This was a big year for crypto, and we will probably look back to it as a pivotal point for the industry. In terms of social and consumer, we had improvements all over the stack. To summarize them: It’s never been easier for a builder to focus on their core user experience, instead than the technicalities. 

2024 is the year crypto turned on stable revenue across every onchain sector. Both protocols and apps from DeFi to social. Farcaster and Lens both turned on revenue at protocol level, essentially saas'ing signups and yearly storage revenue. This led to Farcaster’s unicorn status raise in the spring and Lens growth round announcement. But let's be honest, most of Spring's user growth came from the $DEGEN airdrop.

NFTs are seeing sustainable mint revenue at micro payments levels, which translate into real revenue for artists and brands when something goes viral onchain. This led to Zora's acquisition of mint.fun. We expect more M&A in this category for 2025.

Friend Tech's bonding curve paved the way for token launchpads to take over. Pump is wildly profitable, and Clanker is quickly gaining steam.

As it’s always been, we expect the 2025 bull market to bring in massive user attention, and for great products that have been built in the bear market to flourish and rise over tourists. Some of the trends we expect to unfold this upcoming year are:

Agentic Economies

Agents will be able to interact, and most importantly, trade with each other. Generating an economy which is not completely fueled by human emotionality.

There is whitespace for builders to create interfaces that showcase the most important information and interactions between agents, in a fun, engaging way. Hopefully these platforms not only allow users to consume the content and insights, but also participate in the economy by trading, and even launching agents and tokens.

Creator Economies

The creator economy is booming but it's deeply unfair and fragmented. Attention is indeed everything but platforms are still capturing most of the value. We think this trend will reverse over time thanks to tokens. Begone gatekeepers!

Crypto infrastructure and user experience has been improving at a rapid clip and creators big or small can make most of their income on crypto rails through digital collectibles, equity tokens, and memecoins, if they want to. The opportunity to make a living being an indie creator has never been bigger, regardless of the media and art form.

Onchain Fitness, Longevity and Wellbeing

The undeniable general trend is that fitness, longevity and wellbeing are here to stay. Regardless of your judgment on the different methods. This is a net positive for society.

We’re believers that crypto is able to take it to the next level. Tokens have the intrinsic ability to superboost stickiness for these products by assigning token rewards for users who reach their fitness goals, and even penalizing those who don’t. Work out =  earn rewards, stop smoking = earn rewards, share your health data = earn rewards, this trend will only move forward.

Micro-minting as a new social primitive

Micromints (< $1) of digital collectibles have created stable revenue for protocols, apps and creators. Platforms like Boost and Layer3 are catalyzers for this trend, as creators have more tools than ever to go viral onchain.

We expect this trend to grow beyond the mint itself, and expand into deepening the creator-fan relationship. Platforms will provide the infrastructure for creators to give more value back to their true fans.

Wallet to Wallet Messaging

Wallet to wallet messaging is yet to be unlocked. We believe that as chains go faster, and signless experiences are easier to craft, someone will crack the code for a highly engaging messaging app that is up to speed with leaders like WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram, but with all the privacy and economical benefits that crypto rails bring.

Stablecoins everywhere

Stablecoins already have product market fit but they are going to explode in 2025. Centralized stables let you eat your cake and have it too, on-chain “greenbacks” give you lightning-fast transactions backed by the U.S. Army while decentralized stables give you liberty or give you death aka the programmable, uncensorable, unstoppable money that we all deserve. 

While crypto companies have long embraced stablecoins, the time is ripe to extend their benefits beyond crypto natives and into the broader digital ecosystem.

Take Web2 apps like Venmo and Kalshi, for example. These platforms now offer customers a yield on their balances, but beneath the polished user experience lies a complex network of banking relationships and legal intricacies. It’s a classic innovators dilemma. By adopting stablecoins, these apps—and major players like Stripe—could simplify their backend operations, capture more value for themselves, but the newcomers are more prone to give it back to users. 

The Web3 Growth Marketing Stack

Even though there’s a small amount of large web3 companies, we think this market will only grow.

As web2 brands and companies see the value to target and retain web3 users, they will hit a wall by realizing that there are no proper growth marketing tools, and that they might need to build their own based on their own proprietary data joined with onchain data.

We’re already seeing a market for analytics and growth marketing companies building at the interaction of onchain and proprietary data, helping users monitor, segment and engage their users in a smarter way, both online and onchain.

Smart Wallets, Actually

Smart wallets are finally going to be smart. Gone are the days that a smart wallet just meant it had some fancy social recovery method and morme expensive transactions. Soon, smart wallets will seamlessly get users what they want in a couple clicks or even just a prompt. Want an NFT on the Zero chain but only have memecoins on Base to spare? No problem, tell the wallet what you want and it will figure it out for you. Not scared of smart contract risk? Perfect. Every coin you own that caon be staked will be until the moment you want to spend it and then — tada — they’re unstaked on the fly so you can ape into whatever you want. KISS (Keep it simple, stupid).

Regulatory Certainty

You’re probably used to the opposite phrase, regulatory uncertainty, but for the first time in history this is about to change in the US. Island subsidiaries and fat legal fees are no longer needed, you can build and ship right from your bedroom. This is going to send a shockwave through the industry and enable 100x more innovation. The golden age of consumer crypto begins now.

Call to Builders

If you’re building or are interested in any of these trends. Let us know, we’d love to chat. Onwards, and upwards.

This post is for informational purposes only, and does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell securities or to pursue any particular investment strategy. This post should not be relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment or any particular investment strategy. You should consult your own advisers as to business, financial, tax, legal, and all other related matters concerning any investment. The views expressed in this post reflect the current opinions of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Social Graph Ventures LLC