Over the past week (June 22 to June 28), the broader crypto market maintained a range-bound consolidation pattern, with Bitcoin facing resistance near $60,000 as market sentiment turned cautious. While major mainstream assets entered a brief lull, structural opportunities were quietly emerging. The DeFi sector was the first to awaken from its slumber, with multiple leading protocol tokens exhibiting pronounced independent rallies . According to data from the HTX platform, blue-chip assets such as AAVE, DYDX, and JTO took turns strengthening. The AI sector remained strong, with MANTA and BEAT continuing to perform well. Meanwhile, the Solana ecosystem became active once again, with SOL emerging as one of the best-performing large-cap assets of the week.
DeFi Sector: Protocol Value Returns as Blue-Chip Leaders Undergo Collective Repricing
The most outstanding performance this week came from the DeFi sector. Driven by sustained on-chain liquidity accumulation and steady growth in protocol revenue, the DeFi sector as a whole experienced a broad value recovery, with several core assets recording substantial weekly gains.
● AAVE (Aave Protocol): Surged by 31% this week, leading all large-cap DeFi assets. As the dominant player among decentralized lending protocols, Aave’s total value locked (TVL) has long ranked among the highest in the industry. Notably, the token buyback program previously announced by the protocol (with a weekly buyback amount of approximately $1 million) continued to release positive signals, making Aave’s mid-to-long-term revaluation thesis increasingly clear to the market.
● GWEI (ETHGas): Rose by 63% this week. As a DeFi protocol dedicated to the infrastructure layer of the Ethereum ecosystem, GWEI benefited from the recovery in Ethereum network activity and the growth in on-chain interaction demand, enabling it to capture increased traffic and fee revenue.
● DYDX (dYdX): A benchmark project in the on-chain perpetual derivatives sector, DYDX rose by 26% this week. As demand for on-chain derivatives trading gradually recovers, dYdX continues to attract institutional-grade users by leveraging its mature order book model and deep liquidity.
● XPL (Plasma): Up by 26% this week. As an emerging protocol asset within the DeFi ecosystem, Plasma is a Layer 1 EVM-compatible blockchain purpose-built for high-capacity, low-cost global stablecoin payments.
● JTO (Jito): Logged a weekly gain of 23%, supported by the broader recovery of the Solana ecosystem. As a liquid staking protocol within the Solana ecosystem, JTO benefited from the visible warming of SOL on-chain activity, particularly the resurgence of the Solana on-chain meme ecosystem this week. This trend drove a simultaneous expansion in staking demand and on-chain capital liquidity.
AI Sector and Solana Ecosystem Keep Heating Up as SOL Leads Mainstream Assets
AI remains one of the most sustained hot sectors in the current market. As sub-sectors such as AI agents, decentralized computing power, and AI infrastructure continue to evolve, the integration of AI and Web3 is poised to become one of the primary focal points of the market in the second half of the year.
● MANTA (Manta Network): Soared by 93% this week. With its dual role as a modular Layer 2 and AI computing infrastructure, MANTA continues to attract the attention of technology-driven capital. This week, MANTA-related ecosystem updates were released in quick succession as it advanced integrations with AI computing protocols, significantly boosting its narrative traction.
● BEAT (Audiera): Climbed by 70% this week. Audiera pioneered an agent-native participatory economy model on the BNB Chain, where humans and autonomous AI agents interact as equal participants.
Meanwhile, the Solana ecosystem also showed strong activity this week. SOL(Solana)rose by 2% this week, ranking among the top performers within large-cap mainstream assets. Over the past year, Solana has continued to attract substantial users and capital through its high performance, low fees, and mature developer ecosystem. Recently, meme trading activity on the Solana chain has rebounded significantly, with the number of new project launches and on-chain active metrics showing continuous growth. As the core asset of the ecosystem, SOL is well-positioned to continue benefiting from the overall ecosystem prosperity.
Capture Sector Alpha Through HTX’s Premium Asset Portfolio
While market hotspots rotate continuously, high-quality assets remain the core focus of long-term capital. As a leading global digital asset trading platform, HTX consistently monitors development trends across trending sectors like AI, DeFi, Layer 1, BTCFi, and Memes. By rigorously screening for projects with strong fundamentals, HTX provides its global user base with a highly diversified, curated selection of digital assets. Looking ahead, HTX will continue to track market dynamics, refine its asset ecosystem, and help users capture market trends at the earliest opportunity, enabling them to seize structural investment opportunities in the crypto industry and share in the long-term value of Web3 innovation worldwide.
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The post first appeared on HTX Square.
