Most Influential 2025's Honorable Mentions
This article recognizes key individuals and entities in the crypto industry that made significant impacts in late 2025.Summary
To conclude CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 series, this piece grants honorable mentions to figures and projects that gained prominence late in the year or narrowly missed the main list, spanning areas like privacy, prediction markets, and established leadership.
Key mentions include the resurgence of privacy tools like Zcash, whose founder Zooko Wilcox emphasized the importance of private transactions, and the Canton Network, which was selected as the tokenization partner for the DTCC. In prediction markets, Kalshi is highlighted for winning a pivotal court case against the CFTC, enabling political markets and expanding into crypto, with founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara achieving billionaire status after a $1 billion raise.
Binance co-CEO Yi He is recognized for her immense behind-the-scenes influence overseeing Labs, BNB Chain, and acquisitions, recently being formally named co-CEO alongside Richard Teng. Additionally, ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin is noted for taking a board role at SharpLink, an Ethereum treasury firm planning to actively yield-farm its nearly 900,000 ETH holdings. Finally, Stripe's acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge, led by founder Zach Abrams, signals major institutional interest in the growing stablecoin sector.
(Source：CoinDesk)