Author: Techub selected compilation
Written by: arndxt
Compiled by: Glendon, Techub News
As 2024 comes to an end and 2025 begins, I reflect on my journey in cryptocurrency and draw some insights from OpenGuild Vietnam and the discussions around Ethereum and Optimism Superchain.
Based on this, I will explore the key technological and strategic development trends that will have a significant impact on the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems in 2025.
Cryptocurrency Market Overview
The entire market is currently facing regulatory and technological changes, especially in Vietnam and at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency.
Vietnam legalizes cryptocurrency
Vietnam’s government plans to finalize a legal framework for cryptocurrencies by May 2024, a move that could herald the emergence of a new wave of legal cryptocurrency businesses.
Regulatory clarity can reduce uncertainty, thereby attracting more high-quality projects and institutions. If the framework is designed properly, Vietnam could become a hub for blockchain startups, connecting Southeast Asia’s thriving tech ecosystem with the global cryptocurrency market.
Stablecoins and User Adoption
Stablecoin usage has grown significantly and shows the potential for continued growth. The growing stablecoin infrastructure behind it could drive wider adoption, especially in regions where local currencies are volatile.
At the same time, stablecoins are one of the most powerful gateway use cases in cryptocurrencies. By providing a secure medium of exchange, they facilitate daily transactions and protect value when local currencies fluctuate. Continued improvements (such as more efficient on/off currency channels) may further integrate stablecoins into the global financial system.
AI Agent Ecosystem
Since late 2024, the rise of AI x cryptocurrency solutions has become a focus of investors and incubators such as Y Combinator.
AI agent ecosystems (e.g., fully autonomous trading bots, decentralized AI modules, on-chain AI oracles) hold the promise of simplifying tasks that traditionally require human intervention. However, as these systems mature, they may raise legal and technical questions about governance, liability, and data privacy.
Proof of character
The convergence of AI and cryptocurrency naturally raises concerns about identity verification, especially with the proliferation of deepfakes and AI-generated avatars. Proof of Personhood is a decentralized identity-based solution that can ensure independent human identity verification.
If AI can simulate human behavior on-chain, strong identity verification mechanisms will become even more important. Therefore, proof-of-personality mechanisms may become the standard for social applications, decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) membership, or token airdrops. Expect more innovations in cryptographic methods (such as zero-knowledge proofs) to protect user privacy while verifying authenticity.
Ethereum Ecosystem
Ethereum's evolution in 2025 will focus on chain abstraction and protocol-level upgrades to enhance network efficiency, L2 throughput, and user experience.
Pectra Upgrade
Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is undoubtedly a major milestone, with a focus on improving wallet infrastructure and addressing broader ecosystem challenges. As chain abstraction becomes a key priority for various blockchain platforms, the successful implementation of the Pectra upgrade may redefine the way users interact with Ethereum.
In my opinion, the Ethereum mainnet is at a crossroads. The rise of powerful L2s like Optimism, Arbitrum, and zkSync has increased the pressure to maintain Ethereum's status as the "gold standard". Pectra has the potential to bridge a critical gap and simplify the wallet experience by solving pain points such as high gas fees, transaction bundling, and user identity verification. If implemented effectively, it could significantly increase user engagement while solidifying Ethereum's dominance in an increasingly competitive ecosystem. To me, this is Ethereum doubling down on user-centric innovation, a move that can secure its place in the blockchain hierarchy.
EIPs worth watching in 2025
Important Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in 2025 include EIP-2935, EIP-7702, and EIP-7691.
- EIP-2935: Save historical block hashes in the state
Storing block hashes for a definable period of time can simplify nodes' verification queries for blocks, improving efficiency and reducing overhead.
Analysis: This is a "network plumbing" improvement that is not very eye-catching but is significant for node operators. Improved data retrieval can also help reduce chain reorganization and node sync time.
- EIP-7702: Set EOA account code for a single transaction
The proposal extends the functionality of Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) by allowing code to be injected using a specialized transaction type. This unlocks features such as batching, sponsorship (paying gas fees for others), and permission downgrades (reducing permissions without changing addresses).
Analysis: This proposal could blur the line between EOAs and smart contracts, driving the development of more sophisticated contract wallets (such as ERC-4337-based solutions). If widely adopted, it could catalyze user-friendly features such as transaction sponsorship or advanced multi-signature solutions.
EIP-7691: Improve Blob Throughput
This EIP increases the number of blobs in each block based on EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), which introduced "Blobs" to reduce L2 fees, thereby further reducing L2 costs and increasing throughput.
Analysis: The synergy between L1 and L2 scaling is very important for Ethereum. By expanding Blob capacity, Ethereum reaffirms its commitment to maintaining an affordable L2 environment. If L2 can handle more data without incurring high fees, user adoption of second-layer solutions may accelerate.
Polkadot Ecosystem
To this day, Polkadot remains a hotbed of cross-chain experimentation. Several important developments in 2025 are intended to solidify Polkadot’s position as infrastructure for interoperability and high-throughput decentralized applications.
JAM Chain and its innovations
JAM Chain is currently attracting a lot of attention as a high-profile next-generation blockchain protocol in the Polkadot ecosystem. If successful, JAM may demonstrate Polkadot’s commitment to a plug-and-play multi-chain architecture.
Milestone 1 and JAM SDK
An important milestone for the JAM team is the completion of “JAM Milestone 1”, which includes the launch of a development toolkit called JAM SDK. This toolkit can simplify the construction of applications on JAM and may attract a wider range of developer types (from traditional backend engineers to professional blockchain developers).
JAM CoreVM
The introduction of JAM CoreVM may redefine the way real-time transactions and application execution are handled. By replacing the traditional block finalization method with the "Refine-Accumulate" mechanism, JAM CoreVM will provide near-real-time finality.
This approach could significantly reduce latency, a long-standing challenge for blockchains in their quest for fast confirmations without sacrificing security. If executed well, it could encourage more latency-sensitive DApps (such as high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, or event-driven DeFi) to migrate to or launch on JAM-powered Polkadot parachains.
CoreChains and CorePlay
After completing the construction of the virtual machine layer, the JAM team plans to expand the functionality through CoreChains and CorePlay. Although the specific details disclosed at present are limited, these solutions seem to expand the application boundaries of the JAM architecture, especially for the gaming ecosystem or specific niche scenarios that are critical to the modular design of enterprise-level blockchains.
The core idea of Polkadot is built around specialized parachains. JAM’s approach to building CoreChains demonstrates a potential trend toward industry-specific functionality. If these specialized parachains each solve unique challenges (such as compliance, gaming, or data management), they will greatly enrich Polkadot’s value proposition as a multi-chain network.
Comprehensive improvements to the Polkadot network
In addition to JAM’s initiatives, Polkadot itself will undergo significant upgrades to reflect lessons learned from the past year of network stress testing and community feedback.
Polkadot Hub (Plaza)
The completion of the Polkadot Hub (Plaza) focuses on integrating ecosystem tooling, infrastructure, and documentation.
Analysis: As the ecosystem expands, a unified hub makes sense for both new and experienced developers. Centralizing resources can significantly reduce complexity, which is an important step for Polkadot to attract more developers and end users in the fierce competition with other L1 and L2.
XCM v5
Cross-chain messaging (XCM) is key to Polkadot’s interoperability vision. XCM v5 will improve and upgrade cross-chain messaging, enhance interoperability, and enable more efficient and secure cross-chain communication and a better user experience.
Analysis: Cross-chain operability remains the holy grail in the cryptocurrency space. While existing solutions such as Wormhole and LayerZero help connect ecosystems, XCM serves as a specialized tool for Polkadot. Making XCM more efficient and secure could make cross-parachain operations more “native,” potentially reducing friction between users and developers.
Elastic expansion
After a severe spam attack on Kusama in December 2024, Polkadot’s Elastic Scaling mechanism demonstrated its adaptability under high load, handling 143k TPS.
Analysis: It is critical for a chain to be able to effectively cope with sudden surges in traffic. Successfully resisting spam attacks can enhance its marketing effectiveness and demonstrate the resilience and reliability of its chain. However, the more severe test lies in how to manage the sharp increase in legitimate traffic, especially when Polkadot-based DApps gain widespread attention and use.
Chain Abstraction and Omni-Network Development
Polkadot’s overall strategy is increasingly focused on making the network more developer- and user-friendly, while ensuring that the complexity of the underlying technology remains hidden behind the scenes.
Unified address format
By introducing a single address format for parachains, Polkadot aims to eliminate the confusion caused by multiple wallet standards.
Although simplifying addresses is not an easy task, this move is a key step in reducing cross-chain interaction barriers and improving user experience. This is similar to Apple's iOS ecosystem, which enhances consistency across multiple applications and services by unifying the user experience.
Omni-node and Polkadot SDK
Maintaining up-to-date node software for dozens of parachains requires a lot of resources. Omni-node aims to simplify this process by optimizing resource allocation.
From a developer perspective, the move to reduce operational overhead is undoubtedly welcome. However, the complexity of Polkadot’s multi-chain approach may require continued improvements in developer tooling, so in addition to Omni-node, iterative enhancements to other tools can be expected.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned above, Ethereum will continue to iterate through Pectra upgrades and improvement proposals (EIPs), consolidating its L1 as a reliable settlement layer for the thriving L2 ecosystem. Polkadot uses innovations such as JAM Chain, Omni-node, and improved XCM to optimize cross-chain usage and expansion.
In addition, broader market trends, including Vietnam’s regulatory initiatives, stablecoin improvements, and AI-driven crypto proxy systems, all highlight that the crypto space is rapidly evolving. So, what will the crypto space look like in 2025? Let’s wait and see!
