Author: Coingecko
Compiled by Yuliya, PANews
The article "Top 10 Crypto Projects to Surge in 2024: Gains up to 230x, 7 MEME Coins on the List" has attracted widespread attention. To better understand the development trend of the cryptocurrency market, this research, based on CoinGecko's market data, analyzes the performance of the top 10 tokens in various major narrative themes in the cryptocurrency market from January 1, 2024 to December 29, 2024. By tracking the performance of the top 10 tokens in each theme and calculating their average returns relative to the beginning of the year (or the first trading day), the study selected representative tokens with high market capitalization rankings at the end of the period, excluding specific blockchain ecosystems and themes with high overlap. The results show that the annual returns of different narrative themes vary significantly, ranging from -20.7% to +2,939.8%.
AI and MEME Coins Lead the Market
The cryptocurrency narrative theme that performed the best in 2024 was the AI sector, with an average year-to-date (YTD) gain of 2,939.8%. Closely following was the MEME coin sector, with a year-to-date return of 2,185.1%. These two sectors outperformed other popular narrative themes by more than double.
The MEME coin sector started to significantly outperform 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 of 3,211.4% on December 9th, the sector experienced a pullback as market interest waned.
In comparison, the AI sector saw a strong rebound at the end of the year, with December returns nearly doubling from 1,598.1% to 2,939.8%. This was mainly driven by the explosive growth of the AI agent platform Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), which also became the cryptocurrency with the largest gain in the 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 ranked third with an average annual return of 819.5%. The sector started the year with stable performance, reaching a return of 365.3% by April 12th, and then consolidated for the next six months. In November, the RWA sector resumed its upward trend, driven by the price increase of MANTRA (OM).
Layer 1, DePIN, and DeFi Sectors Perform Averagely
The 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 only slightly outperformed Bitcoin's 125.5% gain during the same period, while the DeFi sector even underperformed Bitcoin.
In other words, conservative investors who only held Bitcoin could have achieved returns comparable to at least three major narrative themes.
Gaming and Layer 2 Sectors Underperform
GameFi and Layer 2 were the worst-performing sectors in 2024, even failing to outpace Ethereum's 49.0% gain. Specifically, the GameFi sector only increased by 14.7% during the year, with six out of the top 10 gaming tokens experiencing declines ranging from 3.1% to 32.9%.
Layer 2 was the only sector to record negative returns, declining by 20.7%. As projects rushed to launch their own Layer 2 solutions, seven out of the top 10 Layer 2 tokens saw their prices drop, with declines ranging from 6.3% to 75.3%.
The Most Profitable Crypto Narratives
The performance of cryptocurrency narratives in 2024, ranked by the average annual price returns of their 10 largest tokens:
