Panama City, August 18, 2025 – HTX, a leading global crypto exchange, saw several newly listed assets deliver outsized gains over the past week (Aug 4–11), accompanied by a sharp surge in trading activity. The broader cryptocurrency market experienced rapid capital rotation between meme coins, public blockchains, and emerging narratives. While some tokens registered short-term spikes fueled by specific events, mainstream assets within the ETH ecosystem maintained steady growth.
Meme Coins Lead Weekly Gains with DONKEY and MEMEFI As the Key Focus
Meme coins continued to dominate market sentiment. Known for their high volatility, low entry barriers, and strong community engagement, these tokens often act as short-term sentiment barometers.
- DONKEY (BSC Memecoin): +197%, the week’s top gainer on HTX. Originating from a viral meme – Binance founder CZ’s self-deprecating “I am a donkey” remark – the token leveraged social traction to attract a fleet of short-term inflows, becoming a representative of trending BSC meme assets.
- MEMEFI (Memecoin): +120%. MemeFi is a Web3 social gaming platform combining PvP/PvE modes with a player-driven economy. It allows players to trade keys to earn rewards, resulting in a more engaging experience. Anticipation of airdrops and on-chain interaction activity helped sustain price momentum.
Emerging Narratives and Niche Sectors Rise, Highlighted by SOON and OG
Innovation-led sectors gained traction, fueled by developments in blockchain scalability, fan engagement, blockchain gaming, decentralized research, and AI integration. The sectors attract both short-term speculators and long-term investors.
- SOON (L1 Token): +145%. SOON is a rollup stack designed to provide high-performance solutions for Layer-1 chains. The project attracted both blockchain enthusiasts and speculative capital due to its high-speed, low-fee on-chain performance, and early ecosystem development. It is viewed as a potential narrative alongside Ethereum and Solana.
- OG (Fan Token): +124%. This surge highlights renewed market enthusiasm for the fan economy. Marking a collaboration between esports organization OG and Socios.com, OG leverages the significant reach of its sports and entertainment IP. This contributes to a resurgence of on-chain fan engagement in the new cycle.
- A2Z (GameFi): +108%. Built on OP Stack, Arena-Z aims to streamline Web3 gaming with player-first infrastructure, hitting record highs in active users and trading volume. The blockchain gaming sector has repeatedly been a market highlight during this year’s recovery.
- BIO (DeSci): +96%. The revival of the decentralized science narrative reignited interest in blockchain-powered scientific research. While these projects exhibit significant short-term price volatility, they hold a unique position in the exploration of long-term value.
- GRIFT (SOL AI Token): +97%. This reflects the speculative fervor surrounding the narrative of AI integrated with Solana. Orbit (GRIFT) is an AI-driven DeFi assistant operating on Solana, enabling on-chain actions via natural language prompts. With AI positioned as a key long-term narrative for the crypto market in 2025 and beyond, its combination with high-performance blockchains is particularly compelling. Market exploration of the synergy between AI and on-chain data continues to rapidly advance.
Ethereum Ecosystem Assets Steadily Advance
Ethereum’s price recovery supported gains in core staking and DeFi tokens, seen as more stable allocation targets.
- LDO (Staking): +63%, benefiting from a rebound in staking APRs and broader ETH staking activity. Lido is a solution for liquid staking on Ethereum. It allows users to stake ETH without minimum deposit requirements or the need to maintain infrastructure, while participating in on-chain activities (such as lending) to achieve compound interest growth on their returns.
- PENDLE (DeFi): +45%. The price increase reflects renewed institutional interest in the interest rate derivatives sector. Pendle Finance is a protocol that tokenizes and allows trading of DeFi yields, enabling users to execute various yield management strategies.
- ENA (DeFi): +38%. This uptick reflects steady growth within the strong Ethereum ecosystem. Ethena is a synthetic dollar protocol built on Ethereum, aiming to provide a crypto-native solution for currencies that don’t rely on traditional banking infrastructure. Its primary product is Delta-neutral synthetic dollars (USDe).
As August progresses, the market is buzzing with activity, where both established and emerging sectors are offering a wealth of trading opportunities. Traders are balancing high-volatility sectors, including memecoin, AI, Layer-1, and GameFi, with more defensive positioning in Ethereum-linked assets. HTX is committed to constantly expanding its listings and market coverage to help users identify opportunities across both speculative and structural growth narratives in the evolving crypto cycle.
About HTX
Founded in 2013, HTX (formerly Huobi) has evolved from a virtual asset exchange into a comprehensive ecosystem of blockchain businesses that span digital asset trading, financial derivatives, research, investments, incubation, and other businesses.
As a world-leading gateway to Web3, HTX harbors global capabilities that enable it to provide users with safe and reliable services. Adhering to the growth strategy of “Global Expansion, Thriving Ecosystem, Wealth Effect, Security & Compliance,” HTX is dedicated to providing quality services and values to virtual asset enthusiasts worldwide.
To learn more about HTX, please visit https://www.htx.com/ or HTX Square , and follow HTX on X, Telegram, and Discord. For further inquiries, please contact glo-media@htx-inc.com.
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