Few could have predicted that 2025 would deliver a “Stablecoin Summer”, but it was one of the trends Applied Blockchain anticipated in its January forecast.

At the start of this year, Applied Blockchain published its 2025 Blockchain Technology Predictions, outlining areas expected to see meaningful progress across payments, regulation, privacy, identity, supply chains and blockchain infrastructure.

As the year closes, many of those forecasts have not only materialised, but in some cases advanced faster than anticipated. From award-winning supply-chain deployments to major regulatory shifts across the UK, EU and US, 2025 became a defining year for real-world blockchain adoption.

This retrospective revisits each of the seven predictions and examines how they unfolded across the wider ecosystem.
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Prediction 1: Proliferation of Blockchain AI Agents

The prediction anticipated increased use of blockchain-connected AI agents capable of interacting with smart contracts, triggering workflows, verifying data and coordinating cross-chain activity autonomously.

What happened in 2025:

• Open-source agent frameworks such as Eliza and ChainML saw rising experimentation, especially in DeFi automation and protocol orchestration.
• Enterprises explored agent-assisted compliance and monitoring workflows, including automated risk checks and on-chain document validation.
• Interest grew in agent-mediated interoperability as cross-chain messaging standards matured.

Verdict: In progress. Strong foundations, likely to accelerate in 2026.
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Prediction 2: Verifiable Track & Trace in Supply Chains

The forecast anticipated that blockchain-backed track-and-trace systems would gain momentum across global supply chains, and 2025 delivered clear evidence of this shift.

What happened in 2025:

• Atlas Path, a logistics platform developed through a partnership between CRYOPDP (part of DHL Health Logistics) and Applied Blockchain, and powered by Silent Data, won the SAP Digital Transformation Award at the 2025 Supply Chain Excellence Awards. The project demonstrated how blockchain can provide a mechanism for reliable verifiability of supply chain data in regulated environments at scale.
• Beyond healthcare logistics, interest in verifiable track-and-trace systems continued across maritime, commodities and humanitarian operations, reflecting a broader shift toward transparency with protected data.

Verdict: Validated through real-world deployment and industry recognition.
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Prediction 3: Regulatory Shifts in Digital Assets

In light of the change of leadership in the US and the announcement of the UK's Digital Securities Sandbox at the end of 2024, this prediction anticipated major regulatory movement across digital assets, and 2025 delivered exactly that.

What happened in 2025:

• In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a more defined stance on digital assets.
• The U.S. GENIUS Act, introduced a framework for U.S. Treasury–backed stablecoins.
• The EU’s MiCA framework came fully into force, establishing the first comprehensive regulatory regime for stablecoins and crypto-asset issuance.
• In the UK, early activity around the Digital Securities Sandbox created momentum for tokenised financial instruments and institutional experimentation, complementing work underway at the Bank of England — more on this in #5.

These developments reshaped the landscape for cross-border payments, tokenised deposits and enterprise settlement infrastructure, marking the most significant regulatory progress in several years.

Verdict: Strongly validated, regulatory clarity arrived across major jurisdictions.
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Prediction 4: Adoption of Identity Solutions

The forecast expected blockchain-anchored digital identities to see broader adoption across social media and online platforms, supported by the rollout of government-issued digital IDs such as the EU’s eIDAS framework.

What happened in 2025:

• The EU eIDAS 2.0 wallet moved into national pilots (Germany, Spain, Netherlands), testing verifiable credentials for government services and age verification.
• Major platforms explored identity-linked features, including X’s expanded verification APIs and Reddit’s continued trials using cryptographic attestations.
• Stronger progress occurred in enterprise settings: financial institutions and supply-chain networks increasingly adopted verifiable credentials for compliance and access control. Silent Data’s identity-based permissioning reflected this shift toward privacy-preserving identity infrastructure.

Verdict: Partially validated. Adoption advanced, but mainstream usage is still emerging.
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Prediction 5: Mainstream Payment Tokens

The January 2025 report anticipated that regulatory developments would accelerate adoption of blockchain-based payments, including stablecoins, CBDCs and tokenised deposits. A16Z similarly predicted that enterprises would increasingly accept stablecoins for payments.

What happened in 2025:

• The year’s “Stablecoin Summer” brought a surge in institutional activity, driven by clearer rules and growing demand for programmable, instant settlement.
• Industry leaders including Tony McLaughlin (ex-Citi), Geoff Kendrick (Standard Chartered) and Bernhard Schweizer (SAP) highlighted this shift toward production-grade payment infrastructure on the Applied Blockchain Podcast.
• Visa expanded its settlement platform to support multiple stablecoins, processed over US$200m in stablecoin transactions, and launched a Visa Direct pilot enabling stablecoin-prefunded cross-border payments, signalling payment networks’ embrace of tokenised money.
• Circle completed a successful IPO and launched Arc, its own Layer 1 network, reinforcing stablecoins as regulated financial infrastructure.
• Stripe deepened its role in crypto-native payments through acquisitions (Pivvy, Bridge) and the launch of its Layer 1, Tempo.
• CBDC experimentation also advanced, including the launch of the Bank of England Digital Pound Lab, where Applied Blockchain participates alongside NOBO Finance to explore privacy-preserving settlement and multi-asset flows.

Verdict: Strongly validated. Payment tokens became one of 2025’s defining areas of growth.
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Prediction 6: Maturing of Rollups

In January Applied Blockchain anticipated continued maturation of rollups, particularly ZK and Optimistic architectures, as enterprises sought scalable, cost-efficient and composable environments aligned with Ethereum standards.

What happened in 2025:

• Rollups matured significantly, with advances in proving performance, throughput, interoperability and developer tooling. ZK-rollups narrowed performance gaps with Optimistic systems, while Optimistic rollups expanded institutional partnerships.
• The major Layer 2 ecosystems — Base, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Polygon zkEVM, zkSync, Starknet and Linea — continued to grow, driven by lower fees, strong EVM compatibility and expanding liquidity.
• Enterprises increasingly adopted L2 ecosystems over private chains, prioritising Ethereum alignment, composability and regulatory clarity. This shift also highlighted demand for privacy-preserving execution environments compatible with L2 architectures. Silent Data’s integration into the Superchain reflected this direction, offering an EVM-compatible environment that supports enterprise app-chain patterns with confidential execution.
• The modular stack gained momentum, with wider use of data-availability layers, shared sequencers and hybrid execution models that combine on-chain verification with off-chain processing.

Verdict: Validated, rollups continued their transition from experimental scaling tools to production-grade infrastructure, with privacy emerging as an essential next layer.
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Prediction 7: TEEs as the Privacy Technology of Choice

The prediction anticipated that Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) would become the leading approach for blockchain privacy, with cryptographic alternatives such as ZKPs, FHE and MPC remaining too early-stage for general-purpose use.

What happened in 2025:

• TEEs saw growing adoption across regulated and enterprise settings, offering scalable confidential execution aligned with existing security standards.
• Enterprises increasingly turned to privacy-preserving execution for real-world applications, including deployments in healthcare logistics (DHL’s CRYOPDP), energy and trading (Shell), and regulated digital-asset platforms such as Tokeny and Archax, which adopted Silent Data for confidential verification and controlled data visibility.
• The industry also shifted toward hybrid architectures, combining TEEs with cryptographic proofs and programmable access controls to strengthen trust assumptions and meet regulatory expectations.
• ZKPs progressed in narrow, specialised domains (e.g., identity proofs and attestations), while FHE and MPC remained primarily research- or pilot-level technologies rather than production-scale privacy solutions.

Verdict: Validated, TEEs moved firmly into the spotlight in 2025.
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2025, A Defining Year for Enterprise Blockchain

The events of 2025 confirmed many of the January predictions and signalled a broader transformation: blockchain is now entering a phase of institutional, regulated and privacy-first adoption. Real-world deployments, regulatory frameworks and maturing L2 ecosystems created the foundations for the next wave of growth.

With Silent Data now integrated into major L2 ecosystems and used in production by enterprises and financial institutions, 2026 will accelerate the shift toward verifiable, programmable and confidential digital infrastructure.

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