According to the asset management firm's research report dated December 30, Grayscale has added tokens from multiple artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to its list of the 20 most noteworthy tokens for Q1 2025.
Grayscale's quarterly updated watchlist for Q1 2025 currently includes tokens such as Hyperliquid (HYPE), Ethena (ENA), Virtuals (VIRTUAL), Jupiter (JUP), Jito (JTO), and Grass (GRASS).
Grayscale indicates that each new member benefits from one of three major industry trends: a more favorable regulatory environment in the U.S., breakthroughs in decentralized AI, or growth in the Solana ecosystem.
Specifically, Virtuals and Grass are AI platforms, Hyperliquid is a high-performance Layer 1 (L1) network, while Ethena, Jupiter, and Jito are DeFi applications. Jupiter and Jito are native applications on Solana.
Grayscale stated: 'In addition to new trends, we are still excited about trends from previous quarters, such as Ethereum scaling solutions, tokenization, and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN).'
These trends are reflected by tokens like Optimism, Chainlink, and Helium consistently appearing on the Grayscale list.
Grayscale also noted that smart contract platforms (such as Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Sui) 'may be the most competitive segment of the digital asset space.'
Grayscale added that the explosive growth of alternative Layer 1 blockchain networks is one of the reasons ETH underperformed against its competitors in 2024.