Crypto Experts Predict Blockchain Trends Fueled By New U.S. Rules

Forbes

01-05-2025

On April 25, 2025, the Cornell Blockchain Conference at Cornell Tech's Verizon Center in New York City spotlighted a growing convergence between academic rigor, institutional credibility, and a maturing blockchain industry. What emerged was not just a conversation about scaling technology—but about scaling trust, regulation, and the next wave of entrepreneurs. Abhishek Bhattacharya, the President of Blockchain at Cornell Tech, helped coordinate the event on the main stage.
John Wu, President of Ava Labs, and a Cornell alum framed Ava's strategy as one bridging traditional finance and decentralized systems. 'We were huge risk-takers in technology, but very conservative when it came to regulation,' Wu said during a fireside chat. 'In a weird way, the coming wave of regulation favors the builders who've already aligned with those standards.'
Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, General Counsel at StarkWare, was on a regulatory panel earlier discussing expected changes in regulations at the state level, the importance of a crypto general counsel as strategic business partner given the near-constant material shifts in the regulatory environment, and expecting continued focus on stablecoins, tokenization, and payments. Starknet, a layer two network built by Starkware, has $117.16m in total value locked (TVL) with 3.69 million transactions over the prior week according to Dune.
Regarding Wu highlighting a conservative approach to compliance and regulation while being risk-takers with technology, Bos said, 'the best crypto companies know that legal and regulatory strategy is key. In many ways, the industry is under a microscope, and lawyers in crypto add value by working alongside product teams and developing a proactive strategy for compliance and regulation.'
According to Wu, who said he just met with over 15 U.S. Senators and Representatives in Washington, he expects significant movement in Washington D.C. on stablecoin and market structure legislation before year's end.
Wu predicted by the end of this year there would be a stablecoin and market structure legislation in the U.S., and it couldn't come soon enough. Bos agreed, saying 'crypto has long been seeking reasonable regulation, and the likely passage of a stablecoin bill is a great first step.'
Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of Ava Labs, positioned Ava Labs as a company ready to meet global demands from its base in New York City. Sirer was the original founder of the Cornell Blockchain student group at Cornell.
Sirer began by tracing the evolution of blockchain from Bitcoin's original design and the need for broader infrastructure. 'We didn't know how to build blockchains that scale,' said Sirer. Sirer then claimed, 'One of the first things we did at our labs was develop the world's fastest consensus protocol—so that a group of nodes operating in unison could act together as fast as possible, at the speed of light.'
Finally, Sirer argued every use case needs its own chain. "Some might be able to share infrastructure, but most have unique demands—and for that, they need a chain that operates according to its own rule set, its own technical specifications, and its own roadmap,' said Sirer. The Avalanche blockchain has $1.32 TVL (total value locked) with 2.16 million transactions over the prior week according to Dune.
Sirer also highlighted the role of blockchain in gaming and how users may not actually realize the technology that is used in the future. Sirer described the launch of 'Off The Grid', a next-generation battle royale game where players can collect in-game assets—such as the arms and legs of defeated opponents—as NFTs. In Off The Grid, those body parts are actually NFTs minted on the Avalanche blockchain, demonstrating how ownership and gameplay can be merged without disrupting user immersion.
Ari Juels, Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs and a professor at Cornell Tech, kicked off a student-led pitch competition at the end of the day capturing the energy and excitement of fresh minds working in the space. The Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), which Juels is a co-founder of and co-directs, servies as a launchpad for student-led ventures.
One of the pitches was called Prinx, a blockchain-based 'Robinhood for IPOs' that democratizes access to late-stage private equity. Co-founders Brendan McShane and Patrick Sullivan presented their tokenized pre-IPO exchange to a professional crowd eager for fresh ideas. McShane said, 'Our mission is to bring late-stage private equity to the masses. Through Ari Juels' class, we were able to bring Prinx to life.'
Another innovation idea came from a project dubbed BitGPT. Lia Müller, founding partner of BitGPT, introduced to the crowd a fiat-crypto native payment system using the once-abandoned HTTP 402 gateway—enabling micropayments between machine agents 'This is the next evolution,' Müller said. 'We're moving from human invoices to machine-initiated micropayments, just as we once moved from mail to email. The rails are being laid for what's next.'
What distinguished this year's Cornell Blockchain Conference wasn't just the prominence of speakers like Sirer, Wu, Bos, and Juels—but the way their narratives converged. Whether discussing throughput, legal compliance, financial market integration, or student-led experimentation, one theme was constant: The blockchain industry is stepping into maturity.
From the halls of Congress to university classrooms, builders are aligning with standards, not avoiding them. And that, more than any hype cycle or price movement, may be the real signal that Web3 is here to stay.