CoinGecko has noted that meme coins have again emerged as the most popular crypto narrative this year, capturing a total of 25.02% of global investor interest across the main meme coin category as well as 35 meme coin trends. According to the report from CoinGecko, this is down from the considerable 30.67% market share that the meme coin narrative held during the year prior, which indicates that the so-called mania “for purely speculative crypto may be subsiding.”
But CoinGecko pointed out that it still remains to be seen if crypto investors’ focus will actually shift “toward narratives with more sound and strong fundamentals.”
As stated in the report from CoinGecko, the main meme coin narrative led with a 12.48% share of crypto investor interest, which represents “a slight decline from the 14.36% share recorded last year.”
Despite that, the report noted that the main meme coin narrative “remains ranked 1st for the second consecutive year, after holding the 3rd place in 2023.”
Meanwhile, three other meme coin trends managed to “continue ranking among the top 20 crypto narrative, following their 2024 popularity: Solana meme coins which came in 6th with a 4.57% share of interest, AI meme coins in 18th position with a 1.51% share, and Base meme coins right behind in 19th with 1.40% of interest.”
Notably, the AI crypto narrative was the second most popular this year, claiming a combined 22.39% share of interest “across the main AI crypto category and 10 other AI-related crypto narratives.”
There was a 6.72 percentage point increase “compared to the 15.67% total share that the AI crypto narrative captured last year. ”
This was despite the main AI crypto category “seeing its share of interest shrink from 12.58% last year, to 9.76% this year.”
Nevertheless, the main AI crypto narrative still “secured the second highest popularity ranking.”
Meanwhile, the overall higher interest in AI crypto can be “attributed to increased attention toward AI agents, as well as the emergence of the DeFAI narrative.”
Among the top 20 most popular narratives, AI agents “recorded the largest market share improvement from 1.17% to 5.03%, or a 3.86 percentage point increase which raised its ranking by 14 places year-on-year (YoY).”
Real world assets (RWA) experienced the largest “YoY decrease in share of narrative interest from 8.64% to 4.98%.”
The 3.66 percentage point drop “caused the RWA narrative to lose its 3rd place ranking and come in at 4th place instead.”
In other words, RWAs saw an even smaller “share of narrative interest than the 6.48% it held in 2023, pointing to the increasingly tough competition for mindshare in the crypto market as more narratives emerge.”
Aside from the unchanged rankings for the top two most popular crypto narratives, there were “eight narratives that saw an improvement in rankings and seven ranking decreases, as well as three new narratives that were added this year.”
The Virtuals Protocol ecosystem recorded the “biggest ranking increase by 39 positions, after coming in 56th from being created towards the end of last year.”
The Virtuals Protocol narrative has since become “the 17th most popular this year, with its share of narrative interest rising from 0.17% to 1.68% YoY as a key player in the AI agents space.”
Stablecoins experienced the second largest ranking “improvement from 31st last year to 16th this year, as its share of narrative interest rose from 0.48% to 1.69%.”
The increased popularity comes as “competition in the stablecoins space heats up, with more protocols and chains seeking to launch their own stablecoins.”
On the other hand, Base meme coins had “the biggest ranking drop from 11th to 19th, after its share of narrative interest shrank from 2.13% to 1.40% YoY.”
Meanwhile over this same period, certain narratives “entirely dropped out of the top 20 most popular rankings in 2025.”
Gaming or GameFi saw its “share of narrative interest fall from 3.72% to 1.30% YoY, DePIN went from 3.38% to 0.93%, and layer 2s from 2.25% to 0.94%.”
As stated in the report, the remaining narratives around “BRC-20, cat meme coins and the TON ecosystem did not even rank among the top 40.”
These were replaced by several new narratives, such as “Made in USA, DeFAI and World Liberty Financial portfolio, as well as the existing narratives of stablecoins, Virtuals Protocol ecosystem and BSC ecosystem which received more attention this year.”
The study examined interest in various crypto narratives that have been based on CoinGecko categories’ “non-botted global web traffic, from January 1 to December 21, 2023, January 1 to December 21, 2024, and January 1 to December 7, 2025.”
