Emerging Crypto Trends - Maartje Bus, Messari

Traditional social media platforms control $230B in market value while creators only earn $7B, highlighting major value capture disparity

Real World Assets (RWAs) seeing significant growth:

• Total RWA TVL grown from $2B to $8B in past year
• Yield-bearing RWAs hold 84% market share
• Debt instruments represent 70% of yield-bearing RWAs
• Tokenized gold and real estate dominate non-yield bearing segment

Social Fi (decentralized social media) trends:

• Enables portable user data and social graphs
• Introduces financialization of social activities
• FriendTech generated $50M in platform fees over 3 months
• Requires crypto-native features to drive meaningful adoption

AI and Crypto intersection focuses on:

• Decentralized compute networks for AI processing
• AI agents using crypto payment rails
• Marketplaces for AI agents to trade services
• D-pins providing infrastructure (bandwidth, storage, compute)

MakerDAO transformation:

• Spinning off products into sub-DAOs
• Creating new yield farming opportunities
• Positioned as potential next “yield meta”
• Expected to benefit from re-rating as products become pure plays

Rising yield environment driving increased interest in on-chain yields through RWA protocols and institutional participation (BlackRock, Franklin Templeton)