Original: Coingecko

Translation: Yuliya, PANews

The analysis titled "Top 10 Leading Projects of 2024: Highest Surge Exceeds 230 Times, 7 Meme Coins Make the List" has garnered widespread attention. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the development trends in the cryptocurrency market, this study analyzes the major narrative themes in the cryptocurrency market from January 1 to December 29, 2024, based on market data from CoinGecko. By tracking the performance of the top ten tokens in each theme, the average return relative to the beginning of the year (or the first trading day) was calculated. The study selected representative tokens with high market capitalization at the end of the period and excluded specific public chain ecosystems and sectors with high overlap with other themes. The results show significant differences in annual returns across different narrative themes, ranging from -20.7% to +2,939.8%.

AI and Meme Coins Lead the Market

The most outstanding cryptocurrency narrative theme in 2024 is the AI sector, with an average year-to-date (YTD) increase of 2,939.8%. Following closely is the Meme coin sector, which achieved a return of 2,185.1% for the year. The returns of these two sectors far exceed those of other popular narrative themes by more than double.

The Meme coin sector began to significantly lead in March, with monthly returns soaring from 96.6% to 1,713.1%. Despite extreme volatility, Meme coins maintained the highest returns for most of 2024. However, after reaching a historical peak return of 3,211.4% on December 9, the sector experienced a correction as market interest waned.

In contrast, 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 primarily due to the explosive growth of the AI agent platform Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), which also became the token with the largest increase in the cryptocurrency market this year. Ultimately, the AI sector surpassed Meme coins by the end of December, becoming the annual return champion.

The Real World Assets (RWA) sector ranked third with an annual average return of 819.5%. This sector performed steadily at the beginning of the year, reaching a return of 365.3% by April 12, and then consolidated over the next six months. In November, driven by the price increase of MANTRA (OM), the RWA sector restarted its upward trend.

Layer 1, DePIN, and DeFi Sectors Perform Mediocrely

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 slightly outperformed Bitcoin's return of 125.5% during the same period, while the DeFi sector's performance was even below that of Bitcoin.

In other words, conservative investors holding only Bitcoin could achieve returns comparable to at least three major narrative themes.

Game and Layer 2 Sectors Underperform

GameFi and Layer 2 became the worst-performing sectors in 2024, even falling short of Ethereum's 49.0% increase. Specifically, the GameFi sector only rose 14.7% for the year, with six of the top ten gaming tokens experiencing declines ranging from 3.1% to 32.9%.

Layer 2 was the only sector to record negative returns this year, dropping 20.7%. Amid a trend of projects seeking to launch their own Layer 2 solutions, seven of the top ten Layer 2 tokens saw price declines ranging from 6.3% to 75.3%.

Most Profitable Crypto Narratives

The performance of cryptocurrency narratives in 2024, ranked by the average annual price return of their top 10 tokens:

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