Grayscale has added several artificial intelligence platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to its list of the top 20 tokens to watch in the first quarter of 2025, the asset manager said in a Dec. 30 research note.
The Q1 2025 watch list, which Grayscale updates quarterly, now includes Hyperliquid (HYPE), Ethena (ENA), Virtuals (VIRTUAL), Jupiter (JUP), Jito (JTO), and Grass (GRASS).
Each new addition benefits from one of three industry trends: a friendlier United States regulatory environment, breakthroughs in decentralized AI, or growth in the Solana ecosystem, Grayscale said.
Virtuals and Grass are AI platforms, Hyperliquid is a high-performance layer-1 (L1) network, and Ethena, Jupiter, and Jito are DeFi apps. Jupiter and Jito are native to Solana.
Source: Grayscale
“In addition to the new themes […] we continue to be excited about themes from previous quarters such as Ethereum scaling solutions, tokenization, and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN),” Grayscale said.
Those themes are represented by Grayscale’s continued inclusion of Optimism, Chainlink, and Helium, respectively, it said.
Grayscale said smart contract platforms — such as Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Sui — “may be the most competitive market segment in the digital assets industry.”
The proliferation of alternative L1 blockchain networks partially accounts for why ETH under-performed peers in 2024, Grayscale added.
Source: Grayscale
Industry trends
Cryptocurrencies saw big gains after Donald Trump’s election victory, as many say his win will benefit the industry, Cointelegraph Research said.
Trump has promised to appoint industry-friendly leaders to key regulatory agencies and make the US “the world’s crypto capital.”
DeFi will benefit, and staking, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and agentic AI catalyze adoption, industry executives told Cointelegraph in December.
“In the US, with [President-elect Donald] Trump’s victory, I am aggressively bullish on the US becoming a global leader in the space by the end of the year,” said Raj Brahmbhatt, CEO of Web3 settlement company Zeebu.
This is particularly true for DeFi apps on Solana, which has seen total value locked (TVL) surge from around $1.5 billion in January to nearly $8.5 billion as of December, according to data from DefiLlama.
Jito, a Solana staking pool, clocked monthly revenue from priority fees and tips of more than $100 million in November and December.
Meanwhile, “AI agents are expected to take on a more prominent role within decentralized communities,” J.D. Seraphine, CEO of Web3 AI developer at Raiinmaker, told Cointelegraph.
Crypto staking and onchain trading will emerge as early AI use cases, the executives said.
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