In 2025, the crypto industry is shifting from hype to utility. Stablecoin frameworks are taking shape, tokenized assets are entering mainstream markets, and artificial intelligence is beginning to transact on-chain.

At the center of these changes, layer-1 blockchains are being redefined not as experiments, but as the infrastructure powering real-world adoption.

“Layer-1s are still the backbone of the industry,” said Marc Vanlerberghe, chief strategy and marketing officer at the Algorand Foundation, on this week’s episode of Decentralize with Coinpectra.

“Everything else builds on top of them. You can innovate endlessly at the edges, but without a secure and scalable base, none of it holds.”

Adoption hurdles 

Despite technical progress, onboarding and retention remain sticking points. As Vanlerberghe explained:

“It is an impossible challenge today. You have to be really, really, really motivated to jump through the hoops and confront the complexity that crypto is.”

That difficulty has kept many new users from sticking with blockchain apps after their first try. To address this, projects across the ecosystem are experimenting with gamified campaigns and simplified wallet designs aimed at lowering friction.

“We want people to experience the benefits of using Algorand, not by talking about instant finality, but by having people experience it,” Vanlerberghe said.

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The road ahead

Even as new experiments unfold in the ecosystem as a means to onboard and retain users, he stressed the importance of resilience and vision.

“You just have to keep… you have to really understand what your North Star is. And that’s where you’re aiming for. And through highs and lows, you just continue to make progress.” 

That North Star for Algorand, according to Vanlerberghe, includes both retail adoption and enterprise use cases like tokenization and payments.

As tokenized finance expands and blockchain experiments meet the demands of real-world scale, layer-1s are positioning themselves not only to survive but to remain essential.

Listen to the full episode of Byte-Sized Insight for the complete interview on Coinpectra’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Coinpectra’s full lineup of other shows!

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