2025 was a line in the sand moment for crypto.
Decades from now, we will look back at these years as 2009 – 2024. Then 2025. Then everything after.
It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on exactly why that is and what it means for the next decade.
Until this point, crypto could fairly be categorized as “the Wild West” with all the good and bad that entails.
We’ve had a decade of unprecedented innovation in computer science, cryptography, and finance, leading to innovations like 24/7 markets, permissionless financial products, and zero-cost global dollar payments.
Concepts and products that crypto introduced are now changing the world.
But throughout that same decade, frauds, speculation, and a lack of regulatory clarity damaged the optics of crypto and put a ceiling on the industry’s growth.
That all changed in 2025 with the administration’s regulatory embrace of crypto. In a complete reversal, the SEC went from fighting crypto to announcing “Project Crypto” and pledging to bring the world’s financial infrastructure onchain.
We also got our first major piece of positive crypto legislation (GENIUS). Several crypto companies went public. Stablecoins went mainstream. Prediction markets are the fastest growing product outside of AI. Billion-dollar M&A is finally happening. DEXs are eating market share from CEXs. RWAs grew 4x. The list goes on…
For the first time ever, banks, payments providers, startups, and enterprises have an incentive to build onchain.
Everyone loves to compare crypto to the internet, so here is our analogy: We believe we just experienced the equivalent of 2002 for the internet.
The age of speculative capital driving crypto is over, and the slow grind up where innovations truly scale has only just begun.
This has profound implications for investors, builders, and society as a whole.
From our perspective, here’s what it means for Blockworks.
We’re making our next big bet.
The theme of the last decade can be described as “assets moving onchain.” $300B moved into stablecoins. $100B moved into DeFi. Another $50B flowed into perps and related markets.
Now, we’ve entered a new era.
We believe the theme of the next decade will be real businesses building onchain.
If you squint, you can see what it looks like. Startups like Hyperliquid, Pump, and Aave generate hundreds of millions of revenue with just dozens of employees. Fintechs like Robinhood, Stripe, and Klarna launched their own chains and stablecoins. Institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan all transact on open, public blockchains.
The world is moving onchain. Slowly at first, then all at once.
In the next decade, we will go from $10 billion in onchain revenue today to more than $1 trillion.
Combined with AI, that shift onchain will create an explosion of opportunity and entirely new types of companies that have never existed before.
We’ve spent this past year positioning ourselves to win what we believe is the biggest opportunity we have ever seen since starting Blockworks.
The problem as we see it today: Even the most talented teams have to run multibillion-dollar protocols and onchain businesses on a patchwork of block explorers, internally built dashboards, and broken spreadsheets.
There is no single operating system and software platform for teams to run their business on.
Blockworks is going to solve that.
Our next phase is about turning the data platform we have built into a true operating system for onchain businesses.
We are building for a world where Blockworks is running the core data and workflows for millions of onchain businesses.
More on this in 2026!
2025 by the numbers
Thanks to our team, 2025 was our strongest year in our history. A few highlights:
- Sales: We grew ARR by more than 10x this year. Data and analytics ARR is now growing faster than any other line of business.
- Profitability: We remained profitable, with positive net operating income and more cash on our balance sheet than the start of the year.
- Massively scaled our data platform: Our data warehouse now contains more than 2.1 trillion rows of data flowing through 100+ pipelines that ingest data from 82 distinct sources. This data powers nearly 2,600 visualizations and 280 dashboards for 145 different companies.
- Shipped 4 major analytics products: We launched Analytics 2.0, with a custom data warehouse, frontend, and studio product, and used that backbone to ship a dashboard builder, chart builder, and the first version of our API (which already has 378 metrics available).
- Expanded data beyond just onchain data: We added offchain datasets for ETFs, fundraising, M&A, centralized exchanges, and more. This will be important as we add more offchain data for companies in 2026.
- Token transparency framework: After presenting to the SEC and receiving their support, we introduced the Token Transparency Framework, an open disclosure standard for crypto projects. TTF is already being used to rate leading protocols and we’re now in active discussion with exchanges, financial institutions, and other data providers to integrate the framework across the industry.
- Podcasts: Our podcast network is by far the most listened to network in crypto. Our creator-led shows now reach several million professionals and investors across finance, crypto, and tech.
- Social: We’ve built a community of 800,000+ followers across our creators and brands.
- Events: DAS New York was our best conference ever: It was the first time a sitting US president has addressed a crypto conference.
Day after day
When we started Blockworks in December 2017, the mission was simple: Build the best source of crypto insights and information for investors and professionals.
Since then, we’ve built a global team of nearly 100 people. Millions of people listen to our podcasts. Tens of thousands have attended our events. Hundreds of institutions read our research and consume our data.
If you zoom out, the story of Blockworks is not a string of funding rounds, product launches, or headline hires. We are a company that has survived multiple bear markets, stayed default alive, and quietly compounded into something much more ambitious than we ever believed possible.
As we head into 2026, we are more convinced than ever that crypto will improve the world by broadening access to assets, increasing transparency, and reducing financial friction. Blockworks will play an instrumental role in that world.
For those that want it, the crypto opportunity has truly never been bigger or more important to humanity.
See you in the trenches,
Jason and Mike
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Source: https://blockworks.co/news/blockworks-2025-reflections
