CoinDesk closes its Most Influential 2025 series with an honorable-mentions roundup that flags notable stories and nominees that gained traction late in the year. The list collects developments across privacy, prediction markets, exchange leadership, treasury management and stablecoin infrastructure, highlighting trends that shaped the closing months.
Overview — CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 honorable mentions
The honorable mentions recognize people, projects and stories that were on the cusp of making the main list or that accelerated in the year's final months. Themes in this roundup include a privacy resurgence, renewed activity in prediction markets, leadership changes at major exchanges, active treasury strategies and continued growth in stablecoin tooling.
Privacy resurgence: Zcash and Canton Network
Privacy features reappeared among the year's notable stories, with Zcash singled out for renewed interest as the Zashi wallet has made shielded — i.e., private — transactions the default and larger investors moved into the token. For background on the protocol and its technology, see the Zcash overview, which outlines the coin's design and features.
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox framed the broader rationale for private transactions in a CoinDesk interview: "The future of privacy is like the past … in the United States that I was born into, and the whole world where everyone lived, you could have a conversation with someone. It's just between you and them," he said. Canton Network also featured in the honorable mentions after being tapped to act as the tokenization partner for the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC); Digital Asset and DTCC are presently working on a minimally viable product with a plan to mint some U.S. Treasury securities on Canton while the underlying securities are custodied by the Depository Trust Company. CoinDesk coverage of broader regulatory and industry discussions on privacy can be found in the privacy roundtable.
Prediction markets: Polymarket and Kalshi's U.S. comeback
Prediction markets returned to U.S. attention this year. Polymarket formally reentered the U.S. after a sharp uptick in users around the 2024 election, while Kalshi's pivotal court victory against the CFTC opened the door for political prediction markets in the country. That ruling enabled Kalshi to expand its offering and power other platforms' markets.
Kalshi also raised $1 billion earlier this month, pushing founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara's net worths above $1 billion. The company signed deals to power prediction markets on other platforms, including arrangements with Coinbase and Phantom Wallet, and will be used by CNN.
Exchange leadership: Yi He elevated to Binance co-CEO
Yi He, a Binance co-founder who served as head of marketing, has been formally named co-CEO of the exchange alongside Richard Teng. She was long described as a behind-the-scenes influence at the firm, involved in areas such as Binance Labs and BNB Chain as well as acquisition activity.
On CoinDesk Podcasts, Yi He said, "I'm really very funny about how to empower the organization, how to build a [growing] company," and described focusing on user feedback and product improvement. Richard Teng added, "I think Yi really understates her role, right? … Anybody that knows the crypto industry and knows Binance knows Yi has been involved from day one in terms of building this to where it is today," underlining her influence.
Treasury strategies: Joe Lubin and SharpLink
ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin took a board role at SharpLink, which the coverage describes as an Ethereum treasury firm holding nearly 900,000 ETH. Rather than simply holding assets, SharpLink announced plans to allocate its holdings and pursue yield.
Specifically, SharpLink said it would deploy $200 million worth of ether to ConsenSys' Layer-2 tool Linea over the coming years, and the company continues to raise funds to support its ETH purchases. The stated aim is to make the treasury more productive by using funds in active deployments.
Stablecoins and infrastructure: Stripe, Bridge and Open Issuance
Stablecoin growth was one of the dominant narratives of 2025, and a major deal reflected that focus: payment firm Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure startup Bridge earlier this year, with the billion-dollar deal closing in February. The acquisition spurred partnerships, license applications and new tooling aimed at easing issuance.
Bridge founder Zach Abrams noted that tooling such as Open Issuance is intended to let platforms quickly build bespoke stablecoins, a capability highlighted in a company press statement earlier this year.
Why this matters
For small and mid-size miners (1–1,000 devices) in Russia, most items in this roundup are industry signals rather than immediate operational changes. Privacy improvements, exchange leadership shifts and treasury deployments generally affect market and product development, not day-to-day mining operations.
However, a few developments bear watching depending on your setup: institutional tokenization pilots and large treasury deployments can alter demand dynamics for on-chain services and infrastructure, while the broader adoption of privacy tools may influence wallet and node software you interact with. If you provide hosting, custodial services or operate many devices, industry partnerships and regulatory conversations about privacy and stablecoins are more directly relevant to your risk and service offerings.
What to do?
- Keep software and firmware updated: ensure mining rigs, wallets and any nodes run supported releases and security patches to avoid known vulnerabilities.
- Secure keys and access: use hardware wallets or air-gapped storage for significant balances, and restrict remote access to mining infrastructure with strong authentication.
- Monitor service integrations: watch announcements from exchanges, treasury firms and stablecoin tool providers if you rely on third-party platforms for payouts or liquidity.
- Consider privacy options cautiously: if you need transaction privacy for operational reasons, test shielded features (like those defaulted by the Zashi wallet) in controlled environments before broader use.
- Follow regulatory and industry updates: be aware of pilot projects and legal rulings that could affect platforms you use or integrate with, and plan contingencies for service changes.
These honorable mentions do not change the fundamentals of running mining hardware, but they signal where capital, product development and regulatory attention concentrated late in 2025. Staying informed and maintaining good operational hygiene will keep your operation resilient as the industry evolves.
