Grayscale Research released a new report yesterday (30) detailing its predictions for the best-performing crypto sectors in the first quarter of 2025. The end of 2024 brought great success, helping to create a sense of competition and vitality in the sector.
The company's report concludes that smart contracts have more potential and dynamic energy than any other. Still, some important sectors like tokenization and DePin have also attracted the interest of Grayscale Research.
Strong competition in the smart contracts market
Grayscale, one of the main Bitcoin ETF issuers, released several comments on its main predictions in its report. The company concluded that crypto markets soared in the fourth quarter of 2024 and that intense competition between smart contract platforms has been a major enabler of growth. He also provided a “Top 20” list of the best performing DeFi/Web3/crypto investment options.
Top 20 da Grayscale Research. Fonte: Grayscale
The firm called smart contracts “the most competitive market segment in the digital asset industry,” noting that Ethereum has underperformed despite major wins like the ETF and a substantial software update. Instead, competitors like Solana, Sui, and TON have gained market share, highlighting the dynamic energy of this sector.
Grayscale places the highest expectations on smart contracts. However, only a few of its top 20 assets fall into this category, and that doesn’t even include its flagship asset. Other areas of interest include several that were of high interest in the last report, such as scalability solutions, tokenization, and DePin.
Regardless of design choices and a network’s strengths and weaknesses, one way smart contract platforms derive their value is through their ability to generate revenue from network fees. The greater a network’s ability to generate revenue from fees, the greater the network’s ability to pass value back to the network in the form of token burns or staking rewards. This quarter, Grayscale Research’s Top 20 features the following smart contract platforms: ETH, SOL, SUI and OP, the report noted.
Grayscale: Between achievements in the ETF market and optimism in the crypto sector
The company is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG) and has a long history in the crypto space. Grayscale led the legal push for a Bitcoin ETF, which was successful in January 2024, though the company quickly lost its grip on the new market.
Despite this setback, it still pioneered SEC approvals for Ethereum ETFs and new ETF trading options. Ultimately, a company’s ability to sell a successful ETF has little bearing on its ability to critically assess market potential.
However, Grayscale Research's Q1 2025 report barely mentions the ETF space, presumably deeming it tangentially relevant to core fundamentals. Either way, Grayscale is significantly optimistic about the future of crypto.
The article Grayscale predicts surge in smart contracts in Q1 2025 appeared first on BeInCrypto Brasil.
