HYPE, OM and XCN hold up against crypto crash
AI agent tokens crash to $8 billion from a $20 billion peak
CryptoFX/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Hyperliquid (HYPE)
L1 tokens have pretty much taken a beating across the board, with one rare exception.
The exception is unsurprisingly Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which has actually posted a 15.8% gain on the week. The perps DEX generated $18.2 billion in trading volumes and ~$4 million in fees on Sunday.
Those price gains are coming in against a deep backdrop of red. When we zoom in on larger market cap L1s, almost none were spared the guillotine. From previous generation L1s like Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX) and Algorand (ALGO), to newer generation L1s like Near (NEAR), Sei (SEI) and Ton (TON), all saw 20%+ price declines on the week.
RON saw the greatest price crash of 27%.
One other L1 that bucked the market crash is the little-known Kava Network L1, which is undertaking an AI pivot. The KAVA token ($539 million market cap) saw a 15.7% gain on the week. Kava launched its mainnet in October 2022 after carving out a niche for itself with an interoperable Maker-like collateralized debt position (CDP) product.
MANTRA (OM)
The OM token, which is 31st largest token by market cap, is up 27% on the week.
For a token this large, I’m embarrassed to say I had no idea what OM was, so I looked it up.
OM is apparently the token behind the MANTRA project, a real-world assets-focused L1 catering to the institutional TradFi world.
Its mainnet launched relatively recently in October 2024. The OM token is used for validator staking, gas and governance — all pretty standard use cases. I expected to find huge TVL numbers on rwa.xyz, but they’re not even listed.
As far as I can tell, there is nothing particularly out of the ordinary that explains OM’s impressive price action. But look upon this price chart, ye Mighty, and despair.
Onyx (XCN)
Onyx (XCN) was a lending market for fungible and non-fungible tokens built on Ethereum, until it suffered a $3.8 million exploit in September 2024 and shut down.
Is it possible to summon an explanation for why XCN (96th largest token by market cap) is up 7% on the week? Perhaps, but the mental gymnastics aren’t worth it.
All I have to offer is this: Onyx yesterday announced XCN Ledger, a new L3 blockchain built with the Arbitrum stack, but settling on Base.
AI agents
The AI agent sub sector has taken a pretty hard beating since it peaked at a market cap of ~$20 billion in early January.
When agents were still going parabolic, everyone wanted to know: How high would this market go? Analysts far smarter than I were making bold predictions that placed the agentic market at a range of $100 billion (base case) to $250 billion (bull case).
It’s been a month since, and market caps have cratered to $8 billion. Yikes.
The top tokens in the AI agent sector haven’t held up: VIRTUAL is down 24% on the week, while FARTCOIN and AI16Z are down 22.5% and 38.6%, respectively.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
- Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
- Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
- Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
- The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
