AI Agents Lead Crypto Narratives with 67% Gains in 30-Day Market Performance

The crypto market has shown dramatic changes in narrative performance, with AI-driven technologies emerging as clear winners in the last month of 2024.

In contrast, meme coins and modularity projects have seen significant drops in the last 30 days.

Winners and losers

The latest data from Web3 analytics platform Dexu AI shows that AI agents generated an impressive 72.2% return over the past month, led by ai16z (AI16Z) and Phala Network’s PHALA token.

At that time, AI16Z saw its value increase by almost 295%, while PHALA added 209% to its price. Other good performers here were Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), which gained 132% in 30 days, and crypto market intelligence token AiXBT, which rose 125%.

Recently, Bitfinex posited that AI agents could revolutionize cryptography with their ability to perform tasks such as executing transactions, managing digital wallets, and devising investment strategies.

However, the category was not the only case of success in December. Centralized exchange tokens (CEX) also performed well, with the narrative up 41.37% over the month. In addition, the “sweatpoint” sector, which focuses on projects that combine blockchain functionality with user-centric applications, saw a respectable increase of 24.4%.

Other traditional spaces, such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and derivatives, saw relatively lower but steady growth of 13.2% and 12.3%, respectively. Moreover, Real World Assets (RWA) also did well, gaining 7.21%.

However, the previous 30 days were not as profitable for the rest of the narratives. Retractions were led by the modularity category, which lost 32.1%, and low-risk tokens (LRT), which fell 30.8%.

Meme coins also saw a substantial 28.7% drop, possibly reflecting investor fatigue. This was despite a recent report from Binance indicating that these tokens had overtaken Bitcoin and Ethereum in terms of ownership.

According to data from CoinGecko, many of the assets with all-time highs in the category, including Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE) and Bonk (BONK), saw their prices drop by double digits over 30 days . The biggest victim among them was dogwifhat (WIF), which lost almost 41% of its value in this period.

In addition, GameFi, Privacy Tokens and Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) also saw losses, with GameFi sinking 21.78% and privacy coins 12.46%.

L1s maximum market capitalization

In terms of market capitalization, Layer 1 (L1) blockchains remain dominant at $2.75 trillion, driven primarily by Bitcoin’s $1.85 trillion valuation.

Centralized exchange tokens have the second highest value at just over $129 billion, closely followed by meme coins, which despite a generally poor December are still worth nearly $86 billion per Dexu AI . Categories like DeFi and AI trail a little further behind, with the former capped at just under $39 billion and the latter valued at just over $23 billion.

Narratives with the smallest market size include privacy coins, LRT, and decentralized science (DeSci). As of December 30, privacy coins had a cap of $2.72 billion, while DeSci remains a niche sector with a price tag of just $284 million.

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