Futuristic Perspectives: Four Anticipated Trends for Web3 in 2025 and Beyond
Rebecca Liao serves as the Co-founder and CEO of Saga. This year, web3 is poised to reach mainstream status. The first Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs set the stage, leading to Bitcoin's approach to record-breaking highs by mid-2024. This surge in interest attracted more attention to the web3 space. When then-President Trump publicly endorsed Bitcoin and cryptocurrency during his campaign, the web3 market saw an even higher rise in value due to the anticipation of his election victory.
However, web3 was always understood to not achieve mainstream status if it remained a highly volatile financial asset. As investors poured billions into blockchain technology, they did so in hopes of revolutionizing our digital lives.
The web3 market operates in two-to-three-year cycles. I anticipate that the growth cycle of 2024-2026 will finally bring about the mass adoption use cases that previous cycles approached before entering bear markets again. As the pinnacle year for this specific expansion cycle, what can we look forward to from web3 in 2025?
1. AI Agents will come in waves on web3 rails.
AI agents are self-governing entities that rely on AI to carry out specific tasks. They range from simple AI-triggered smart contracts on a blockchain facilitating a payment to more complex human-like actors serving as a game’s non-performing character or even playing on a gamer’s behalf.
Because AI agents operate autonomously, it's crucial that their actions are traceable and transparent. Once an AI agent is assigned a task, it doesn't require further human intervention to complete its responsibilities, so traditional checking mechanisms will not apply.
Blockchains have already started to shine as the infrastructure for managing and tasking AI agents due to their transparency. By using blockchain, the actions performed by an AI agent are easily tracked, and any required model adjustments are quickly detected. Moreover, AI agents can act independently without the control of a centralized organization. For these agents to truly mirror human capabilities, they should operate across networks and organizations without boundaries—making blockchain, with its immutable ledger, the ideal solution.
In our work at Saga, we've observed an increasing use of AI agents in the gaming and entertainment industries to create content through generative AI among parties who don't directly interact. To ensure appropriate attribution and payment for their work, blockchain rails are required to document, organize, and execute these agents' actions.
2. The emergence of SocialFi will be evident.
To date, web3 has primarily been tailored to finance. However, web3 assets without social utility often struggle to maintain value due to their failure to maintain interest. The recent craze of memecoins perfectly illustrates this principle - with the exception of a few memecoins symbolizing membership or personal identifiers, most vanish within a few weeks.
Web3 assets with social utility, originating from gaming and entertainment, possess significantly more staying power. For instance, games contain in-game assets that cannot be traded on secondary markets without the risk of backlash from the original game designer who sees no value in secondary market sales. By utilizing a decentralized marketplace, games can realize value from secondary market sales and provide their players with the freedom to transfer assets as they please. Particularly among Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha, this combined economic and social activity is no longer an unusual form of entertainment but a popular one.
The attribution of value to an asset based on community consensus determines the foundation of web3, and this same force of SocialFi (social finance) will propel the industry towards mass adoption.
3. Web3 gaming will save the gaming industry.
The gaming industry has been in a tailspin for over a year, with mass layoffs affecting larger studios and many profitable indie studios closing by the end of the year. Although part of this decline is due to an excess of content during the pandemic, similar to the streaming industry, the primary cause is the high cost of user acquisition. The average cost per install (CPI) in 2023 was approximately $4.30 on iOS and $1.15 on Android. For AAA franchises, marketing budgets can reach around $300 million.
Despite web3 having its detractors in the traditional gaming industry, almost all industry leaders acknowledge that web3 has developed a fundamental understanding of community engagement crucial to cost-effective and sustainable user acquisition. At Saga, we've discovered that incorporating both web3 and traditional methods for user acquisition offers the best balance for user acquisition and retention.
4. Widespread adoption of web3 in traditional industries will occur, but it will have a different look.
During the previous growth cycle of cryptocurrency (2020-2022), traditional industries, from insurance to supply chain to banking, undertook substantial experiments in adopting blockchain technology. However, very few of these experiments were deemed successful and continued.
Disruptive technology doesn't just change the manner tasks are performed; it introduces entirely new models for conducting business and interacting with the world. Therefore, an adoption strategy that merely duplicates current processes on new infrastructure will appear less convenient and more expensive than currently available options.
New, robust social and business models will emerge from web3 in this cycle, serving as the foundation for mass adoption by traditional businesses. After these technologies are tested at the grassroots level, they will be adopted by the followers and subsequent adopters.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) were the primary areas that surfaced between 2020 and 2022. Regrettably, neither managed to gain widespread acceptance. In our present situation, the sector has the chance to construct upon its foundations and genuinely blend culture, technology, and finance, resulting in the groundbreaking web3 creation.
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- Rebecca Liao, the Co-founder and CEO of Saga, highlighted the importance of blockchain in managing and tasking AI agents due to their transparency and traceability.
- Amidst the anticipated growth of web3 in 2025, Rebecca Liao's company, Saga, envisions a significant role for SocialFi in ensuring appropriate attribution and payment for AI agents' work in the gaming and entertainment industries.
