Author: He Yi TechFlow
Have you gotten a bit tired of looking at all the year-end reviews and outlooks from institutions?
Recently, CoinMarketCap also released a 2024-25 Crypto Market Yearbook, outlining the major innovations, market-shaking moments, and unforgettable milestones of the past year, while also looking ahead to 2025.
But interestingly, this yearbook seems more lively and interactive:
In the review section, CMC uses a more design-conscious, lively, and unconventional style to bring the big events of the past year to life; and in the outlook section, unlike the expert forecasts of institutions, CMC has handed the decision-making power to the market - for you to vote on the trends that might happen in 2025.
For example, do you think which projects will make big news in 2025? The pure Meme Fartcoin, or the Trump-related World Liberty Financial?
In addition, the entire yearbook is full of charts and analyses worth collecting, which TechFlow has edited and interpreted and presented as follows.
Suits & Ties VS Laser Eyes, Both Are Winners
Throughout 2024, from the perspective of the retail investor, you may have been pondering the rise and fall of certain coins; but in the ever-changing crypto market landscape, the yearbook summarizes a more macro trend - "Suits & Ties VS Laser Eyes".
This is indeed a very accurate cultural contrast.
Suits & Ties represent the traditional financial world (Wall Street), symbolizing conservatism, professionalism, and established financial institutions; typical representatives are traditional financial institutions like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Laser Eyes is the iconic cultural symbol of the crypto community, originating from Bitcoin supporters adding red laser eyes to their social media avatars, representing crypto believers and emerging digital asset supporters.
In 2024, both of these groups were actually winners.
The two seemingly opposing groups have for the first time truly achieved integration in terms of asset significance:
Traditional financial institutions (like BlackRock) have started launching Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs; Meme coins have reached the billion-dollar market cap level and gained mainstream recognition.
Or perhaps, Wall Street and Web3 are no longer opposites, but partners influencing each other at the same negotiating table.
From past opposition to each carving out their own piece of the pie, the crypto market has entered a new stage of maturity.
Crypto Story of the Year: The Rise of TON
Amid the wave of AI Agents, have you forgotten about TON's soaring performance last year?
The L1 corresponding to Telegram, the growth is astronomical: the user base has increased from 100,000 to a staggering 17.4 million, ranking 8th on CoinMarketCap. With 1,400 dApps and seamless integration with Telegram's 950 million users, TON has proven that it is not just another Layer 1, it is a movement.
And this movement has also gone beyond the crypto circle.
On August 24, 2024, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris, facing charges related to controlling platform activities. This news could have triggered waves of uncertainty, but instead it sparked a fire.
The Tg community rallied together, posting messages of support on social media, and launched a Meme project as a rallying cry for justice.
CMC's yearbook also amplified the value of this event:
"This is a declaration of the crypto spirit. A reminder that decentralization is power, and that the purest technology is a tool of freedom, not error. In that moment, the TON community showed the world that it is not just a blockchain; it is a revolution driven by resilience, solidarity and unshakable belief."
Although TON is no longer in the spotlight, it is still one of the many events with bright spots last year.
Asset Category of the Year: Memes Lead the Charge, Blooming Diversity
Considering popularity, the asset categories and projects that the yearbook considers to have performed well are:
MEME:
MEW: The 5th largest Memecoin, utilizing unique token economics, 90% LP token burn, driving a stable price floor and market confidence.
Popcat: The first cat-themed Memecoin on Solana reached a $1.2 billion market cap, achieving a $120 million valuation, and pioneering the "cat coin" space.
WIF: Became the 3rd largest meme coin after DOGE and SHIB within 4 months, reaching a $3 billion market cap driven by community engagement and Elon Musk's endorsement.
Application Domains:
Polymarket: Invested $3.3B in the 2024 US presidential election, leading the decentralized prediction market space through smart contract automation and no-KYC methods.
Pump.fun: Experienced revolutionary changes in the Memecoin creation on Solana, facilitating the development of 3M+ tokens, attracting 150,000 users, and generating massive revenues. The platform's impact is significant, but also controversial, sometimes fueling the worst of meme culture.
Binance Launchpool: Enhanced user engagement through innovative farming mechanisms for new tokens, including successful launches of Notcoin, Scroll, and Catizen.
Ones to Watch:
Story Protocol: Pioneered blockchain-based IP management, attracting over 100 projects, while revolutionizing creator rights through a programmable IP licensing infrastructure.
Monad: Next-gen Layer 1 achieving 10,000 TPS and 1-second finality, raised $225 million, and introduced the innovative MonadBFT consensus mechanism.
Berachain: An innovative Layer 1 with liquid proof-of-stake consensus launched the Artio testnet, attracting 230 active developer teams through unique DeFi integrations.
And considering innovation, from AI-enhanced DeFi to real-world asset platforms, from decentralized infrastructure to core scaling solutions - the following projects have pushed the boundaries of on-chain possibilities:
AI Sector:
Bittensor: Built a framework for decentralized AI development, scaling to 64 subnets, while achieving full Ethereum compatibility and launching complex AI models.
Prime: Leading the AI gaming frontier with flagship games Parallel TCG and Colony, backed by OpenAI integration and the Wayfinder protocol for autonomous AI agents.
Near: Built the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launched Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, achieving 400% transaction speed increase through innovative sharding.
DeFi Sector:
LIDO: Maintained dominance in liquid staking, with 9.8M ETH staked, launched institutional solutions, and reduced validator requirements from 32 ETH to 2.4 ETH.
Pendle: Innovated DeFi yield tokenization, grew TVL from $230M to $1B through liquidity re-collateralization and launching the Boros margin trading platform.
EigenLayer: Dominated the re-staking space with 80% market share, reached $12.9B TVL, re-staked 4.5M ETH, and fundamentally transformed Ethereum's security model.
DePIN Sector:
Render: The leading decentralized GPU rendering service has successfully migrated to Solana, expanding into real-time streaming and dynamic NFTs, while serving major entertainment and architectural clients.
Arweave: A permanent storage solution, maintaining stable growth amid market volatility, pioneering the "pay once, store forever" data storage model.
Aethir: A decentralized cloud computing platform, transforming GPU capabilities into shared resources for gaming and AI, supported by a $100 million ecosystem fund and key partnerships with Nvidia and Filecoin.
RWA Sector:
Ondo: The first platform to tokenize over $500 million in US Treasuries within four months, occupying over 25% of the market share through partnerships with BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase.
Clearpool: Redefining DeFi institutional liquidity, with over $500 million in total loans, and launching Ozean, a Layer 2 network based on the OP Stack, enabling RWA yields.
Ethena: The synthetic dollar protocol has become the fourth-largest stablecoin, pioneering risk management through a delta-neutral strategy of spot and short positions.
Infrastructure:
Sui: Building the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launching the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, and achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Wormhole: Building the world's largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model, launching the Nightshade 2.0 upgrade, and achieving a 400% increase in transaction speed through innovative sharding.
Arkham: Launching a on-chain perpetual trading platform leveraging intelligence data, pioneering entity-based blockchain analysis.
Note: The selection of the above projects represents the yearbook's perspective. Interested readers can also visit the original website to see the introduction of each project, with a helpful video to explain them.
Due to space constraints, some projects from different ecosystems are not detailed, but are nominated as follows.
6 Treasure Trove Charts to Traverse 2024
As is well known, CoinMarketCap has a strong hand in data analysis and data visualization.
The yearbook also selected 6 charts that depict the changes in the crypto market in 2024 from different data dimensions.
Best and Worst Performing Sectors: Smart Contracts and Storage
Smart contract-related projects topped the list with a 6000% return, while the worst performing was the storage sector, with a -24% annual return.
The Pattern of Bitcoin Halving-Induced Rallies Continues
The Bitcoin halving in 2024 saw the price around $63,000; the current events have also been witnessed by everyone, from an experiment to $100,000, spanning the 16-year sprint of BTC.
Looking Back, the Bearish Turnaround Seems Not Yet to Come
Bitcoin and the broader market generally have a 3-4 year cycle. From the chart, the black line representing the new 2024 cycle shows that Bitcoin's price has not yet exhibited a clear downward trend.
With MicroStrategy in the Lead, a Global Snapshot of Institutional/National Bitcoin Holdings
MicroStrategy leads the global institutions with a cliff-like 440,000 Bitcoin holdings, even exceeding any single country's BTC holdings; while the US and China have not yet opened a significant gap in their Bitcoin holdings.
The US Remains the Country with the Most CoinMarketCap Website Users
Surprisingly, India is in second place.
The Most Popular Sector: Memes Gradually Demonstrating Their Value (Blue Area in the Chart Below)
12 Memes Telling the Story of a Whole Year's Opportunities and Fun
There were many opportunities last year. If you had caught 1-2 of them, your story would certainly be quite different.
And if you missed too many opportunities, you can review the timeline and development of opportunities in these Meme images.
January: SEC is slower than hackers. The SEC Official Twitter account was hacked to announce the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, which the SEC officially announced a few hours later...
February: Will the ETF approval lead to a price surge? In fact, BTC was quite sluggish in February.
March: BTC hits a new high of $73K, while Degens are busy claiming airdrops.
April: BTC holders explaining the significance of the halving to their friends and family, or just dragging people into the halving.
May: Heard you're bearish on Ethereum? The SEC approved an ETH ETF!
June: Iggy launches a token, opening the door for celebrity coins, so call her "Mother".
July: The annual "Is Craig Wright Satoshi?" debate is back, with the "Satoshi identity authentication" case.
August: The French arrest the Tg founder, the community ferments, and related Memes emerge, actually leading the trend of political coins.
September: That man, CZ is back! The market is looking up too.
October: The "October must rise" rule was delayed...
November: Trump is back, and crypto has a seat at the table in Washington and the White House.
December: Rate cut expectations are gradually materializing, and the crypto market seems to have found a savior.
Looking Ahead to 2025, What Are Your Choices and Predictions?
In this section, CoinMarketCap opened up a public vote, handing the power to decide the 2025 outlook to the users, essentially a market survey to see which sectors and projects the community is bullish on.
The outlook section also features the following discussion topics, so which projects do you think will come out on top?
Which projects will make big news this year?
Shortlist: ETH, PEPE, Monad, Fartcoin, World Liberty Financial (Trump-related).
Which narrative will ignite the market this year?
Shortlist: NFT/Gaming, Anti-Quantum Computing Tokens, Crypto IPOs, RWA, and AI Agents.
Which asset will get an ETF approval?
Who will quietly sneak into the top 30 market cap?
Shortlist: Virtuals, FET, Pengu, Ethena, Ondo.
Who will see their old coins bloom?
