Original text: Coingecko
Translated by: Yuliya, PANews
(Top 10 leading projects in 2024: highest increase over 230 times, 7 Meme coins made the list) This analysis has sparked widespread attention. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the development trends in the cryptocurrency market, this study analyzed major narrative themes in the cryptocurrency market from January 1 to December 29, 2024, based on market data from CoinGecko.
By tracking the performance of the top 10 tokens in each theme, the average return relative to the beginning of the year (or the first trading day) was calculated. The study selected representative tokens with higher market capitalization at the end of the period and excluded specific public chain ecosystems and fields with high overlap with other themes. The results showed significant differences in annual returns among different narrative themes, with a range from -20.7% to +2,939.8%.
AI and Meme coins lead the market.
The most outstanding cryptocurrency narrative theme in 2024 is the AI sector, with an average increase of 2,939.8% year-to-date (YTD). Following closely is the Meme coin sector, which achieved a return of 2,185.1% in 2024. The returns of these two sectors far exceed those of other popular narrative themes by more than double.
The Meme coin sector began to lead significantly in March, with monthly yields soaring from 96.6% to 1,713.1%. Despite the volatility, Meme coins maintained the highest returns for most of 2024. However, after reaching a historical maximum yield of 3,211.4% on December 9, the sector experienced a pullback as market interest waned.
In contrast, the AI sector experienced a strong rebound at the end of the year, with December yields nearly doubling from 1,598.1% to 2,939.8%. This was mainly due to the explosive growth of the AI agent platform Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), which also became the token with the largest increase in the cryptocurrency market in 2024. Ultimately, the AI sector surpassed Meme coins at the end of December, becoming the annual return champion.
The Real World Assets (RWA) sector ranked third with an annual average return of 819.5%. This sector performed robustly at the beginning of 2024, achieving a yield of 365.3% by April 12, and then consolidated for the next 6 months until November, when the RWA sector resumed its upward trend driven by the price increase of MANTRA (OM).
Layer 1, DePIN, and DeFi sectors performed mediocrely.
The Layer 1, decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), and decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors performed similarly in 2024, recording returns of 142.5%, 135.4%, and 101.4%, respectively. This means that Layer 1 and DePIN slightly outperformed Bitcoin's 125.5% increase during the same period, while the DeFi sector's performance was even worse than Bitcoin.
In other words, conservative investors can achieve returns comparable to at least 3 major narrative themes just by holding Bitcoin.
GameFi and Layer 2 sectors performed poorly.
GameFi and Layer 2 became the worst-performing sectors in 2024, even below Ethereum's 49.0% increase. Specifically, the GameFi sector only increased by 14.7% for the year; among the top 10 gaming tokens, 6 experienced declines ranging from 3.1% to 32.9%.
Layer 2 is the only sector that recorded negative returns in 2024, down 20.7%. Amid the trend of various projects seeking to launch their own Layer 2 solutions, 7 out of the top 10 Layer 2 tokens saw price declines ranging from 6.3% to 75.3%.
The most profitable crypto narratives in 2024
The performance of cryptocurrency narratives in 2024 is ranked by the average annual price return of its 10 largest tokens:
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"What are the 'most profitable crypto narratives' in 2024? Research: AI and Meme coins surged over 20 times" was first published on (Block客).