Trends in Blockchain Applications in 2025

Toronet Research Team

We tracked token performance across categories from January to May 2024, projecting trends into December. The analysis was based on the top 200 blockchain projects by market cap.

Methodology

Each project in the top 200 was categorized, using sources from a combination of data from the various projects, and CoinmarketCap. The data was extracted for the price and daily volumes were averaged for January and May and then compared.

*Extract of the Analysis worksheet. Data derived from project information and CoinMarketCap. Analysis by Emmanuel Tope.*

Results and Observations

The results on growth rate in price and volume compared between January and May 2024 is presented below, and then Jan 2024 to Jan 2025.

Results sorted by the price growth data on Jan 2025

Note that in the categorization, there were some projects that could potentially fit into two or more categories, but the closest fit was selected. We believe the number of projects in the categories will even out any variances that could be derived from different classification decisions.

The data showed that meme coins, AI-related, and RWA project tokens are the early growth leaders. In addition, the analysis also revealed that 9 new meme coins and 6 new AI-related projects broke into the top 200 projects, outpacing any other categories. And as we saw in past cycles, application areas with little utility that led the cycle’s mania, such as ICOs in 2017, and NFTs in 2021 tend to be repudiated in the next cycle.

Other observations include:

All categories showed growth in volume, as is typical during the heightened interest and participation in blockchain projects that seems to occur every four years.
DEPIN projects might not have experienced much growth to start off this cycle, although one or more innovative projects could still potentially achieve some breakthrough during this cycle.
Growth in Layer 2 projects are outstripping those of Layer 1 projects, or absorbing most of the growth that would have been experienced by the latter.

A bar chart of the current trend comparing Jan 2025 to Jan 2004 is presented below.

Chart visualization of the price growth rate of Jan 2025.

Based on the data, we expect to see RWAs to continue to attract more serious developers and meme tokens to continue to attract a lot of attention from some of the less skilled developers and newer users into the blockchain space.