Original text: Coingecko
Compiled by: Yuliya, PANews
(Top 10 leading projects in 2024: highest increase over 230 times, 7 Meme coins made the list) This analysis has attracted widespread attention. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the cryptocurrency market's development trends, this study analyzes the 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 ten 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 high market capitalization at the end of the period and excluded sectors with specific public chain ecosystems and high overlap with other themes. The results showed significant differences in annual returns across different narrative themes, ranging 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, with a return of 2,185.1% over the year. 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 returns 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 high return of 3,211.4% on December 9, the sector saw a correction as market interest waned.
In contrast, the AI sector experienced a strong rebound at the end of the year, with returns in December 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 became the token with the largest increase in the cryptocurrency market this year. Ultimately, the AI sector surpassed Meme coins at the end of December to become the annual return champion.
The Real World Assets (RWA) sector ranks third with an average annual return of 819.5%. This sector performed steadily at the beginning of the year, reaching a return of 365.3% by April 12, and then consolidated over the following six months. In November, spurred by the price increase of MANTRA (OM), the RWA sector resumed its upward trend.
Layer 1, DePIN, and DeFi sectors performed moderately.
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 below that of Bitcoin.
In other words, conservative investors holding only Bitcoin can achieve returns comparable to at least three major narrative themes.
The performance of the gaming and Layer 2 sectors has been poor.
GameFi and Layer 2 became the worst-performing sectors in 2024, even underperforming Ethereum's 49.0% increase. Specifically, the GameFi sector only rose 14.7% over the year, with six out of the top ten gaming tokens experiencing declines ranging from 3.1% to 32.9%.
Layer 2 is the only sector that recorded negative returns this year, down 20.7%. Amid the trend of projects seeking to launch their own Layer 2 solutions, seven out of the top ten Layer 2 tokens saw price declines ranging from 6.3% to 75.3%.
The most profitable cryptocurrency narratives
Performance of cryptocurrency narratives in 2024, ranked by the average annual price return of its top 10 tokens:
