https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/where-crypto-is-still-growing-620
Crypto is in a bear market. There’s no denying that.
Despite this, there are still a handful of sectors and projects that are thriving based on key fundamental performance metrics.
Here are 5 projects that are defying the odds and experiencing their own bull runs:
Lens Protocol, a web3 social platform, is hitting all-time highs across a variety of metrics.
For one, engagement per month has nearly doubled to around 370K engagements per month across posts, comments, and mirrors (the web3 equivalent of a retweet). Despite the bear market, people are interacting with Lens Protocol and its leading app, Lenster, more than ever.
In tandem with engagement from users, the number of monthly active lens profiles is hitting all-time highs, reaching nearly 40,000 unique profiles on the protocol. This is after adding another ~14,800 profiles in the month of November – an increase of 59% from the previous month.
Naturally, with the increase in engagement and number of lens profiles, we can see that the number of wallets that own a Lens Profile are steadily increasing — now over 98,000 wallets. At the current rate, we should expect to see the total number of wallets that own a Lens profile to surpass 100,000 in the coming days.
The leading music NFT platform is seeing a resurgence in activity since reaching its peak back in April.
The number of songs minted on the platform reached all time highs back in October, but then more than doubled that metric in November to reach over 12,000 music NFTs minted in a single month. For reference, this is an increase of 242% from its previous record in April 2022 when ETH was over $3,000 (tbt to the good ole days).
Songs minted is just the beginning though, collector growth is surging as well with 1442 active collectors in November, bringing the total to 6,500 unique addresses collecting these new type of media NFTs.
Even though it hasn’t surpassed its previous records, we’re seeing a material uptrend in secondary market volume from the bottom. Total volume traded on secondary markets reached $271K in November, putting the protocol back on track to levels that it reached back in 2021/2022.
That said - Sound Protocol just reached its 1-year anniversary.
While what we’ll call web3 social – Lens and Sound – is hitting its stride, another sector is also garnering a significant amount of adoption: Layer 2s.
After launching its token back in May, Optimism has seen a massive surge in usage across multiple key metrics.
The first, and arguably one of the most critical, is the number of transactions— blockchains aren’t valuable if there are no transactions! Optimism’s daily transactions are skyrocketing to all-time highs of 500,000 transactions per day. For reference, Ethereum processes just over double that at ~1 million transactions per day (at its current rate).
Predictably, the number of unique addresses on the network is also rising exponentially. The network has just crossed 2 million unique addresses – an important milestone for the second-largest Layer 2 by value-locked.
The last metric hitting new highs for Optimism is verified contracts deployed. This is a key indicator to gauge developer activity on the network and how much builders are building. The trend is clear: it’s up and to the right after spiking to an all time daily high of 115 contracts deployed just over a month ago.
Optimism is not alone. Its toughest competitor, Arbitrum, is also reaching similar heights. We’ll look at the exact same metrics to give you a clear understanding of how these projects stack up.
The number of transactions per day on Arbitrum is also hitting an all time high right now, surpassing its competitor to reach 575K daily transactions.
Arbitrum already surpassed 2M unique addresses and is currently closing in on the 2.25M addresses – giving a slight lead over its primary competitor.
In terms of verified contracts deployed, Arbitrum recently peaked at 176 contracts deployed in a single day, while continuously spiking to over 100 contracts per day in recent months.
It’s obviously very clear right now that Layer 2s are trending upwards. The key difference between Optimism and Arbitrum right now? Optimism already launched its OP token back in May. Arbitrum has yet to launch its token, keeping a powerful growth steroid in the back pocket.
So far - we’ve seen the prominence of what is shaping up with Web3 social and Layer 2s. Now, let’s talk about one more upswing trend: liquid staking. More specifically, Rocket Pool, which is seeing an eyebrow-raising level of growth in recent months.
Even though it’s cumulative, there’s an accelerating amount of adoption across different key metrics for Rocket Pool. The primary metric is the number of rETH in circulation, which has surged to a new height above 150,000 rETH. For reference, this number was shy of 75,000 back in September, meaning they’ve doubled the total supply in 3 months.
While impressive, it’s still significantly behind the leading protocol, Lido, which currently holds 4.5M ETH under its purview. That said, there’s a key difference in design choice between Rocket Pool and Lido. Anyone can run a Rocket Pool validator (known as a minipool), whereas Lido is closed.
When looking at the data, this is proving to be a strong growth driver as the number of Minipools just hit 10,000 unique nodes on the network.
When users run a Minipool, they are required to stake an additional amount of RPL as “insurance” against the “borrowed” ETH they’re using to run a full validator. As such, with the increase of Minipools on the network, the amount of RPL staked on the network has increased to 7.8M RPL. This is equivalent to 41% of the total supply currently locked away on the network to support validation for liquid stakers.
While prices have tanked over the past year, it’s important to look further than the surface. Why? Because these are generally the opportunities that pay off in a bull market.
That’s not to say that these projects are locked in as the next big things. It’s more to highlight that these projects all have charts that are up and to the right while everything seems to be down horrendously.
With that, it may be wise to keep tabs on these projects as we search for the end of what’s been a very dark and volatile tunnel.
Bhutan mined Bitcoin using its extra hydropower and sold it to raise money. The country used the funds to double civil servant salaries and slow down people leaving for jobs abroad.
AnaisAccording to police sources cited by NHK and other outlets, the four individuals—ranging in age from their 20s to 50s—allegedly created and sold posters featuring indecent images of women through online auction platforms.
CatherineThe US is looking at using tariff funds and gold revaluation to buy Bitcoin without raising taxes or debt. Plans include building a long-term Bitcoin reserve, while criticism grows over Trump’s personal crypto ties.
WeatherlyThailand has introduced stricter crypto laws to fight online fraud and illegal foreign platforms, giving authorities power to block unlicensed services and punish misuse. The new rules also raise security standards for crypto firms and come after several high-profile scams and arrests.
WeatherlyDonald Trump’s family is set to launch a Monopoly-inspired crypto game this month, aiming to capitalise on their public profile to attract attention. The game adds to Trump’s expanding digital asset ventures, which include a meme coin, NFT collections, and the DeFi project World Liberty Financial. However, the crypto community remains sceptical, citing vague tokenomics and possible legal challenges. Is Trump’s rapid expansion into Web3 moving too fast?
CatherineOpenAI is developing its own social media platform that integrates ChatGPT’s image generation with a social feed, aiming to compete with X and Meta. The project is still in early stages, with prototypes already being tested internally.
JoyHarvard rejected Trump administration demands to regulate campus speech, citing First Amendment violations. In response, the administration froze $2.3 billion in federal funding. Barack Obama praised Harvard for defending academic freedom and resisting political pressure.
KikyoChina has seized large amounts of crypto from criminal cases and is using private firms to quietly sell them, despite its trading ban. Officials are now debating if the country should create formal rules—or even build a national reserve—to manage these assets.
AnaisAB DAO officially announced the launch of a dual reward campaign in collaboration with Bitget (bitget.com), the world’s second-largest digital asset trading platform. In celebration of AB’s Token Generation Event (TGE), the campaign will distribute a total of 213,307,000 $AB, valued at approximately $2.6 million USD
AlexCBEX, a fraudulent digital trading platform, scammed thousands of Nigerian investors by promising unrealistically high returns and freezing accounts after taking their money. The platform, which was never registered, collapsed in April 2025, leaving victims with significant financial losses.
Weatherly
