The year 2025 promises to be quite profitable for many DeFi investors. While the combined TVL of the sector has been contracting since the beginning of the year, there were several categories of protocols that managed to attract capital. Lending and Liquid Staking are the two most prominent types of DeFi platforms surviving the temporary recession quite well.
Finding high-growth crypto investments among over 20,000 different digital assets is extremely challenging even for people with experience. We want to dedicate some time to discussing some of the most interesting targets for investments in 2025. If you want to get on board with some of the hottest projects and don’t mind some risk, this article will be right up your alley.
We are going to talk about several cryptocurrencies that are promising to deliver the best results for investors. Before giving you more detailed information about each, let’s list them in no particular order:
We will cover all these cryptocurrencies and their respective networks. Note that we do not give financial advice. All the information is educational.
Despite losing a massive chunk of its market cap in 2024 and 2025, this network is still the biggest DeFi ecosystem with over 20 million unique wallet addresses interacting with various EVM protocols in December. The current Ethereum dominance is at 7.62%, and the market cap is close to $188 billion.
Ethereum and Solana upgrades set the tone for the whole DeFi ecosystem. Here are some important changes that will affect the former in the near future:
These innovations should increase the interest in ETH and may drive up the price of the token by the end of 2025. Note that it is not a forecast. It is a speculation and a hopeful vision of the biggest DeFi ecosystem.
By January, Solana reached a significant milestone when the combined TVL of the chain eclipsed an important $11.7 billion mark. It was still dwarfed by Ethereum’s $66.4 billion. However, the growth of the Solana ecosystem was undeniable.
The network was full of high-potential crypto projects, including high-yield protocols focused on incentives and memecoins that attracted immense attention from newcomers. Solana is also making progress toward key upgrades:
The network is facing an upcoming wave of regulatory changes that may severely affect its status quo. For instance, it is currently being researched by the SEC as many investors are interested in approving SOL ETFs. Australian regulators are also interested in this chain and its digital assets.
Polkadot is a unique layer-0 solution that wants to create an interconnected Web 3.0 ecosystem that can be used by all DeFi enthusiasts. Currently, it is a solid chain with over $5 billion invested across all its protocols. It has over 600 different projects and can handle over 623 thousand transactions per second.
Despite falling from its ATH, the DOT token is still trading 20% higher compared to its launch price and has a respectable 24-hour volume of over $440 million.
The network is expecting several core upgrades:
These changes are making Polkadot look like the future of blockchain ecosystems and may reignite the interest in its utility among developers and investors. It is a good idea to keep an eye on this layer-0 chain.
ATOM has been doing terribly during the last three years. It has already dipped dangerously close to the all-time low. However, it is also an opportunity for some brave investors to get on board while prices are at rock bottom. Whether one should do it is a different question altogether.
Cosmos is another layer-0 network hoping to build a unified Web 3.0 ecosystem. It is far behind Polkadot, but some upgrades seem quite interesting.
One of the best things about this particular network is that it is very easy to work with for a developer. We decided to include this network in the list because it still has potential.
When it comes to selecting the right digital asset for “hodling”, investors should focus on tokens that have been around for ages and still have respectable market capitalizations and investor activity. Ethereum, Bitcoin, most stablecoins, Solana, and Doge are good examples of projects that have survived the crypto winter and come out quite strong.
DeFi 2.0 and RWA tokens are promising targets for capital allocation. However, these are concepts that still need testing. For instance, MakerDAO is one of the most important players in the RWA field in 2025. The protocol is expanding into the RWA sector to provide new financial services to the community of DeFi users. Whether you should get on board is a question that requires heavy contemplation.
Before investing in various cryptocurrencies, you should consider the risks of crypto investing. It can be dangerous to put your savings into unreliable digital assets. However, building a portfolio without them also seems unwise considering the all-time performance of Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Choosing sound investment strategies can be difficult even for people with experience in the field. We invite you to visit Rivo and its Yield Marketplace, full of diverse strategies picked by professionals and verified by dedicated teams of specialists who do all the due diligence on your behalf.
You can pick something that suits your preferences and risk style to the point. If you are not sure about which strategies to explore, talking to the Maneki AI virtual assistant is a good idea. It will guide you to the best strategies after giving you a short quiz!
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