Author: Anil Lulla, Co-founder and CEO of Delphi Digital
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
People often say that crypto projects lack PMF (product-market fit), but to me, this only indicates their cynicism and the fact that they don't take the time to explore the applications that global developers are constantly launching.
I want to highlight some of my favorite crypto applications that I've used this year and hope to inspire some of you to try some of these applications. These teams work hard to create useful products, and we can at least spend some time testing the results of their efforts.
Before diving in, there are some disclaimers and disclosures. Whether through investments by Delphi Ventures, angel investments, or just personal buys, I hold some exposure to these tokens, which I will mark with *. The content of this article is not financial advice, but rather my thoughts on projects I liked this year.
HyperLiquid
Hyperliquid is great. You may have read over 1,000 tweets about it in the past month, so I’ll keep my thoughts brief. Anyone who frequently uses Hyperliquid loves it; I rarely hear complaints, which is a stark contrast to most applications.
I usually avoid using leverage, so I am not the target user for Hyperliquid. In fact, when it launched, I used this app for the first time to buy HYPE*. Soon, I saw what its fans had been discussing for a year. Not only is the UI/UX very much like CEX (I know it only has four validators now), but the speed at which the team responds to criticism, concerns, and feedback from users in their Discord is also encouraging.
Since its establishment in 2023, HyperLiquid has built a cult-like community of over 200,000 users and a cumulative trading volume of nearly $450 billion. The platform currently has over $2.5 billion in open contracts. It has been highly successful, currently accounting for over 60% of all USDC trading volume on Arbitrum. The buzz surrounding HYPE since its launch has not just been due to its sleek UI/UX as a perpetual contract exchange. It promises to launch its own L1, and although still in early stages, an ecosystem has already formed around it that cannot be ignored.
Polymarket
Since entering the cryptocurrency space in 2017, prediction markets have been a use case that excites me, and I believe it will be the first to truly take off. Clearly, that has not been the case. This process has taken nearly 7 years, but thanks to the success of Polymarket, 2024 is officially the year prediction markets enter the mainstream. It operated perfectly on election night and forecasted what I believe to be the most important election of our generation. In this context, Polymarket handled $3.6 billion in election bets and announced Trump's victory six hours before the Associated Press.
Polymarket has created a new form of media and provides the world with a valuable data source for predicting future events. Many people thought Polymarket would gradually fade after the elections, but in reality, it has performed quite well, having fallen from its November peak but still remaining above mid-October levels. I still visit it often to see which markets are active, and it seems the sports markets have gained a decent share.
Additionally, Fun.xyz has built a great Checkout product for Polymarket, allowing users to deposit with tokens from any chain or CEX (like Binance, Coinbase, etc.). Friends of mine outside the industry have even used it and had no complaints. The user experience in cryptocurrency is not as bad as everyone says!
Farcaster
To be honest, while I was using Warpcast daily in the first half of this year, since then I have checked it only once or twice a week at most. One thing I want to do in 2025 is to change that.
Earlier this year, I attended FarCon in Los Angeles, where most of the people I spoke with were builders of Farcaster. This is a very optimistic sign. Although it may still be too early, many builders are focused on creating something cool/niche that could amaze the Farcaster-focused and adventurous community. I believe we will see many strange toys built around this social graph in 2025.
I also believe Dan Romero and the Farcaster team will continue to innovate rapidly. They focus on purposeful features that help enhance core users and enable them to expand their social graphs and reputations, providing an excellent sandbox for developers to create new experiences. Features like channels, frameworks, and DEGEN tips have already explored new ways to coordinate social interactions. Games like Clankermon and Stokefire have shown me some interesting and unique early signs. While they have fallen about 50% from their peak, overall, they still do well in retaining users.
Ethena*
Delphi has high expectations for Ethena, but it has still exceeded our expectations. Ethena's synthetic dollar USDe has grown to nearly $6 billion in the past year, becoming the third-largest stablecoin after Tether and USDC.
I am particularly impressed by Ethena's recent collaboration with BlackRock to launch USDtb, a new dollar stablecoin supported by BlackRock's BUIDL fund. Like USDC, USDtb is backed by cash and cash-equivalent reserve assets. In the short term, due to funding rate reasons, USDe's yield may remain high. However, Ethena can now flexibly redirect Treasury yields as a supplement. This effectively sets an APY 'floor' around Treasury bill rates, allowing Ethena to further scale.
Like most people, I am optimistic about the growth of stablecoins in 2025. Currently, the value of stablecoins is about $200 billion, and I believe it will exceed $300 billion, with a strong chance of reaching over $400 billion next year. I think that with Ethena's clever products and ongoing focus on product integration, it will play a significant role in attracting a large amount of on-chain capital. We have already seen other decentralized stablecoins or synthetic dollars integrate into DeFi in various ways, and Ethena's USDe seems to be the first to make progress through CEX and TradFi integrations. This helped them establish a strong moat early on.
Gunzilla*
Delphi's enthusiasm for the crypto gaming space is well-known. Through early collaborations and investments with teams like Axie Infinity, Yield Guild, and Immutable, we have been seeking to bring games to market that allow the masses to engage with cryptocurrency.
Off the Grid is a cyberpunk-themed battle royale game and the first crypto game launched on Playstation and Xbox, attracting over 12 million wallets and 230 million transactions. Players have streamed over 4 million hours of gameplay on platforms like Twitch, and the game has ranked in the top three live games twice. It utilizes Avalanche to implement a game-native mechanism, putting into practice the widely discussed benefits of cryptocurrency for gaming: digital ownership enhances player engagement.
I strongly recommend listening to a conversation that Piers Kicks had with the founder of Gunzilla on the Delphi Podcast last month. The team's unparalleled attention to detail and their commitment to providing players with what they truly want is evident. Currently, they are internally testing their product and are committed to becoming the infrastructure for more mainstream AAA games. I'm really excited to see how Gunzilla continues to evolve and shape the future of crypto gaming.
Lighthouse.One
Over the years, Delphi has invested in several portfolio trackers (Zapper, Debank) and wallet watchers, which we believe have the potential to become the front page of the crypto space. They, along with Nansen, have become my main tools for managing wallets and monitoring other wallets. That said, I still manually track my portfolio using spreadsheets and other applications... until a few weeks ago.
Will Price casually mentioned Lighthouse.One while talking to me, and I became obsessed with it. It’s the best complete portfolio tracker I’ve used so far. EVM, Solana, Cosmos, Aptos, Sui, CEXs, Hyperliquid, dYdX; it does it all. Within days of trying the app, I spoke with the Lighthouse.One team, and their attention to privacy is second to none.
Of the applications I mentioned in this article, I guess many people are hearing about it for the first time. I am impressed by it; it is effortless to try out. I have been looking for such a product for years, and I am glad I finally found it. While I implored the team to let me invest, I currently have no economic ties with Lighthouse. I am just a very happy user of their product.
Pump.Fun*
This year, Pump.Fun successfully turned attention into liquidity. I believe this mechanism has not received enough praise; it is a simple yet necessary solution with a strong and immediate PMF. It lowers the barrier while promoting fairer distributions, and its bonding mechanism alleviates rug pulls.
In one year, Pump.Fun has generated over $300 million in fee revenue and helped launch over 5 million tokens. While everyone hopes the team will vertically expand by launching a DEX, they have chosen to pursue horizontal growth by exploring new ways to attract attention. In my view, the live-streaming feature seems to be an unexpected direction. It ultimately spiraled out of control, but mostly because it was very successful. It's really cool, and I genuinely believe this feature needs better oversight.
Whether you like it or not, everything that can be financialized will inevitably be financialized. Pump.Fun has the potential to build a preferred social application around investment institutions, so it cannot be ignored. By the way, I made an angel investment in Pump.Fun, not through Delphi Ventures. Betting on the founders was an easy decision, and I am still amazed by their performance this year.
Truth Terminal and GOAT*
One of the moments I was most excited about in the crypto space this year might be that the Crypto x AI field found a sandbox to try out: Twitter and wallets. The Delphi team has been outspoken about our excitement and curiosity about this cross-section. We are in the research of Crypto x AI, when GOAT launched and attracted all eyes in the crypto space.
Watching the unfolding of the Turing Test live is an incredible experience, as people on crypto Twitter (CT) question which robots are AI and which are human. Although it is still in its early stages, I believe GOAT is one of the most important things happening this year as it helps provide a tangible way to think about how the important cross-section of Crypto x AI interacts with each other. Since then, we have witnessed a surge in AI agents, with teams constantly innovating to stand out and capture attention. What’s coolest is the interoperability of these upgrades, with every developer's efforts maximized by being applied to others' agents. Although some of these bots can be annoying, I believe the influx of these agents will bring truly interesting and quirky spaces to the internet next year.
VIRTUAL
I won't write too much about Virtuals now because this is one of the new projects I have been researching. I just find it interesting as a 'pick and shovel' for AI agents. So far, over 12,000 agents have been launched on Virtual. Don't get me wrong, most of these agents are still pretty bad and sometimes at best just annoying responders. However, I expect a significant improvement in the coming months.
aixbt* is a particularly compelling account worth following. The data does not lie, it captures the attention of the cryptocurrency community, simply posting alpha tweets, but it is backed by rxbt's years of work, compiling a large amount of crypto data and curating a smart CT social graph that gives aixbt 'personality.' While many crypto KOLs often talk about the same projects in the CT echo chamber, aixbt consistently showcases fresh alpha and highlights it in my feed. This is a project I want to keep a closer eye on.
MetaDAO and MetaLeX*
Few people know that Delphi was one of the first companies in 2019 to receive compensation from a DAO (Synthetix). Since then, we have been active in dozens of governance processes and even helped design governance systems and projects in the crypto space, such as Gitcoin. Initially, DAOs were one of the most exciting aspects of this field for me. However, as we dealt with the complexities of working with them, my enthusiasm gradually waned. Most DAOs were set up to achieve some ambitious vision, but then spent all their time figuring out how to 'DAO.' This year, two projects stood out for their practical approaches to solving these challenges: Meta DAO and Meta LeX (despite both being called Meta, these two projects are unrelated).
MetaDAO sparked many interesting discussions at Delphi (largely thanks to META enthusiasts)
mrink0). While some criticize Solana for a lack of innovation, MetaDAO is the first project in the world to realize futurism. I must mention it here because it is one of the coolest on-chain experiments I have seen this year.
Meta DAO does not use traditional voting, but employs the market to predict and determine the best outcomes for the DAO. It is interesting to see different protocols integrate it into their decision-making processes. For example, Drift utilizes Meta DAO for market-based token listings on its exchange. As we move towards 2025, I am closely watching Meta DAO, hoping it can increase participation and diversity among cryptocurrency voters.
On the other hand, MetaLeX is a concept that lex_node and Delphi Labs have been refining for years. This year, it finally went live, moving towards a future where DAOs can focus on their mission without getting bogged down by governance challenges. Through BORG, MetaLeX enables DAOs to connect with the real world while maintaining crypto-nativity.
This is the culmination of Gabe's years of experience in traditional law and crypto law. He has been the General Counsel of Delphi Labs for many years, and to be honest, I have a lot of respect for him. Delphi Labs has been unhesitatingly supportive in making this happen, as no one else in the world could build it the right way. MetaLeX fills the legal gaps with law and fills the code gaps with code. Their BORG can execute mutual, multilateral trustworthy commitments and reduce the trust assumptions of all counterparties.
MetaLeX has helped teams like Lido, Curve, and ZKSync transition to BORG. They have been developing a comprehensive set of tools for trust-minimized governance. I think by 2025, we will start to see the impact of their work on the DAOs that integrate these tools.
Sandwich
This is a product launched by one of my friends. Sandwich is a private trading tool for CEX order execution (and HyperLiquid). It allows you to access insto-level algorithms, helping to save on fees and slippage while allowing you to access multiple tools and exchanges from a unified UI.
Given that I primarily buy and hold assets and do not often use leverage, I am not the target user for this product. That said, every trader friend who has seen it has become a power user. The Mac application is about to launch, and if you have a desktop, you might want to give it a try.
9dcc
I think gmoney is researching one of the coolest things in the crypto space, 9dcc. He successfully combines passion with forging his own path, giving cryptocurrency another avenue into the mainstream.
Essentially, cryptocurrency is a very powerful coordination tool. Gamifying universal things like fashion and face-to-face human interactions with it is a genius move, and it's surprising that this remains an underexplored avenue. gmoney is still immersed in it, allowing him to connect cutting-edge on-chain ideas that are happening and translate them into the real world.
So far, my personal favorite work is the Bird Poop Hat (IYKYK), but I have already seen the outlines of what’s coming next. I have no doubt that 9dcc will gain some recognition outside the crypto world in 2025.
DeBridge
Over the years, I have tried many cross-chain bridges, but DeBridge is the one I have used the most this year. Not only is the experience seamless, but its team has consistently been one of the fastest to integrate new chains. No matter where your assets are or where you want them to go, you can use DeBridge.
They utilize cross-chain intent to connect DeFi in real-time, making the cross-chain experience almost completely hidden. DeBridge co-founder deAlex mentioned that they have processed over 4 million intents, with a trading volume of over $6 billion. This is the first cross-chain bridge I can recommend to ordinary friends without any issues. Just this alone is impressive, and I am grateful for the team's work.
Echo and Legion*
2024 is the year of the ICO's return. I really like the approach taken by Cobie's Echo. It seems to have the perfect product-market fit with the crypto Twitter audience. Being able to support people you trust and have them curate and deliver interesting deal flows directly to you is a win-win. Echo has already helped facilitate over 150 deals and raised over $55 million for projects from nearly 6,000 users.
On the other hand, Legion takes a bottom-up approach by putting project tokens into the hands of more consistent community members. They developed the Legion Score, which currently primarily considers scores in three areas: (1) on-chain activity, (2) social influence, and (3) development experience. This score will change over time, allowing projects to better understand who they are letting into their equity structure.
Legion is a project incubated by Delphi Labs, which we have been working on for over a year, with the first transaction just going live on its platform a month ago. The data speaks for itself: over $5 million raised, and nearly 100,000 users have registered for the Legion Score.
I think we will see more projects utilizing such platforms to help issue tokens in 2025. The timing with the new government coming into power couldn't be better. Both of these platforms are ones I strongly recommend everyone sign up for and check weekly. They may have many attractive opportunities as they strive to curate high-quality projects for their members.
Kaito
Kaito has quickly become a powerful tool favored by crypto users this year. To some extent, Kaito and Delphi Research aim to solve similar problems: helping users ignore the noise in the market to find alpha and valuable insights. Our research team does this by spending hundreds of hours researching, then condensing all the necessary and relevant information into about 30 minutes of reading. In the process, our analysts take time to think and filter out most of the noise to simply analyze and summarize what is important to understand for any specific protocol or industry.
What’s great about Kaito is that it uses clever algorithms to help sift through all the noise on crypto Twitter to unearth treasures. When I searched for specific projects or stock codes, it helped me bypass a lot of noise, which impressed me.
I understand how useful and essential it is for all traders. However, I also use it to find talent. Typically, some of the most articulate people in any specific field become potential candidates for our recruitment. In fact, we just sent an offer to someone I found through Kaito, who will join our team in January. I believe Kaito has the potential to serve many different user groups with one product.
Grass*
Grass allows users to earn rewards by sharing excess internet bandwidth with other parts of the network. It is a simple plugin that I have been running in the background for most of this year. Our Ventures team has invested in a number of Crypto x AI projects, but Grass may be the one I am personally most excited about (at least among the transactions I can publicly discuss at this time).
Data is the next frontier of model development. We have seen AI labs trying to negotiate deals with platforms like Reddit or StackOverflow to gain API key access to their data. Grass provides API keys for the entire internet. It can do this efficiently and at scale. They already have 2.5 million nodes on the supply side, providing unfiltered data for training and AI responses. New methods will join the network in the future, such as people being able to order and connect mobile and hardware plugins to their WiFi routers.
Grass co-founder Andrej mentioned that the inbound demand for the network has reached nine figures. Grass is a project that has already helped traditional AI personnel take the Crypto x AI intersection seriously, and I am confident about their plans for 2025.
Ostium
Ever since our team worked with kain and SNX in 2019, we have been looking forward to enabling the on-chain world to access traditional assets. Ostium seems to be delivering on that promise.
Ostium's kaledora has made it clear that she is passionate about building Ostium into a universal market. Currently, they offer users long or short perpetual contracts on forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and stock indices. So far, their trading volume has exceeded $166 million. The trading volume of certain currency pairs has surged, which is cool. For example, since its inception, the trading volume of the USD/JPY pair has reached $21 million—most of which occurred around the time of the Japanese central bank's interest rate decision (if you remember that 72-hour bear market).
They have launched some neat structured products on Polymarket. For example, once Polymarket predicts that Trump's chance of winning reaches a certain percentage on election night, you can let Ostium 10x long BTC. You can set it up and go to sleep while waiting for what will happen around the world, waking up without missing out on profit opportunities. With the new government no longer opposing cryptocurrencies, I have a feeling this will allow Ostium to launch things on-chain that we couldn't have imagined over the past four years.
Moonwalk Fitness*
Moonwalk Fitness leverages the coordinating ability of cryptocurrency to create a powerful accountability tool for fitness.
Currently, the first version of Moonwalk focuses on incentivizing daily step counts. You can create a group, set daily step goals, and deposit USDC/SOL/BONK. As long as you meet the set goal, you can at least get your money back. If others in the competition do not meet their goals, their money will be distributed to the winners. This is a simple yet powerful tool for incentivizing good behavior, and I am excited to see its next iteration. The application of this concept goes far beyond running; it can also include weightlifting goals, daily sleep hours, water intake, etc.
Although it is still early, they already have nearly 100,000 users registered. They will soon be launching a mobile application, which might be the first crypto app my parents could use weekly.
Summary
This is my list. These are just the products I like, and I want to thank their teams for their hard work. Unfortunately, I clearly can't list all the teams I think did a great job this year. Other ones that quickly come to mind are Morpho, Jito, Cowswap, Jupiter, Pendle, and wallets like Phantom/Rabby.
