Grayscale has added tokens from several artificial intelligence platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) applications to its list of top 20 tokens to watch in the first quarter of 2025, the asset manager said in a Dec. 30 research note.
The Q1 2025 watchlist, which Grayscale updates quarterly, now includes Hyperliquid (HYPE), Ethena (ENA), Virtuals (VIRTUAL), Jupiter (JUP), Jito (JTO), and Grass (GRASS).
Grayscale said each of the new additions is benefiting from one of three industry trends: the favorable regulatory environment in the U.S., innovation in decentralized AI, and the growth of the Solana ecosystem.
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 Zito are from Solana.
source: grayscale
“In addition to new themes (…) we are continuing to look forward to themes from previous quarters, such as Ethereum scaling solutions, tokenization, and DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure),” Grayscale said.
This theme is represented by Grayscale’s continued inclusion of Optimism (OP), Chainlink (LINK), and Helium (HNT), respectively.
Smart contract platforms such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), and Sui (SUI) “may be the most competitive market segment in the digital asset industry,” Grayscale said.
Grayscale added that the proliferation of alternative L1 blockchain networks partly explains why ETH underperformed its peers in 2024.
source: grayscale
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industry trends
Cryptocurrencies have benefited greatly since Donald Trump’s election victory, with many saying his victory will help the industry, Cointelegraph Research said.
Trump promised to appoint industry-friendly leaders to key regulators and make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.”
DeFi will benefit, and staking, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and agent AI will drive adoption, industry executives told Cointelegraph in December.
“In the US, we are actively optimistic that Trump’s victory will make the US the global leader in this space by the end of the year,” said Raj Brahmbhatt, CEO of Web3 payments company Zeebu.
This is especially true for Solana’s DeFi app, according to data from DefiLlama. Solana’s total value has surged from about $1.5 billion in January to about $8.5 billion as of December.
Solana’s staking pool, Jito, generated more than $100 million in monthly revenue from preferred fees and tips in November and December.
Meanwhile, JD Seraphine, CEO of Web3 AI developer Raiinmaker, told Cointelegraph that “AI agents are expected to take on an increasingly important role in the decentralized community.”
Cryptocurrency staking and on-chain transactions will emerge as early AI use cases, the executive said.
magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins.