If you consider KITE in 2025 as a huge transfer station still laying tracks and debugging engines, then 2026 will be the critical moment when countless "silicon-based express trains" set off fully loaded, completely reshaping the on-chain ecosystem.

Looking back to the end of 2025, many are still watching the ups and downs of KITE this year, but I see another dimension — what KITE accomplished in 2025 is merely the foundational construction of "from nothing to something," and the true explosion will come in 2026 with the "from something to many" civilization upgrade. Why am I so optimistic about 2026? The reason is simple: we have already reached the critical point where we transition from the "road paving stage" to the "application era."

**2025: A Year of Planting, Quiet on the Surface but Turbulent Beneath**

What KITE did this year may seem dull, but it is actually crucial. As the most core AI collaboration layer in the ZKsync ecosystem, it spent a full 12 months doing one thing — verifying the large-scale feasibility of "decentralized proof reasoning."

Over the past year, KITE has been like a researcher working diligently in a laboratory. It tackled a major problem: the black box dilemma of AI model on-chain operation. Through improved proof mechanisms, it enabled each decision of every AI Agent to be traceable and transparent, which is a huge breakthrough for the system's transparency. But the problem is, such underlying protocol optimizations are never sexy in the secondary market — they happen silently, invisible and intangible to the market.