RWA or real-world assets have reportedly emerged as the most profitable crypto narrative this year, with the highest average price returns of 185.8% YTD across its largest tokens. This, according to an extensive CoinGecko report which also noted that the RWA narrative’s profitability was primarily driven or fueled by the outperformance of Keeta Network (+1,794.9% YTD), Zebec Network (+217.3% YTD) and Maple Finance (+123.0% YTD). That said, the RWA narrative this year was merely a quarter as profitable when compared to last year’s 819.5% gains, according the CoinGecko research report.
The research report also mentioned that the second most profitable narrative this year was layer 1, “recording 80.3% in average price gains YTD.”
The report from CoinGecko further stated that the layer 1 narrative is on track to “end the year profitably due to privacy layer 1 blockchains Zcash and Monero, which have rallied 691.3% and 143.6% respectively during this period, placing them among the top crypto gainers.”
Meanwhile, Bitcoin Cash, BNB and Tron have also managed “to hold onto some of their price gains, further contributing to the layer 1 narrative’s profitability this year.”
The CoinGecko report pointed out that among the major narratives, RWA and layer 1 were the “only narratives to mark a second consecutive year of profitability.”
The report further noted that the only other narrative that is on track to end the year profitably “is Made in USA, which achieved an average gain of 30.6% YTD.”
This was entirely attributable to Zcash’s strong returns “compensating for moderate losses posted by all the remaining Made in USA representative tokens.”
Despite ranking as the most popular crypto narratives again this year, meme coins and artificial intelligence have “posted average returns of -31.6% and -50.2% respectively YTD.”
The CoinGecko report also stated that the largest meme coins “saw losses from 44.6% to 82.5% YTD, except for Ribbita by Virtuals.”
Similarly, except for Alchemist AI and Kite, the largest AI crypto “are down 49.8% to 84.3% YTD.”
Notably, the DeFi narrative’s average returns of “-34.8% was on par with the meme coins narrative this year, while the DEX narrative’s -55.5% was in line with the AI crypto narrative losses.”
Meanwhile, the layer 2 narrative recorded “average returns of -40.6%, in a second consecutive unprofitable year.”
The GameFi and DePIN narratives performed “the worst among the major crypto narratives, posting the largest losses of 75.2% and 76.7% respectively YTD.”
The largest crypto gaming tokens saw prices drop “40.1% to 92.5% YTD, while the largest DePIN tokens fell 44.5% to 88.0% YTD.”
The Solana ecosystem narrative experienced “the third largest loss of 64.2% YTD, even though it remained the most popular blockchain ecosystem with the highest mindshare.”
Jupiter’s JLP was the only token to close the year with “marginal price gains, as all other major Solana tokens fell 33.5% to 83.1% YTD.”
The study examined the most popular “crypto narratives’ performance from January 1 to December 22, 2025, and January 1 to December 29, 2024.”
Narratives’ performances were calculated based “on CoinGecko data for each narrative’s 10 biggest and most representative tokens’ average daily price returns compared to the start of the year, or the first day of available price data for tokens that were launched during the year.”
The representative tokens in each narrative were selected by their market capitalization ranking “on the last day of the period, after excluding low organic activity assets.”
For the purposes of the CoinGecko research study, crypto narratives that had a limited number of “large market capitalization tokens or had high overlap with other narratives were excluded.”