The digital assets industry smashed records and blew past major milestones in 2024, catapulting Bitcoin past $100,000 to a new all-time high.
But the world’s oldest cryptocurrency isn’t the only thing that was on the up-and-up this year. Several industry newcomers also saw their stars rise.
From rolling out beloved meme coin launchpads to unveiling new trading platforms and stirring up drama on Crypto Twitter, here are our picks for 2024’s rising stars in crypto and Web3:
Sasha Plotvinov: NOTCOIN founder
Sasha Plotvinov's Notcoin, a play-to-earn (P2E) game on Telegram, helped drive the stunning resurgence of crypto-based gaming this year.
Notcoin racked up roughly 35 million users at its peak, onboarding large swathes of new people to the world of Web3. It also had one of the biggest crypto gaming token launches of 2024, with its digital asset's market cap hitting $1.5 billion on launch day, or nearly twice that of Pixel's token.
However, Notcoin's impact hasn’t stopped there.
The early success of Notcoin set the stage for the success of later, more popular Telegram tap-to-earn crypto games. One Notcoin successor, Hamster Combat, has amassed over 300 million players.
Dylan Abruscato: Crypto the Game founder
Dylan Abruscato has breathed new life into crypto-based gaming.
In February 2024, the founder released Crypto: The Game, a winner-take-all digital assets survival game where players vote each other out of gameplay during a series of challenges.
The project attracted roughly 350 players in its first “season” and generated significant buzz on social media. That early success allowed the project to return with a second season, Crypto: The Game (Anon Island), just a few months later—this time with more players.
‘Crypto: The Game’ Goes Bigger for Season 2—Can It Sustain the Hype?
The first season of Crypto: The Game was a viral, “Survivor”-inspired phenomenon that had players around the world competing in online and IRL challenges for a chance to win a prize pool of $115,000 worth of Ethereum (ETH). And everything is apparently bigger the second time around. Tickets to play in season 2 of Crypto: The Game are available today for a season with more players, big industry sponsors, and new on-chain game mechanics—and it’s all happening on Ethereum scaling network Base. But...
In June, DeFi protocol Uniswap acquired Crypto: The Game for an undisclosed price — a testament to its fast-growing popularity.
Ansem: Trader and influencer
Crypto Twitter celebrity Ansem's star skyrocketed this year, with the influencer amassing roughly 600,000 followers on X.
Crypto Influencer Ansem Explains His Meme Coin Thesis and Why He’s Bullish on Bitcoin Runes
Ansem, the crypto trader who's amassed a sizable following on the back of meme coin Dogwifhat (WIF) and other calls, chats with Decrypt reporter Sander Lutz at Token 2049 Dubai about his meme coin thesis, why he's bullish on Bitcoin Runes, and what he sees ahead for the crypto markets.
The twenty-something-year-old trader has seen his following grow partially due to his knack for spotting altcoin trends and delivering key crypto market insights.
However, his willingness to serve up controversial commentary on crypto industry happenings, as well as his tongue-in-cheek interactions with other crypto influencers, have also won him many fans (and his fair share of haters).
Alon: Pump.fun co-founder
Alon skyrocketed to fame earlier this year as his Solana-based meme coin launchpad platform Pump.fun reignited an altcoin-trading craze.
The market cap of meme coins is worth more than $150 million as of publication time, with much of that market driven by Pump.fun token launches, CoinGecko data shows.
From last August to November, Pump.fun meme coins comprised more than 50% of all monthly transactions on Solana, the most-used network for altcoin trading.
Decrypt’s 2024 Project of the Year: Solana Meme Machine Pump.fun
It started on a whim. Two devs, a laptop, and an idea to develop a platform for launching crypto tokens fairly, cheaply, and easily—all while minimizing the risk of scams. The product wasn’t perfect—far from it. And after launching in January, it arguably led to more crypto scams than would have existed without it; they just looked different. But by the end of the year, the Solana meme coin launchpad Pump.fun had become undeniably the most culturally significant crypto project of the year. Maybe...
The meme coin madness has been fueled by Pump.fun's unique livestream platform, where staged kidnapping and explicit content have been commonplace.
The platform's bizarre content has become a favorite topic of the crypto community, with heavyweights in the digital asset industry, such as Binance’s founder, weighing in on its kooky culture.
Jack Booth: Ton Society co-founder
Jack Booth is another figure who contributed to the Telegram crypto game trend in 2024.
The founder's Telegram Open Network (TON) Society has led efforts to build communities in the TON ecosystem, spearheading hackathons and other programs that offer mentorship opportunities and incentives to early builders.
Those efforts, in turn, have helped fuel the explosive growth of the decentralized network tapped by many teams building on Telegram.
Jack Lu: Magic Eden CEO
Jack Lu is stirring up a potential NFT revival at Magic Eden, a Solana-based platform where users can maintain a cross-chain wallet for their NFTs.
The multi-chain platform accounts for 80% of trading volume for Bitcoin Runes and Ordinals, two types of tokens that sizzled earlier this year. Meanwhile, Magic Eden this summer logged $60 million in daily volume, according to on-chain data, making the project a leader in the revival of NFT trading.
The platform's airdrop has also generated buzz among traders, with more than $300 million in Magic Eden’s native token to go to its loyalists.
Iggy Azalea: $MOTHER founder
Iggy Azalea has ridden her 15 minutes of fame to the final frontier of internet infamy: making a meme coin.
But unlike many of her celebrity companions—and even some long-time Web3 developers—the unlikely shitcoin queen has seen some success.
Iggy Azalea launched her Mother Iggy ($MOTHER) meme coin in June, with the token's value tripling to nearly $0.15 at its peak, CoinGecko data shows. The songstress’ token has a market cap of nearly $74 million, making it more widely traded than Rekt (REKT) and Own the Doge (DOG).
SCENE's 2024 Person of the Year: Iggy Azalea
Four-time Grammy-nominated artist Iggy Azalea entered the crypto scene this year with her own meme coin, MOTHER. But unlike many of her celebrity counterparts, the project wasn’t a quick cash grab. In fact, she’s redefining what it means to be a celebrity in crypto—and is paving the way for others. Not that's it's been a smooth ride for the Australian rapper. Her crypto journey has been plagued by some of the worst crypto has to offer, including drama, red candles, personal anxiety, and copius s...
The token's relative success is supposedly a product of Azalea’s dedication to building a Web3 community.
At Singapore's Token 2049 in September, Azalea promoted her meme coin at what was arguably the most-talked-about side event of the conference—a gaudy wild-west-themed party complete with strippers and loads of cringe-inducing antics.
Although the event was heavily criticized on crypto Twitter, it certainly accomplished its task of putting the songstress and her token on the meme coin map.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify the relationship between Telegram and TON.
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