ecosystem piece by piece and bidding up tokens like $GRASS.
But my TOC friends...I promise you, we'll stay ahead of the curve.
That's all I had for today's post, hopefully this framework was helpful in organizing some of your thoughts of what's going in the onchain economy.
I hope all of you have a great weekend, and I'll see you back on Tuesday!
- YB
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