Despite the uptick in NFTs, gaming and social apps, web3 mainstream adoption has struggled over the years but now it seems to be picking up as the 2025 Web3 trends show tokenisation of real-world assets (RWA), gaming studios entering the sphere, decentralised social media platforms, stablecoins etc.etc are some of the key aspects people are looking for.

Let’s take a look at the top 6 trends shaping up in the web3 sector

Tokenization of Real-World Assets

Real-world assets are tokenized using blockchain technology which converts ownership rights of assets like luxury goods, commodities, art, and real estate, into digital tokens, representing fractional ownership of the assets. This allows investors including crypto traders to sell and buy high-value items’ shares on decentralized platforms. Originally, such assets were only available for sale to wealthy individuals having low liquidity and high value. Through tokenization, the system will become more investment-inclusive and accessible, enabling wide-scale adoption of web3 through smart contracts on blockchains which will make the transactions transparent, eliminating brokers and banks. This in turn will enhance crypto market liquidity and reduce cross-border transactions errors. This RWA tokenisation market is set to reach $16 trillion by 2030, making it 10% of the global GDP.

All-time high crypto activity fueled by clearer Web3 regulation

As Paul Atkins takes over as the new US SEC chair from Gary Gensler, the regulator is likely to move towards more crypto-friendly policies causing a surge in crypto activity. The Commission might ease the enforcement of cases against crypto projects that do not have proper registration if they are not involved in any fraudulent activity, says William Frentzen, partner at Morrison Foerster.

Frentzen further elaborated on the matter by saying, “Meanwhile, under the new administration, Congress pushes through ‘FIT 21‘ or similar legislation to provide more regulatory guidance to the industry, increase the authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the space potentially at the expense of the SEC, and reduce regulation by enforcement”. As per the 2024 State of Crypto Report, the monthly active crypto addresses increased to 220 million this year while monthly crypto wallet users hit 29 million in June as Ethereum (20.8%), Solana (11.2%) and Base (10.7%) accounting for the majority of the share. This has tripled the numbers of last year. The pro-crypto policies are likely to take crypto activity to an all-time high in 2025 driven by enhanced network capacities and blockchain infrastructure in the Web 3 space, specially Layer 2.

“This push for blockchain and crypto development is coming at a critical time because, with the swift development of other technologies, such as AI, happening in parallel, technologies like blockchain will be critical both as a complement to and a safeguard against some of the concerns surrounding generative AI”, said Natalie Lederman, partner at Sullivan & Worcester.

Decentralised social media platforms

Decentralised social media platforms are rising at an unprecedented rate as they are providing better control for users, unlike centralized control systems. This can be seen in the increase in users on platforms like Mirror and Mastodon where user data and privacy is secured from large corporations. These decentralised platforms run on federated models where smaller instances are part of the bigger network, eliminating data exploitation, algorithmic bias and censorship concerns.

Web 3 blockchains that enable direct ownership and monetization of content through these decentralised social platforms are likely to be major players in 2025.

This is already visible in how Mastodon recorded more than 10 million users by the middle of this year, with 1.5 million monthly active users. Many content creators have moved to Mirror which has blockchain-based publishing, allowing for direct ownership of their content.

All this will cause the decentralised social media market to touch $10 billion by 2030, a 30% yearly growth rate with platforms like Bluesky overtaking Twitter.

Meme coin and degen asset creation

A key aspect of the Web3 space is making meme coin and degen assets which gain traction through airdrops, viral memes and community projects. The crypto culture propagates through creativity by generating new meme coins which go viral in moments like Peanut the Squirrel and CHILLGUY of this year.

As these drive community engagements and create genuine moments in the web3 space, it’s one of the chief trends that will continue in 2025. Take for example how a meme coin was created when an AI agent stood up its first L1 on Saga for a social app.

Gaming studios entering the web3 space

2025 will be the year when gaming studios enter the Wev3 space as AI leverages crypto rails for payments centering around gaming. This will open up the realm of game developers into the blockchain and crypto field, particularly around the use of AI agents onchain for non-player characters (NPCs).

Hence, gaming studies which can use this tech will gain traction. Many of these AI agents have taken it a step further and created their own L1s at will on Saga, leading to fully autonomous interactive worlds on a decentralized network.

Gaming studios are now looking to have blockchain as their core infrastructure which will give greater ownership to the gamers. While this industry was in recession for the last one and a half years and experimenting with blockchain, in 2025 they are ready for mass adoption as gaming studios are springing up in the Web3 space.

Rise in stablecoin adoption

Stablecoins use is likely to surge in the Web3 space in 2025 as they have found a market fit with their low-cost and easy-to-access feature. These pegged-to-fiat currencies act as reliable savings and transaction mediums for users because of their steady value. Most adopters are from the limited banking infrastructure and high inflation economies where it acts as a viable alternative to volatile cryptos.

These stablecoin transactions have become more efficient and affordable with the latest developments in the web3 space like high-throughput blockchain development and Layer 2 solutions. This is seen in how stablecoins accounted for $8.5 trillion in transaction volume across 1.1 billion transactions in Q2 2024, which was double that of Visa. This year, stablecoins made up 32% of daily crypto usage. As blockchain technology develops further stablecoin adoption will accelerate across sectors like DeFi, e-commerce, cross-border payments etc because of their versatile nature.