2025 Web3 industry hot narratives roundup!
Stop saying there are no new narratives!
12 months, 12 trends—understand where hot money flows and where market attention lies!
The retrospective is to help us go farther in the future.
2025 is over, and today we’ll review this year’s Web3 industry hotspots, seeing which you captured and where you stumbled and lost money.
1️⃣ Peak of meme coins
Starting with January, the biggest hotspot was definitely Meme coins, driven by Trump’s token launch, which pushed the meme‑coin narrative to a climax.
On January 18, two days before his inauguration, Trump announced the TRUMP token, which peaked at nearly $80 billion market cap.
After the peak came a downhill slide.
The next day, Melania released the MELANIA token, and TRUMP fell 38% within hours, with market liquidity beginning to fragment wildly.
Later, Argentine President Mile followed suit, draining the last bits of market liquidity.
After this wave, the meme‑coin narrative essentially ran its course.
Thus you can see the meme‑coin track has cooled dramatically, with only occasional spikes.
2️⃣ U‑card frenzy
February’s hotspot shifted to U‑cards, i.e., Crypto Cards.
Many projects were building them; the most prominent was Infini Card.
It introduced a powerful model: you load stablecoins, and the platform automatically allocates your funds to on‑chain protocols to earn yield, with balances accruing interest automatically.
This was very attractive to both users and platforms.
However, higher yields came with significantly larger risk exposure.
In February, Infini Card suffered a major breach: an internal employee stole funds, causing a $50 million loss and the project halted, heavily shaking the entire U‑card arena.
Nevertheless, demand persisted, and many new U‑card projects emerged, now mainly dominated by well‑capitalized exchanges.
3️⃣ DEX market restructuring
March’s hotspot turned to DEXs, i.e., decentralized exchanges.
This hotspot actually stemmed from a major February event.
In February, Bybit was hacked, losing $1.5 billion.
Crucially, hackers laundered the proceeds through OKX’s DEX, leading to OKX DEX being suspended for compliance issues.
When the leading platform stopped, a huge market gap opened.
At that moment, newer on‑chain trading tools like GMGN and Axiom seized the opportunity and aggressively captured market share.
4️⃣ PayFi launch
April’s hotspot shifted to PayFi (payment finance), with the leading player being the newly emerged Huma Finance.
The founding team consists entirely of Web2 fintech veterans—former core members of Facebook and Google Fi—who had long understood cross‑border payment pain points.
They combined blockchain technology with traditional finance needs, and ...