2025: The Great Turning Point in Web3 History

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Author: K, Web3Caff Research Fellow

Cover: Photo by Motion Lady on Unsplash

By 2025, the entire industry will finally cross a watershed that no one can pretend not to see: transitioning from a decade dominated by infrastructure to a decade driven by applications. You can think of it as Web3’s “end of adolescence”—the years of rapid growth, rebellion,拼算力,拼 TPS,拼跨链,拼 ZK are over; products that truly make ordinary users willing to spend money, stay, and participate are just beginning.

This shift is not just rhetoric but the first time the underlying conditions have truly matured. a16z clearly states in the “State of Crypto 2025” that mainstream chain processing capacity has increased from a few TPS a few years ago to today’s 3400+ TPS, with costs dropping from twenty dollars to a few cents or even less than a penny. [1] In other words, the chain is no longer a bottleneck, technology no longer hinders entrepreneurs, and users are no longer kept outside. In other words, the infrastructure of the public chain era is now sufficiently mature, and the next decade’s real focus should be on application deployment, public goods, open-source tools, and structured financing.

One of the important backgrounds supporting the industry’s gradual entry into the application exploration stage is the relatively clear policy environment at a phased level. For example, as the US and Hong Kong China gradually develop clearer policy paths on key issues such as crypto asset regulation, stablecoin frameworks, and compliant custody, institutions, developers, and infrastructure providers are beginning to reassess the long-term feasibility of blockchain applications. This clarity does not come from a single policy shift but is reflected in a series of institutional discussions, regulatory practices, and legislative processes, reaching a phased consensus on “innovation within compliant conditions.” In such an environment, capital allocation has begun to warm up, and foundational modules such as compliant stablecoins, payment tracks, custody, and clearing are gradually capable of large-scale deployment, providing a realistic foundation for more diverse application forms.

The author especially reminds: Stablecoins are tokens of virtual currencies, and please be aware that issuing and participating in Token investments are subject to different strict regulations and restrictions in various countries and regions. Especially in mainland China, issuing Tokens is suspected of “illegal securities issuance,” and activities such as providing Token trading matchmaking are also considered “illegal financial activities” (mainland Chinese readers are strongly advised to read “Summary and Key Points of Laws and Regulations Related to Blockchain and Virtual Currencies in Mainland China”). Therefore, do not base your decisions on this information, and strictly comply with the laws and regulations of your country and region. Do not participate in any illegal financial activities.

As policy environments cease to be a major source of uncertainty and infrastructure performance continues to improve, internal industry changes also become apparent. The real transformation has occurred: revenue is shifting from the network layer to the application layer. a16z uses the concept of “Real Economic Value” to mark this trend clearly—measuring whether a chain is successful no longer depends on its ecosystem story but on whether users are willing to conduct real economic activities on it. [1]

Against this backdrop, we finally see the three core uses of the Web3 industry in 2025 bloom in full (Editor’s note: Blockchain technology applications are extremely broad and can be applied to many real-world fields, mainly solving trust, collaboration, and rights confirmation issues, including: finance and payments (cross-border settlement, clearing, reconciliation), assets and property rights (real estate, equity, intellectual property rights confirmation and transfer), supply chain and manufacturing (traceability, anti-counterfeiting, process transparency), government and public services (electronic certificates, data sharing, voting), healthcare and education (trustworthy records of medical history and academic credentials), content and cultural creation (copyright registration, revenue sharing), and energy and IoT (device collaboration, carbon data, energy trading). This report aims only to analyze representative cases of the Web3 industry under the market changes of 2025 and does not claim to be comprehensive.):

First, as assets. Stablecoins, DAT, RWA, on-chain payments, and other “real asset layers” are becoming the main entry points for large-scale adoption. Stablecoins form the fastest dollar clearing network globally, on-chain payments are being reinvented, and RWA brings traditional yields into blockchain, making chains a layer for “distributing real yields”;

Second, as a market. Hyperliquid and Solana now account for 53% of the entire network’s revenue-generating transaction volume, indicating that high-frequency trading, contracts, and prediction markets are becoming new economic engines. Price discovery markets are not just by-products but core forces driving liquidity, optimizing infrastructure, and cultivating user culture;

Third, as a computing and coordination network. Blockchain is finally beginning to empower AI, rather than waiting for AI to empower Web3. From verification computing, model ownership, data traceability to decentralized inference networks, on-chain assets as an “AI coordination layer” are taking shape. Previously, we discussed “what chains can do”; now we discuss “what AI can do on chains.”

This also explains why IOSG’s Jiawei Zhu said: “The glorious era of infrastructure is over; we have undoubtedly entered the application era.” [2] Peter Pan of 1kx also made the same judgment: the application layer investment cycle was immature in the past seven years, but the next seven years will be completely different because, against the backdrop of continuous technological improvement and gradually clarified regulatory environments, external constraints on application innovation are significantly easing. [3]

Therefore, the key in 2025 is not “whether applications will come,” but “applications finally have the soil to be born.” Chains are fast enough, costs are low enough, regulations are relaxed, and user attention has returned. The past decade was about preparing for today; the next decade will be the era when various real business models truly run on chains. Infrastructure will not disappear, but it is no longer the narrative focus; from now on, everything must return to the product’s intrinsic value.

The application era of Web3 is not coming soon; it has already begun.

This content is excerpted from the research report: “Web3 2025 Annual 40,000-word Report (Part 1): Facing the Intersection of Financial, Computing, and Internet Order, Is a Major Industry Shift About to Begin? A Panoramic Breakdown of Structural Changes, Value Potential, Risk Boundaries, and Future Outlook”

This report (available for free reading) was written by Web3Caff Research Fellow K, systematically analyzing the core logic of the changes in Web3 development stages in 2025, focusing on why application exploration and systematic collaboration are gradually becoming new focus areas under the continuous evolution of underlying infrastructure and regulatory capabilities. Key points include:

• Stage evolution background: The internal reasons for the end of infrastructure construction and the change in industry focus;
• Key mechanism changes: The gradual clarity of rules and on-chain mechanisms and their impact on system operation;
• Main application directions: Exploration paths around payment settlement, real-world scenario mapping, and programmable collaboration;
• Future development directions: The evolution trend of Web3 in 2026 and beyond.