Author Anil Lulla, CEO of Delphi Digital; Translated by Jinse Finance xiaozou
People like to say that cryptocurrencies have no PMF (Product-Market Fit), but from my perspective, such a statement indicates that they are a group of cynics who haven't taken the time to explore the various applications being constantly launched by developers around the world.
I would like to highlight some of my favorite crypto applications that I used in 2024, hoping to inspire some of you to give these apps a try. These teams work hard to create useful products, and we can at least take the time to test their efforts.
Before we dive into the discussion, I must make some disclaimers and disclosures. I have personally engaged with these products and/or their tokens in various ways. I use * to indicate any projects I have engaged with in some capacity. None of this constitutes financial advice—it's merely a summary of my thoughts on the projects I have liked over the past year. The order in which the projects appear in this article does not indicate their priority.
1**、**HyperLiquid
To stand out, HyperliquidX has performed exceptionally well. Over the past month, you may have read thousands of tweets about it, so I'll briefly share my thoughts. Everyone who regularly uses the product has fallen in love with it, without exception. In fact, I haven't heard many complaints so far—until now, we can't say that about many crypto applications.
I try not to use leverage frequently anymore, so I am not the target user of HyperLiquid. In fact, I first used this app when it was released to purchase HYPE* tokens. Soon, I saw the reason why its fans had been crazy about it for a whole year. Not only does the UI/UX have a style that is quite reminiscent of CEX (centralized exchanges) (yes, I know it has only four validators), but it is also encouraging to see how quickly the team responds to user criticisms, concerns, and feedback in their Discord.
Since its establishment in 2023, HyperLiquid has built a passionate community with over 200,000 users and a cumulative trading volume close to $450 billion. The platform currently has more than $2.5 billion in open positions. It is very successful, currently holding over 60% of all USDC on Arbitrum.
Since the launch of HYPE, people's interest in it is not just because it has a clean UI/UX as a trading platform. Although it is still in its early stages, it has already formed an impressive ecosystem. The project not only promises an exciting future but has also realized an ambitious vision.
2**、**Polymarket
Since entering the crypto space in 2017, prediction markets have been a use case that excites me, and I believe it will be the first true use case to take off, like early projects such as Augur. Obviously, that hasn't been the case. Nearly seven years have passed, and thanks to Polymarket, prediction markets officially became mainstream in 2024. It played a perfect role on the night of the U.S. presidential election, announcing in advance what I believe to be the most significant electoral victor of our generation. To provide some background, Polymarket handled $3.6 billion in election bets and predicted Trump's victory six hours ahead of the Associated Press.
It has created a new form of media and provided the world with additional data points for people to reference when being informed about future situations by other potentially biased information sources. Many have called for its abolition after the election, but to be honest, it has been performing well. Below the highs of November, but still above mid-October levels. I still use it frequently to see which markets are active, and it seems the sports sector has started to gain an increasing share on it.
In addition, we should give praise where it's due. Fun.xyz has built a great checkout product for Polymarket, allowing users to deposit any token on any chain, card, or CEX (such as Binance, Coinbase, etc.). Some of my regular friends are even using it and have no complaints about it. The cryptocurrency user experience is not as bad as everyone says!
3**、**Farcaster
To be honest, although I was a regular user of Warpcast in the first half of 2024, in the second half I only opened it once or twice a week at most. One thing I want to do as we enter 2025 is to change this situation.
At the beginning of 2024, I attended the FarCon conference held in Los Angeles, where most of the people I talked to were builders of Farcaster. This is indeed a bullish sign. Although it is still early, many builders are focused on creating some very cool niche things, which gives Farcaster the opportunity to attract the awe of communities that are focused and adventurous. I think you will see a lot of strange things emerge around this social graph in 2025.
I also believe that Dan Romero and his team will continue to innovate rapidly. They focus on helping core users expand their social graph and reputation features, which will create a great sandbox for builders to create new experiences. Features like channels, frameworks, and tip tokens (such as DEGEN) have already developed new ways to coordinate social interactions. Games like Clankermon and Stokefire have shown me some interesting and unique content.
Although it has fallen by 50% from its peak, it still performs well in terms of user retention.
4**、**Ethena
At Delphi, we have high expectations for the launch of Ethena, but somehow, it has exceeded our expectations. Over the past year, Ethena's synthetic dollar USDe has grown to nearly $6 billion. Among stablecoins, it is now second only to Tether and USDC.
What impressed me particularly is that Ethena recently collaborated with Blackrock to launch a new dollar stablecoin, USDtb, supported by Blackrock's BUIDL fund. Similar to USDC, USDtb is backed by cash and cash equivalent reserve assets. In the short term, due to financing issues, the yield of USDe may remain high. However, Ethena can now flexibly adjust the treasury yield to complement USDe. This effectively creates an APY “floor” around the treasury bond rates, allowing Ethena to further scale.
Like most people, I am optimistic about the growth of stablecoins in 2025. The current market cap is about $200 billion, and I believe it has the potential to exceed $300 billion, with expectations of reaching over $400 billion next year. I think Ethena, with its smart products and ongoing focus on integration, will play an important role in attracting significant capital on-chain. We have already seen other decentralized stablecoins or synthetic dollars being incorporated into DeFi in various ways, and Ethena's USDe seems to be the first to perform well in terms of integration with CEX (centralized exchanges) and TradFi. This helps them establish a strong moat early on while chasing the largest crypto market.
5**、**Gunzilla
As we all know, Delphi is passionate about the crypto gaming industry. Through our early work and investments in teams like Axie Infinity, Yield Guild, and Immutable, we have been working hard to help bring games to market and bring the masses into the crypto world. Gunzilla Games has achieved this - users have encountered no friction from crypto components.
Off the Grid, a battle royale game themed around cyberpunk, is the first crypto game released on Playstation and Xbox, attracting over 12 million wallets and 230 million transactions. Players have streamed over 4 million hours of gameplay on platforms like Twitch, with the game ranking in the top three for live games on two occasions. It utilizes Avalanche's play-to-own mechanism, putting into action the widely discussed benefits of cryptocurrency in gaming: digital ownership can enhance player engagement.
I strongly recommend you listen to the conversation between Piers Kicks and the founder of Gunzilla on the Delphi podcast last month. The team's unparalleled attention to detail and commitment to delivering what players truly want is evident. They are currently developing their own products as they work to become the infrastructure that allows more mainstream AAA games to launch within their ecosystem. I'm really excited to see how Gunzilla continues to evolve and shape the future of crypto gaming.
6**、**Lighthouse
For many years, Delphi has invested in several portfolio trackers (Zapper, Debank) and wallet observers, and we believe these tools have the potential to become mainstream tools in the crypto world. Tools like these, as well as Nansen, have become my primary tools for managing my wallet and observing others. Until a few weeks ago, I was still manually using spreadsheets and other applications to track my total portfolio.
Will Price casually mentioned Lighthouse to me, and since then I have been captivated. It is the best and most comprehensive portfolio tracker I have ever used. EVM, Solana, Cosmos, Aptos, Sui, CEX, Hyperliquid, DyDx; they can track everything. During the few days I tried this app, I spoke with the team, and they are extremely focused on privacy protection.
Among all the applications I mentioned in this article, I guess this is a product that many people have just heard of. I am very impressed with it, and I think it is a wise attempt. I have been looking for such a product for several years, and I am glad to have finally found it. I have no financial ties with Lighthouse, although I did request the Lighthouse team to allow me to invest. I am just a user who is very satisfied with their product.
7**、**Pump.fun
This year, pump.fun has turned attention into liquidity. I don't think this mechanism has received the recognition it deserves—it's a simple yet necessary solution with a strong and direct PMF (Product-Market Fit). It lowers the barrier to entry while promoting a fairer distribution, and its bonding mechanism mitigates the risk of rug pulls.
Within a year, pump.fun has garnered over $300 million in fees and assisted in the issuance of more than 5 million tokens. While everyone in the field hopes the team will vertically expand by launching a DEX (decentralized exchange), they chose to grow horizontally by exploring new ways to attract attention. In my conversation, live streaming initially seemed an unexpected direction. It ultimately spiraled out of control, but mainly because it was too successful.
Regardless of whether you like it or not, anything that can be financialized will inevitably be financialized. Pump.fun has the potential to create a social application around speculation, so it cannot be overlooked here. By the way, my investment in pump.fun was through a small angel investment and not through Delphi Ventures. Betting on the founders is an easy decision, but I am still impressed by their execution.
8**、**GOAT
My favorite crypto moment this year might be when the Crypto x AI field found a testing sandbox—Twitter and wallets. Our Delphi team has been outspoken about our excitement and curiosity regarding this cross-domain. Just as we were conducting our Crypto x AI research, GOAT was launched and captured all the attention in the crypto space.
Witnessing the Turing test become a reality is an incredible experience, as people on Crypto Twitter are questioning which bots are AI and which are real humans. No matter how early it may seem, I believe GOAT is one of the most important events in 2024, as it provides a tangible way to think about the interactive possibilities in this crucial intersection of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. Since then, we have witnessed a surge of these agents, seen teams innovating, standing out, and attracting attention. The coolest part is the high interoperability of all these upgrades, maximizing the efforts of every developer through applications that can be applied to other agents. While some of these bots can be annoying, I truly believe that by 2025, these agents will be flocking to the internet, bringing truly interesting and even quirky things.
9**、VIRTUAL Ecosystem**
I don't plan to write too much about Virtuals right now, as this is one of the new projects I've been researching. I just feel that this is a “pickaxe and shovel” strategy for AI agents. So far, they have released over 12,000 agents. Don't get me wrong, most agents are still quite terrible, sometimes at best just annoying responders. However, I expect exponential improvements in the coming months, making this project worth watching.
Aixbt* is a particularly noteworthy account that deserves attention and observation. The data does not lie; it occupies a share of thought in cryptocurrency for good reason. It simply posts alpha on Twitter—but it is backed by years of research from 0rxbt, who has taken the time to gather a vast amount of crypto data and curate an intelligent Crypto Twitter social graph that gives aixbt its 'personality.' While many cryptocurrency celebrities often talk about the same projects in the echo chamber of Crypto Twitter, aixbt consistently presents fresh alpha, mainly consisting of projects I haven't seen anywhere else.
10and11:MetaDAOand****MetaLeX
Few people know or remember this, but Delphi was one of the first companies to receive DAO (Synthetix) rewards in 2019. Since then, we have been active in dozens of governance processes and have even helped design governance systems and projects for cryptocurrencies like Gitcoin. Initially, DAOs were the most exciting aspect of this field for me. However, my enthusiasm waned as we faced the complexities of working with DAOs. Most DAOs are formed to achieve some ambitious vision, but they spend all their time figuring out how to “DAO.” This year, two projects stood out for their practical approaches to addressing these challenges: MetaDAO and MetaLeX (despite both having 'Meta' in their names, the two projects are unrelated).
MetaDAO has sparked many interesting discussions within Delphi (largely thanks to our META maxi mrink0). While some criticize Solana for lacking innovation, MetaDAO is the world's first project to deploy futarchy. I have to mention it here because it is one of the coolest on-chain experiments I have seen in 2024.
Unlike traditional voting methods, MetaDAO uses the market to predict and determine the best outcomes for the DAO. It is interesting to see different protocols integrating it into their decision-making processes. For example, Drift leverages MetaDAO for market-based token listings on its exchange. As we approach 2025, I am closely watching MetaDAO, hoping it will enhance voter participation in cryptocurrency and improve the diversity of voters.
On the other hand, MetaLeX is a concept that Lex node and Delphi Labs have been refining for years. It finally launched in 2024, building a future where DAOs can focus on their tasks without getting bogged down by governance challenges. Through BORGs, MetaLeX enables DAOs to connect with the real world while maintaining cryptonative properties.
This is the crystallization of Gabe's years of experience accumulated from the traditional world and the crypto world. He has served as the technical director at Delphi Labs for many years, and honestly, I have a lot of respect for him. For Delphi Labs, making this concept a reality is a no-brainer, as there is no one else in the world who can build it the right way. MetaLeX fills in the legal gaps with code and the code gaps with law. Their BORGs can mutually execute multi-party trusted commitments and reduce trust assumptions for all counterparties.
MetaLeX has already helped teams like Lido, Curve, and ZKSync transition to BORGs. They have been developing a comprehensive set of tools for trust-minimized governance, and I believe that by 2025, we will start to see the impact of their work on integrating their DAOs.
12**、**Sandwich
This is a product created by one of my friends. Sandwich is a private placement trading tool used for executing CEX orders (as well as HyperLiquid orders). It allows you to access institutional-level algorithms, which help save on fees and reduce slippage, and lets you access a variety of tools and multiple exchanges through a unified user interface.
Considering that I mainly buy and hold tokens and rarely use leverage, I am not the target user in this regard. That being said, every trader friend who sees it has become a super user. The Mac application is about to be launched, but if you have a desktop, I encourage you to give it a try.
13**、**9dcc
I think what Gmoney and 9dcc are doing is the coolest thing in the crypto space right now. He has successfully combined his passion, carved out his own path, and created another mainstream attempt for cryptocurrency.
Essentially, cryptocurrency is a very powerful coordination tool. Using it to gamify ubiquitous things like fashion and interpersonal interactions is a brilliant move—surprisingly, this is still a largely unexplored field. Gmoney continues to delve into this area, allowing him to connect cutting-edge on-chain ideas and bring them into the real world.
14**、**DeBridge
Over the years, I have tried many bridging tools, but DeBridge is the one I have used the most this year. Not only is the experience seamless, but their team has consistently been one of the fastest to integrate new chains. Regardless of where your assets are or where you want them to go, the experience is the same.
They leverage cross-chain intents to connect DeFi in real-time, making the bridging experience feel almost magical. According to deAlex, they have already settled over 4 million intents, with a transaction volume exceeding $6 billion.
This is the first bridge I recommend to my ordinary friends that doesn't require answering any questions about how to use it. Just this alone is impressive, and for that, I thank the team's work.
15and16:Echoand****Legion
2024 is the year of the ICO resurgence. I am a loyal fan of the approach Cobie has taken with Echo - it seems to resonate very well with Crypto Twitter users and has a strong product-market fit. Supporting the people you trust to bring you interesting deal flow directly is a win-win situation. Echo has already facilitated over 150 deals and raised more than $55 million for projects from nearly 6,000 users.
On the other hand, Legion adopts a more bottom-up approach by handing project tokens to more consistent community members. They have developed a Legion Score, which currently consists of three main variables: ( on-chain activity, ) social influence, and ( development experience. This score will change over time, allowing projects to better understand who they are letting into their capital structure.
Legion is a project that has been incubated by our Delphi Labs for over a year, and just a month ago, the first transactions on its platform took place. The numbers speak for themselves: it has raised over $5 million, and nearly 100,000 users have registered for Legion Score.
I believe that by 2025, we will see more projects utilizing such platforms to help distribute tokens. The timing of the new U.S. government coming into power couldn't be better. I strongly recommend everyone to register on both platforms and check them weekly. While these platforms strive to curate high-quality projects for their members, there may be many attractive opportunities.
17**、**Kaito
In 2024, Kaito has rapidly become a very powerful tool for cryptocurrency users. To some extent, the goal of Kaito and Delphi Research is to solve a similar problem: helping crypto members cut through all the noise in the crypto world to find alpha and valuable insights. To this end, our research team spends hundreds of hours conducting research and then condenses all the necessary and relevant information into about 30 minutes of reading content, focusing on the areas where we believe alpha will emerge. In this process, our analysts take the time to think through and filter out most of the noise, only analyzing the understandings and conclusions that are important for any specific protocol or niche. Where Kaito excels is in using its smart algorithms to help sift through all the noise on CryptoTwitter to uncover the nuggets. In fact, when I search for a specific project or token, it helps me skip over so much noise that I'm truly amazed.
I can see that it is a very useful and necessary tool for all traders. However, I have been using it to find talent. Typically, in any specific field, some of the most outspoken individuals become potential candidates for our Delphi team. In fact, we just sent an offer to a talent I discovered through Kaito, and they will be joining our team in January.
I believe Kaito has the potential to serve many different user groups through a product, as there are many cryptocurrencies that continue to be active on Twitter.
18**、**Grass
Grass allows users to earn rewards by sharing excess internet bandwidth with the rest of the network. This is a simple plugin, and I have been running Grass in the background for most of 2024. Our venture capital team has invested heavily in various Crypto x AI projects, but Grass might be the one I am personally most excited about (at least among the projects I can publicly discuss right now).
Data is the next frontier in model development. We have seen AI labs attempting to partner with platforms like Reddit or StackOverflow to gain API key access to their data. Grass provides an API key for the entire internet.
It can do this efficiently and at scale. They already have 2.5 million nodes on the supply side, providing unfiltered data for training and AI responses. New ways to join the network will also emerge, such as people being able to plug in mobile and hardware devices into their WiFi routers. According to research by 0xdrej, the current demand for joining the network is already in the nine-digit range.
The Grass project has been helping traditional AI professionals take the Crypto X AI crossover field seriously, and I am optimistic about their development prospects in 2025.
19**、**Ostium
Since our team partnered with Kain and the SNX family in 2019, we are excited to bring traditional assets to the on-chain world. Ostium seems to be fulfilling this promise.
Kaledora has made it clear that she is keen on making Ostium an all-encompassing marketplace. Currently, Ostium offers users long-term or short-term perpetual trading on forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and stock indices. So far, they have completed over $166 million in trades. What's cool is that when the trading volume for certain trading pairs spikes. For example, the USD/JPY trading pair has seen a trading volume of $21 million since its inception, with most of it occurring during the Japanese bank's interest rate decision (not sure if you remember the 72-hour short-term bear market).
They have launched some streamlined structured products based on Polymarket. For example, once the Polymarket odds for Trump winning on election night reach a certain percentage, you can have Ostium leverage 10 times long on Bitcoin. You can set it up this way, and while the rest of the world stays up late to see what happens, you go to sleep and wake up very happily (and well-rested).
With the new U.S. government no longer opposing cryptocurrencies, I believe it will allow Ostium to launch some things on-chain that we couldn't have imagined in the past four years. (As I publish this article, Ostium has actually launched SPX Perps!)
20**、**Moonwalk Fitness
Moonwalk Fitness leverages the coordination capabilities of cryptocurrency to create a powerful accountability tool for fitness.
Currently, the main purpose of the first version of Moonwalk is to motivate people to walk daily. You can create a group, set a daily step goal, and deposit USDC/SOL/BONK tokens. As long as you meet your set goal, at least, you will get your money back. If others do not meet their goals, their money will be distributed to the winners. This is a simple yet powerful tool to incentivize good behavior, and I am excited to see what its next iteration will look like. You can see that this concept applies not just to step incentives: setting goals for daily sleep duration, water intake, etc. When it comes to rewards, I am curious about which projects sponsor competitions to help different people enter this space.
Although it is still early days, they already have nearly 100,000 registered users; they have locked in over 500,000 people to take on responsibilities. They will soon release a mobile app, and I have been bothering the team about it for quite some time. This could be the first crypto application that my parents use every week.
Alright, this is my list of favorite projects for 2024. These are just a few products I like, and I want to thank the teams for their hard work. Unfortunately, I obviously can't list all the teams I think did a great job in 2024 in detail. Other projects that quickly come to mind include wallets like Morpho, Jito, Cowswap, Jupiter, Pendle, and Phantom/Rabby.
I am very curious - what is your favorite project in 2024?
