In 2024, the crypto world has its fair share of surprises. During the first quarter, established trends were shaken up. Marginal sectors such as memecoins and AI experienced unexpected surges, while some previously promising areas faced unforeseen setbacks.
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With stratospheric average returns of 1,313%, memecoins reaffirmed their status as the most profitable and speculative crypto phenomenon of the first quarter of 2024. Established coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu shined once again, joined by offbeat newcomers such as Brett, BOOK OF MEME, and cat in a dogs world. This meme-tidal wave illustrates the frenzy surrounding these originally parodic tokens.
Hot on the heels of memecoins, the artificial intelligence ecosystem made a remarkable breakthrough with an average increase of 222%. All major AI tokens made substantial gains, including AIOZ Network at 480% and Fetch.ai at 378%. An unexpected triumph for this sector long overlooked by crypto investors.
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After briefly giving way to AI, the narrative of Reel World Assets (RWA) managed to regain the upper hand towards the end of the quarter, with a 286% increase. Driven by the successes of MANTRA and Tokenfit, this crypto sector demonstrated the robustness of its economic model.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi), on the other hand, recorded more modest yet notable gains of 99%, propelled by Ribbon Finance as well as heavyweights Jupiter, Maker, and The Graph.
Finally, the DePIN ecosystem (decentralization, infrastructure, nodes) overcame a sluggish start to close the quarter with a resurgence of 81%, thanks to solid performances from Arweave, Livepeer, and Theta Network.
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While niche sectorsย stole the spotlight, established crypto trends provided a welcome contingent of stability. Layer 1 blockchains such as Solana Foundation, Toncoin, or Bitcoin Cash have thus progressed by about 70% in the first quarter, as did the GameFi ecosystem with 64% increases for Echelon Prime, Gala, and Ronin.
The only cloud on the horizon, Ethereumโs layer 2 scalability projects saw an increase of just 39% over the period, with the notable exception of Stacks and Mantle, which outperformed.
This quarterly overview reaffirms once again the incredible vitality of the crypto sphere and its ability to constantly reinvent itself. Whether they are exhilarating or destabilizing, these perpetual market fluctuations confirm the immense disruptive potential of thisย decentralizedย world, where change is the only constant.
