Author: Lim Yu Qian, CoinGecko; Translated by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
What are the most popular cryptocurrency narratives of 2024?
So far, the most popular cryptocurrency narrative of 2024 is the Meme coin narrative, which has attracted a total of 30.67% of global investor interest across the main Meme coin narrative and 25 Meme coin trends. In other words, as the market rapidly expands from dog-related Meme coins to other animal and personality-themed Meme coins, nearly one-third of cryptocurrency narrative interest this year is focused on more speculative opportunities rather than on fundamentals.
Specifically, the main Meme coin narrative ranks first with a cryptocurrency narrative interest share of 14.36%. This is an increase of 6.04 percentage points compared to last year's Meme coin narrative interest share of 8.32%.
In addition to the overall Meme coin narrative, four Meme coin trends successfully entered the top 20 cryptocurrency narratives: Solana meme coin ranks 4th with a narrative interest share of 7.65%, Base meme coin ranks 11th with a share of 2.13%, AI meme ranks 15th with 1.49%, and cat-themed Meme coin ranks 16th with a share of 1.19%.
AI-related narratives attracted 16% of investor interest
Another popular cryptocurrency narrative in 2024 is the artificial intelligence (AI) narrative, which accounts for a total of 15.67% of investor interest across the entire AI narrative and five other AI-related narratives.
This year, the overall popularity of artificial intelligence ranks second, accounting for 12.58% of investor interest. Although this is an increase of 1.26 percentage points compared to last year's interest share of 11.32%, the popularity of the AI narrative has still declined compared to Meme coin narratives.
In addition to the overall AI narrative and AI meme coin trends, the AI agent narrative also entered the top 20 with a 1.17% investor interest share.
RWA and DePIN are gaining attention
Compared to the previous year, other popular cryptocurrency narratives gaining more attention in 2024 are Real World Assets (RWA) and DePIN narratives.
The investor interest share in RWA increased by 2.16 percentage points, rising from 6.48% in 2023 to 8.64% in 2024. Therefore, its popularity ranking rose from 6th to 3rd. Similarly, the popularity ranking of the DePIN narrative rose from 13th to 8th, with its investor interest share increasing by 1.56 percentage points.
On the other hand, the popularity of the GameFi narrative has declined, with its investor interest share dropping from 10.49% in 2023, a decrease of 6.77 percentage points to 3.72% in 2024.
Interest in Solana and Base-related narratives is increasing
Solana-related narratives attracted a total of 14.30% of investor interest, closely following the popularity of the AI narrative. Although Solana meme coins attracted nearly half of the attention, investors are still interested in the broader Solana ecosystem, which ranks fifth with 5.78% of investor interest. The narrative of Pump.fun itself only accounts for 0.61% of investor interest, which may reflect its overlap with the Solana meme coin narrative.
Meanwhile, as the popularity of this blockchain increases, two Base-related narratives also entered the top 20 this year. Overall, the Base ecosystem and Base meme coin narratives account for 4.87% of investor interest.
Overall, among 67 blockchain ecosystems, 5 made it into the top 20 cryptocurrency narratives of 2024. In addition to Solana and Base, these popular blockchain ecosystem narratives also include the Ethereum ecosystem (with an investor interest share of 1.82%), Sui ecosystem (1.04%); and TON ecosystem (0.85%).
The most popular cryptocurrency narratives of 2024
The 20 most popular cryptocurrency narratives of 2024 (ranked by annual investor interest market share) are as follows:
Among the 200 different cryptocurrency narratives that gained attention this year, the top 20 cryptocurrency narratives accounted for a total of 78.72% of global investor interest. The remaining 21.28% of cryptocurrency narrative interest is spread across 180 narratives.
The most popular cryptocurrency narratives of 2023
Based on the ranking of investor interest share from January 1 to December 21, 2023, the 15 most popular cryptocurrency narratives of 2023 are:
