Grayscale Updates Top 20 Altcoin List For Q1 2025 With These 6 New Additions

Grayscale Research has updated its top 20 altcoin list for the first quarter of 2025, adding six new digital assets.

The list highlights cryptocurrencies that the company believes will show strong potential for the coming quarter.

The six signs

According to the December 30 report, this update emphasizes signs related to three main aspects of the market: the US election and the implications of regulation on decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking, breakthroughs in decentralized AI technologies and blockchain adoption by AI agents and the development of the Solana ecosystem.

Based on these factors, Grayscale added HyperLiquid (HYPE), Athena (ENA), Virtual Protocol (VIRTUAL), Jupiter (JUP), JETTO (JETTO) and GRASS (GRASS) to the top 20 list.

Hyperliquid, a Layer 1 blockchain, powers financial applications and operates a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures with a fully on-chain order book. On the other hand, Athena, backed by sealed positions in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), offered opportunities tied to the price differential between the spot and futures markets.

Virtual Protocol enables the creation of alternate AI agents on the Base, Ethereum Layer 2 network. This functionality allows agents to autonomously interact with their environment and users.

Jupiter, the leading decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, has the highest total value (TVL) of any application on the network. Another Solana project, Gito, is a liquid staking protocol that has generated over $550 million in fee revenue by 2024.

The last of the six, Grass, acts as a decentralized data sharing platform. The Chrome extension compensates users for unused Internet bandwidth. This bandwidth is then sold to AI developers to train machine learning models, providing a unique approach to monetizing data.

In addition to these new entries, Grayscale also dropped some cues from the top 20, including CELO. While these removed tokens remain relevant to the broader crypto ecosystem, the updated selection better reflects risk-adjusted responses, the company explained. It is expected in the next quarter.

Modern contract platforms

Greyscale's latest report also highlighted the competition among smart contract platforms. In the year Despite major gains in the last quarter of 2024, Ethereum is facing increasing pressure from competitors like Solana and The Open Network.

The study explains that these platforms are gaining traction by solving the ‘blockchain trilemma', balancing scalability, security and decentralization with innovative solutions.

Fee revenue also continues to play a critical role in driving the value of smart contract platform tokens. For this reason, Grayscale has included Ethereum, Solana, Sui and Optimism as the standout contract platforms in its top 20 list for Q1 2025.

According to the asset manager, these projects generate sustainable fee income while providing long-term value to the ecosystem.