Yeliz Akmaca 
The dominant theme in the crypto market this year has once again been the meme coins trend. Data from CoinGecko’s global traffic analysis shows that the majority of investor attention has been directed toward this category. Overall, the meme coin space captured over 25% of interest throughout the year, surpassing all other trends.
This indicates that speculative market behavior remains strong, and short-term trend movements continue to influence investor psychology. Sudden price surges in major meme token projects like DOGE and SHIB highlight the continued enthusiasm for quick profit opportunities.
Main Meme Coin Theme Retains Popularity
The main meme coin category remained the most-watched narrative this year. Despite a slight decline in its percentage share, it retained a top position, showing that investors have not abandoned this segment. The Solana meme coin ecosystem stood out, while AI-based meme token projects also remained within the top twenty. New meme coin initiatives on the Base network lost some popularity during the year but still maintain a broad following.
The leading meme coin sub-trends this year are:
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Solana-based meme coin projects (4.57% investor interest)
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AI-themed meme coin ecosystem (1.51%)
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New meme coin wave on the Base network (1.40%)
According to CoinGecko, the total investor interest in the main meme coin category and its 35 sub-trends reached 25.02%. This slightly lower figure compared to last year’s 30.67% indicates a minor cooling in speculative activity.
AI Themes Become the Second Major Force
The second most popular trend in 2025 was AI-focused projects. AI agents and the DeFAI ecosystem together raised total investor interest to 22.39%, making it one of the market’s leading forces.
Among new trends, the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem jumped from 56th to 17th place (0.17% → 1.68%). Stablecoins rose from 31st to 16th place, increasing their share from 0.48% to 1.69%. Base meme coins, however, fell from 2.13% to 1.40%, moving from 11th to 19th place. Additionally, new narratives like Made in USA, DeFAI, and the World Liberty Financial portfolio attracted investor attention this year.
AI agents became one of the fastest-growing themes of the year. The DeFAI ecosystem also unexpectedly gained prominence, intensifying narrative competition in the market. Meanwhile, the RWA category experienced a noticeable decline. CoinGecko’s data shows that RWA’s share fell from 8.64% in 2024 to 4.98% in 2025, moving it from third to fourth place due to rising competition. Gaming, DePIN, and Layer-2, which were previously popular, completely dropped out of the top twenty.
Quarterly Data Confirms Meme and AI Trend Continuity
CoinGecko’s Q1 2025 data supported the annual trends. Meme coins and AI-based projects accounted for approximately 62% of total investor attention during the quarter, indicating that both narratives set the market pace from the beginning of the year.
The report shows that six meme coin categories and five AI trends ranked within the top twenty, proving that these themes are not merely short-term hype. Solana-based meme coin projects maintained strong momentum quarter over quarter, while the ecosystem around AI agents attracted a significant portion of investor flow.
Combined with the annual report, these quarterly figures confirm that meme token projects and AI narratives were the main drivers of investor behavior throughout 2025. Both community influence and technological developments continued to push these two themes to the forefront amid fragile market conditions.
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