The crypto world market faces a chill, popular narrative coins suffer heavy losses

Since the beginning of 2025, the overall performance of the cryptocurrency market has been sluggish, with a lack of sustained upward momentum. This downturn is reflected not only in the small coins on exchanges but also in the on-chain tokens that performed well in the fourth quarter of last year, all of which have suffered significant declines.

Data shows that AI-related tokens have encountered a Waterloo in less than three months:

• Virtual decreased by 79.2%
• Ai16z fell by 85.5%
• AIXBT dropped 68%
• Griffain plummeted by 80.3%
• Buzz down 72.4%
• Fartcoin dropped 67.5%
• ARC dropped 62%
• Swarms has a relatively small decline of 45%.

Although it cannot be definitively concluded that the AI track has failed, it is an undeniable fact that the market's attention to it has significantly decreased, making it difficult to regain investor favor in the short term.

On the other hand, the celebrity coin craze led by Trump has also encountered a severe setback. The decline of major celebrity coins since their peak is as follows:

• Trump fell by 77.1%
• Melania plummeted 91%
• Vine's drop reached 92.7%
• jailstool dropped 93.5%
• Jellyjelly plummeted 98%
• CAR dropped by 98.5%
• Libra dropped 94.3%

Compared to AI tokens, the drop in celebrity coin projects has been even more severe. In the current market environment, which lacks new narratives, the issues faced by these two once-popular tracks are worth pondering.

Current Narrative Dilemma: Concept Hype is Rampant

The main issue in the AI token space is that most projects are still stuck in the concept demonstration and future planning stages, lacking practical and easily promotable products. Even if there are a few available services, they generally face issues such as complex interfaces and poor user experience, making it difficult to attract ordinary investors for long-term participation. Worse still, some project teams, in order to meet market expectations, overly exaggerate the prospects of AI and blockchain integration, while the actual implementation continues to be delayed. This has led to investors losing patience, funds starting to withdraw, and ultimately causing a significant drop in token prices.

In terms of celebrity coins, although Trump initially sparked a wave of interest, he later encountered the problem of "celebrity effect decay." Subsequently, other politicians, internet celebrities, and stars followed suit, but they could not replicate the initial funding enthusiasm and market sentiment. As market enthusiasm declined, the celebrity coin track showed characteristics of rapidly rising and quickly falling, with investor confidence swiftly eroding, leading to a significant drop in coin prices.

The fundamental reason for the severe volatility in these tracks lies in the fact that most projects only stay at the level of speculative concepts, lacking real and sustainable profit models. Whether it's AI tokens or celebrity coins, their core appeal relies on the rapid influx of short-term capital and hype, but they lack the motivation to engage users in the long term. Once the hype fades, it becomes difficult to maintain prices, let alone attract new funds to enter.

Finding real yield projects has become key

In the current market environment characterized by weak narratives, the key to standing out lies in discovering projects that offer "real returns" and are "willing to share with users." "Real returns" refer not only to short-term price increases at the time of listing on exchanges but also to the ability to continuously generate returns through actual business models and trading behaviors, and to feedback these returns to token holders or ecosystem participants.

Taking a certain decentralized trading platform as an example, its business model is similar to that of centralized exchanges, with the main income coming from contract trading fees. The platform uses all the fees for repurchasing its platform tokens, closely binding the coin price with product usage. According to data platform statistics, this platform occupies about 45% of the 24-hour trading volume share in the perpetual contract DEX, with an average daily trading volume of 3.78 billion USD and daily revenue of about 1 million USD. Even during the current market downturn, this platform still maintains high activity levels, and its token price remains relatively strong.

No matter how popular a narrative is, it will eventually pass. Projects that can exist long-term in the crypto market must have high product-market fit, strong user engagement, and the ability to generate real profits.