How can such a large space not accommodate a quiet desk?
How difficult is it to earn a return on your faith and persistence in cryptocurrencies? Even if you have read through the white papers of the project and have been popularizing and answering questions in the community day and night, what can you not avoid? On a large scale, the risk of war, regulatory policies, and market liquidity; on a small scale, the technical level of the project, the investment amount of VCs, the firmness of user consensus, and which one comes first, accidents or tomorrow, your investment list may roll back to the embarrassment of having nothing.
Therefore, the egg-and-basket theory of diversified investment has become a reliable means of hedging risks in a bull market.
This round of bull market has catalyzed projects to quickly go public and realize their value, making it the mainstream. Narratives and popularity have become key factors for VCs and users to judge whether it is worth investing. Let’s take a look at the changes in narrative popularity since this year:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) remains one of the strongest narratives in Q1/Q2 2024. AI is also a significant dominant narrative in 2023, accounting for 30-50% of the interest for most of 2023. This suggests that with the exponential growth of the entire AI field (not just limited to the crypto bubble), the AI vertical is here to stay.
SocialFi (financial social networking) has seen the biggest change in popularity since January 2024, driven by the revival of friend.tech, the explosion of fantasy.top, and other well-known projects.
It is clear that memes will become one of the strongest narratives in the first and second quarters of 2024.
BRC20 saw the largest drop in popularity, likely due to narrative fatigue following the Bitcoin halving and a recent drop in interest in Ordinals/Runes. It’s worth noting that BRC20 as a vertical held a large amount of popularity at the end of 2023.
Decentralized social (DeSo c) is also expected to become a strong competitor in the heat-dominated field - projects such as Farcaster, friend.tech, and DeSo are attracting attention.
The GameFi narrative has cooled a bit compared to the beginning of the year - there was a lot of discussion that it would only take one breakout game to revive the entire GameFi space, but we haven’t seen any big game releases so far this year.
With the announcement of the EIGEN token, both LSD and LRT narratives have declined slightly compared to the beginning of the year, while major LRT protocols like Renzo and Etherfi have ended their points programs or first and second phase activities.
Although the situation changes rapidly, the general trend in the cycle is similar. All you need to do is prepare the shovel and food faster than others and analyze the greed of human nature more keenly. For example, AI and meme have always been the dominant narrative. The question is whether the popularity of these two fields can continue. For AI, the theory is very clear, because there are many external factors, such as Open AI's constantly iterating ChatGPT model, AGI discussions, NVIDIA, etc., which may have a positive impact on the AI vertical field throughout the year. Memes usually have no upper limit and depend entirely on market trends and culture.
As a construction of infrastructure , the decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) will continue to gain more investment and returns as long as the bull market continues and demand drives it.
The approval of Bitcoin ETF has greatly helped the start of the bull market. Now Bitcoin has also started to play with the ecosystem, especially since the Bitcoin halving has been completed this year. The direct income of miners has slowly shifted to the ecosystem, allowing funds and users to continue to have the opportunity to play on the table. Similarly, as the king of the ecosystem, Ethereum has no reason to give up in this regard. If the Ethereum ETF is passed, Ethereum will also start its highlight moment , so please don’t forget Ethereum. Although Ethereum is being beaten and scolded now, those who firmly believe in Ethereum must also be silently supporting and paying attention, because it is the only two encrypted coins, and BTC and Ether are your ballast.
