GM, frens! ☕️

Experience isn’t about sounding sure of yourself. It’s about knowing where not to spend your energy. When to pass, when to wait, when to let a moment burn itself out 🔥 

In crypto especially, that kind of experience is clearly visible. People who’ve been around long enough don’t get excited by novelty alone - they look for whether something actually holds up when it’s used, stressed and repeated.

And that’s what today is about: Web3 as it’s experienced in practice, by people building and using it over time, once the novelty wears off and only the hard work remains 💪 

🔥 Web3 in 2025, according to the people building it

2025 wasn’t defined by a single event or token or a meta that exploded.

It was defined by small changes stacking into something heavier and friction easing in places that had been stuck for years. Crypto didn’t suddenly reinvent itself, but it did start behaving differently 👀 

To understand what changed, we asked some of our frens from the space to look back at the year and reflect on what stood out.

They come from different parts of the ecosystem, but their answers actually converge in telling ways 🤯 

This is 2025 as they experienced it 👇️ 

Payments got elevated

Hugo (@uwwgo), Cofounder @ Peanut

When asked about his favorite Web3 moment of 2025, Hugo didn’t point to some token that was printing or a protocol launch. His answer was specific:

For him, that moment represented something much larger than one product getting attention. It reflected what people were focused on 🤔 

This wasn’t an isolated feeling 👇️ 

Throughout 2025, payments moved from being treated as some future use case to something actively being tested and deployed 🪙 

• Stables processed tens of trillions of dollars in onchain volume over the year, with a meaningful portion tied to real economic activity rather than internal routing.

• Settlement times dropped below a second ⏰ 

• Fees as a problem in the space became history 👋 

The UX made a great leap - wallets increasingly abstracted away gas, chain selection, and manual signing. Payments started to resemble familiar financial interactions rather than obscure rituals.

And btw, by leaning into smart accounts, gas abstraction, and batched transactions, Ambire has directly contributed to a state of the industry where paying with crypto felt less like using hacker tricks 🙃 

So 2025 was really the year crypto payments stopped being novel. The pivotal point where true adoption actually happens was crossed 🫡 

Interest became behavior

Alsie (@AlsieLC), Marketing @ Dune:

When asked about the most unexpected trend of 2025, Alsie’s answer was short and telling:

That mirrors what many observed across the year. Institutions didn’t just express interest, they executed 👇️ 

Exchange traded crypto products grew substantially, custody solutions matured, and compliance frameworks hardened enough that allocation became operational rather than hypothetical 🧠 

Beyond individual firms, the entire industry’s posture changed. Surveys showed a majority of institutional investors plan to at least double their digital asset exposure in the next three years.

Banks and exchanges formed partnerships to trade and settle with crypto: for instance, Mastercard teamed with Chainlink so its 3+ billion cardholders could purchase crypto directly onchain 🤏 

In short, Alsie’s observations are spot on: 2025 will be remembered as the year institutions stopped lurking at the sidelines and jumped into Web3.

From ETFs to bank issued tokens, crypto became an accepted part of financial strategy, and not just in Silicon Valley circles, but on Wall Street itself 💰️ 

Tokenized RWAs, pragmatism and crypto’s macro strength

Barry BenAsher (@Barry98964766), Team Lead @ MarketAcross

Barry’s favorite Web3 moment of 2025 was rooted in infrastructure:

He expanded on what that meant in practice:

Barry’s comments honed in on a couple of real themes of 2025: the rise of tokenized RWAs, pragmatism dominating over hype in the space and Bitcoin’s strength as a macro asset 🤓 

• First, RWAs - things like bonds, real estate, and funds brought onchain – really “went mainstream” in 2025.

• This was the year that major banks and asset managers moved beyond pilot projects to scaling actual products on public. We already saw J.P. Morgan issuing short term debt on Solana and launching a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum 🪙 

• Likewise, firms like UBS tokenized a money market fund (uMINT) and processed live investor subscriptions. Ondo Finance worked with big institutions on tokenized Treasury funds, and State Street teamed with Galaxy Digital to plan a tokenized cash management.

• All of these efforts paid off – by late 2025, the total value of tokenized cash and securities on various chains surpassed $36 Biliion, a clear sign that RWAs are no longer niche in any shape or form 💵 

“Utility over ideology” or change towards pragmatism

The most unexpected trend of 2025, according to Barry, was:

For those closely watching the space, this was hard to miss 🥸 

• By the end of 2025, conversations that centered on techno utopian ideals and maximalist slogans just a few years ago had refocused on practical matters like sustainability, market structure, compliance, liquidity, user trust, etc. In other words, crypto “grew up” 🎋 

The metrics proved this, too.

• Projects and protocols that delivered tangible utility generally outperformed those fueled purely by narrative 😉 

• Revenue generating apps became stars – Hyperliquid, for example, pulled in roughly between $30 to $90 million in fees every month, ranking among the top earners and demonstrating real user demand.

Barry also pointed out Bitcoin’s macro resilience 👇️ 

Despite price volatility, spot Bitcoin ETFs (from BlackRock and others) held over 800,000 BTC by year’s end 🪙 

BlackRock’s fund briefly hit $100 billion in assets, making it the fastest growing ETF ever.

This happened even as BTC’s price was off its highs, showing strong long term conviction. In fact, Bitcoin ETFs attracted more new capital than gold ETFs in 2025, even though gold’s price pumped ~60% in 2025 🤯 

Storytelling claimed its place

Dayana Aleksandrova (@dee_centralized), New Media Lead @ WalletConnect

When asked about the most unexpected trend of 2025, she pointed to something surprisingly important. yet non technical 🫢 

For much of crypto’s history, engineers and financiers grabbed the spotlight 🤓 

But, as she noted, “the storytelling narrative blew up” - especially in late 2025 - validating that content creators, artists, and community builders have a crucial role in this industry 🤔 

This was the year projects realized that having great tech and green candles isn’t enough, you need a compelling story that people can relate to.

• We saw Web3 companies hiring “Chief Storytellers” and Heads of Narrative to shape their brand’s message.

• In fact, tech giants like Microsoft and Google started recruiting storytelling leads for their teams, and startups were offering salaries up to $300k+ for narrative experts 🤯 

This trend went viral as firms in old finance or just organizations in general acknowledged that perception is reality - controlling your story helps hire users, and in crypto, this meant embracing creatives who could translate complex concepts into human narratives 👨‍🎨 

Projects with rich lore and social content began to stand out over others in 2025.

Hand in hand with storytelling came the creator economy flourishing onchain.

• In 2025, more mainstream platforms integrated crypto for creators. For example, YouTube announced U.S. creators can receive their payouts in stablecoin (PayPal’s PYUSD), artists launched narrative driven NFT collections, and DAOs funded creative works 🫡 

Late in the year, there was a burst of discussions on Twitter (X) and blogs about how “creatives have a role in the space” – that designers, writers, and storytellers are essential to make Web3 accessible 🧠 

This gained traction as crypto marketing started changing from pure hype to meaningful engagement.

Even the AI boom intersected, with projects using AI generated art and stories to draw in users 🤖 

By validating storytelling, 2025 showed that Web3 isn’t purely a tech or finance revolution, it’s also a cultural movement.

Dayana’s insight highlights an encouraging change in the space: the industry opened its doors to creatives, recognizing that a good story can onboard the next million users just as surely as good code can 🫡 

Ethereum communities proved staying power

Cardno (@cardnoNFT), Community Ops @ POAP

Cardno’s insights focus on the human side of crypto: community, identity, and culture.

In 2025, despite whatever the market was doing, communities doubled down on what makes Web3 special: shared experiences and collective memory 💓 

Cardno, who works at POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol), noted that people still “value presence, memory, and shared experiences, even throughout market noise and shifting narratives” 🙃 

• This meant that Web3 communities kept gathering, both online and in person, to make memories - and they used blockchain to record them.

• The aforementioned POAPs themselves, those digital badges for attending events or moments, continued to be hugely popular. Since its start in 2019, over 7.4 million POAP badges have been minted across nearly 100k events – an astounding cultural archive of meetups, conferences, and even virtual hangouts ⭐️ 

2025 also saw strides in crypto identity and culture.

• More users anchored their online identities to blockchain assets: for example, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) registrations surpassed 15 million names, with even more usernames issued as subdomains on platforms like Coinbase’s Base and others.

• Owning an ENS name (like yourname.eth) became a digital passport of sorts, used in profiles and as a login across dApps – a sign that decentralized identity is catching on 📛 

• We also saw concepts like Soulbound tokens and onchain reputation systems trialed in communities, linking identity to trust and contribution (though these are early stage) 🧾 

Culturally, crypto communities proved they have long memories.

• Iconic memes, inside jokes, and traditions carried on, creating continuity even as new people arrived. Projects started focusing on “community archives” – preserving things like forum posts, historical airdrops, and artworks onchain so that the community’s story isn’t lost 📦️ 

We also saw IRL community events (Global hackathons, local meetups on every continent) get record participation as well as digital communities in Discord/X/Telegram forming stronger bonds 🤝 

So it’s clear that crypto is more than charts. It’s a social movement that treasures its history and identity.

People – their memories and identities – are at the heart of Web3. 

Technologies like POAP or ENS are simply tools enabling this human element. And in 2025, those tools got wider adoption, proving that crypto’s cultural layer is maturing alongside its technology 🥳 

Across responses, a sort of a convergence appeared. Crypto in 2025 felt less ideological and more operational.

Memecoin launches peaked early in the year and declined. Utility narratives replaced maximalism. The dominant question changed from “which chain wins?” to “what belongs onchain?” 🧠 

Looking ahead to 2026

When asked about 2026, everyone basically had only one thing to say:

Hugo (@uwwgo):

Alsie (@AlsieLC):

Dayana (@dee_centralized):

Barry (@Barry98964766):

Cardno (@cardnoNFT):

… nuff said 🫠 

When we look back at the year through these answers, what stands out isn’t alignment around one story, it’s the opposite: we now have many stories running in parallel without canceling each other out 📚️ 

Builders, institutions, creators, and communities weren’t chasing the same thing, yet they all found room to operate 👷 

After everything was said and done, 2025 showed that the space no longer needs a single idea to move forward.

Other worthy reads

“26 Views for 2026” by Campbell:

“The State of AI Going into 2026” by Yohei:

Recent headlines, curated by TylerD:

That's all for now, frens.

We'll meet in a week! And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better Web3 is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

Brought to you by Ambire: The Only Web3 Wallet That You’ll Need!