AI-Enabled Crypto Projects and Meme Coins Surge as CoinGecko Highlights Promising 2025 Narratives

CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Lee highlights the success of AI-enabled crypto projects and the unprecedented growth of certain meme coins.

CoinGecko research analyst Shaun Lee highlights several promising narratives in the crypto space that are expected to continue gaining traction by 2025. These narratives include the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with crypto, the proliferation of meme coins, the use of crypto points farming for airdrops, the popularity of perpetual trading on decentralized exchanges, and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs).

According to Lee, the convergence of AI and crypto has been a major theme in 2024, with the community showing a keen interest in building projects that combine the capabilities of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. Several projects have already achieved positive results in facilitating decentralized access to AI.

Among the most successful AI-related crypto projects is the Virtuals Protocol, a decentralized platform for creating, owning, and monetizing AI agents in virtual worlds. Dune data reveals that Virtuals created more than 21,000 AI Agent tokens in the last month alone. Some of these tokens, such as AIXBT and LUNA, surged more than 300% only days after their initial launch.

Another notable development in 2024 was the launch of AI16z, an AI-driven venture firm that began trading and currently has a market cap of $600 million. As of this month, the Eliza Framework, AI16z’s technical foundation, has become one of the most widely adopted open-source frameworks for AI agents.

This open-source platform empowers developers of all levels to build and deploy AI-driven solutions. AI16z’s framework was specifically designed to bridge the gap between centralized and decentralized systems, making it accessible to Web3 and Web2 developers.

In addition to AI integrations, there was also a strong push in the generation of new meme coins, which led to higher trading volumes and a surge in overall earnings.

“Solana’s resurgence and the creation of Pump.fun have led to the proliferation of meme coins. Meme coins are easily accessible nowadays and can be created with the click of a few buttons, carrying the trend from 2023,” Lee explained.

Launched this year, Pump.fun has become a major player and dominates Solana meme tokens. The meme coin launchpad generated nearly $300 million in revenue in 2024, according to data from DeFi Llama.

The success surrounding airdrop narratives in the DeFi space was also a highlight of the year, according to Lee.

“After lagging for the past couple of years, DeFi has caught a bid once again. Points farming for airdrops drove up the usage of Pendle, while Ethena’s new stablecoin model and its integration with many popular DeFi protocols have helped bolster its popularity,” he said.

Pendle’s Ethereum-based yield trading protocol tokenizes the yield of crypto assets, allowing users to trade and manage yield-bearing assets. It enables strategies like fixed-income yield, yield speculation, and yield farming, bringing traditional finance concepts to the DeFi world.

Although the concept behind Pendle has been around for a while, its particular framework allows users to trade tokens while earning yields of up to 47% on the underlying assets, outperforming similar existing projects.

Launched in 2021, Pendle has seen a surge in popularity this year due to increased Ethereum liquid staking and airdrops from DeFi protocols like Ether.Fi. In April, raising Ethena’s USDe pool cap to $400 million fueled further activity, pushing Pendle’s total value locked (TVL) to a staggering $4.88 billion.

Lee also highlighted the use of crypto points farming by various projects, such as Eigen and staking protocols, which offered points for Total Value Locked in anticipation of future airdrops.

When discussing successes within DeFi, CoinGecko’s research analyst also spotlit Aave Protocol’s token, which has experienced a recent surge in activity fueled by significant whale accumulation, injecting fresh liquidity into the market.

Similarly, decentralized exchanges also saw a surge in popularity for perpetual trading. Lee used Hyperliquid’s recent airdrop as an example of how this initiative significantly boosted trading volumes.

Hyperliquid, a high-performance decentralized crypto exchange built on its own Layer 1 blockchain, made waves at the end of November when it airdropped its HYPE token to over 90,000 users.

This generous distribution of tokens made crypto history as the largest airdrop ever done, while the token’s pricer surge has been ongoing, reaching an all-time high this week. The crypto community greeted the move with surprise, setting a new standard for future crypto airdrops.

Finally, Lee pointed out that real-world asset projects are continuing to gain ground, with tokenized treasuries already surpassing $3 billion.

A type of physical or financial asset that exists outside of the digital spectrum, RWAs are represented on the blockchain in the form of a token.