Grayscale Research has created a list of the top 20 assets in the cryptocurrency industry. The top 20 represent a diverse array of assets in the crypto sector, and also signify that Grayscale believes these assets have high potential in the next quarter.

Its approach combines a range of factors, including network growth/adoption, upcoming catalysts, sustainability of fundamentals, token valuation, token supply inflation, and potential tail risks.

This quarter, Grayscale emphasizes that tokens involve at least one of the following three central market themes:

(1) The U.S. elections and their potential impact on industry regulation, particularly in areas like decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking;

(2) Ongoing breakthroughs in decentralized artificial intelligence technology and the use of AI agents on the blockchain;

(3) Growth of the Solana ecosystem.

Based on these themes, Grayscale has added the following six assets to the top 20 list for Q1 2025: HY­PE, E­NA, VIR­TU­AL, JUP, JTO, and GRASS.

1. Hyperliquid (HYPE): Hyperliquid is a Layer 1 blockchain designed to support on-chain financial applications. Its main application is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for perpetual futures, featuring a full-chain order book.

2. Ethena (ENA): The Ethena protocol has evolved into a new type of stablecoin, USDe, primarily backed by long positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum collateral. Specifically, the protocol holds long positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as short positions in perpetual futures contracts of the same assets. The staking version of the token provides from the difference between spot and futures prices.

3. Virtual Protocol (VIRTUAL): Virtual Protocol is a platform for creating AI agents built on the Ethereum Layer 2 network Base. These AI agents are designed to autonomously perform tasks and mimic human decision-making. The platform allows for the creation and co-ownership of tokenized AI agents that can interact with their environment and other users.

4. Jupiter (JUP): Jupiter is the leading DEX aggregator on Solana, boasting the highest TVL among all applications on the network. As retail traders increasingly enter the crypto market through Solana, and with heightened speculation around Solana-based memecoins and AI agent tokens, we believe Jupiter is fully capable of capitalizing on this growing market activity.

5. Jito (JTO): Jito is Solana's liquid staking protocol. Over the past year, Jito's adoption has surged, providing one of the best financial profiles in all of cryptocurrency, generating over $550 million in fee revenue in 2024.

6. Grass (GRASS): Grass is a decentralized data network that rewards users for sharing unused internet bandwidth via a Chrome extension. This bandwidth is used to scrape online data, which is then sold to AI companies and developers for training machine learning models, effectively scraping data while compensating users.

The complete Top 20 token list is shown in the figure below