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Decrypt's Best of 2024

A collection of the persons, projects, and stories of the year in 2024.

CollectionLast updated Dec 31, 2024
Dec 31

Decrypt’s 2024 NFT Project of the Year: CryptoPunks

Earlier this month, Pudgy Penguins came within striking distance of dethroning CryptoPunks as the most expensive NFT collection in the world.  It’d been a long, long time since any other brand had come close to accomplishing that feat, and Pudgy had wind in its sails: Riding momentum from an upcoming token airdrop, the collection soared to unbelievable highs, exploding from a floor price of $19,000 at the start of November to more than $138,000 by mid-December.  It looked like the flip might hap...

Deep DivesLong Reads
6 min read
Sander Lutz
Dec 30
GG's 2025 Story of the Year is the Telegram tap-to-earn craze. Image: Decrypt

GG Story of the Year 2024: Telegram Tap-to-Earn Gaming Explodes, Then Implodes

At the start of 2024, the first Telegram tap-to-earn game was a curiosity—an enigma. By the end of the year, the success of Notcoin had spawned a mini-industry that had drawn substantial demand. And yet, as quickly as Telegram gaming came, it also went, and it increasingly feels like its moment has passed. When Notcoin launched back in January, we barely knew what to make of it. Why were people incessantly tapping a coin within a messaging app on their phones? Would there be a real on-chain toke...

NewsGaming
5 min read
Andrew Hayward
Dec 27
Emerge's Project of the Year for 2024 is open-source AI company Hugging Face. Image: Decrypt

Emerge's 2024 Project of the Year: Open-Source AI Platform Hugging Face

In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, few companies have left a mark in 2024 like the open-source project Hugging Face. What began as a chatbot app has since evolved into a hub for open-source AI, becoming an indispensable resource for researchers, developers, and businesses alike. By 2023, following several investment rounds, Hugging Face was valued at $4.5 billion. Hugging Face is Emerge’s Project of the Year 2024 for its transformative role in AI and dedication to democra...

Deep DivesLong Reads
7 min read
Jason Nelson
The war over the future of AI is the Emerge 2024 Story of the Year.

Emerge’s 2024 Story of the Year: The Race to Rule AI

OpenAI's rise to tech stardom reads like a Silicon Valley soap opera. The company that began 2024 in turmoil after Sam Altman's dramatic return has morphed from a cautious non-profit company to an AI powerhouse worth $157 billion. With a $13 billion investment from Microsoft and a deal to power Apple iPhones, the company is on track to generate $11.6 billion in revenue. Game over for all the other suckers trying to elbow their way into the AI market? Hardly. The money flooding into AI continued...

Deep DivesLong Reads
11 min read
Jose Antonio Lanz
Dec 26
The "celeb meme coin meta" is SCENE's Story of the Year for 2024.

SCENE’s 2024 Story of the Year: The Boom—and Bust—of Celebrity Meme Coins

Celebrities and crypto? Nothing new about that, right? Ever since Brock Pierce—who as a child starred in the Walt Disney movie, The Mighty Ducks—co-founded Blockchain Capital, in 2013, some of the world’s most famous humans, from Donald Trump to Lindsay Lohan, have leaned into crypto to see what was in it for them. Some celebrities were able to use their glitzy names to pump existing crypto projects, with predictable results. The SEC brought actions in a dozen cases over the past decade, ranging...

Deep DivesLong Reads
8 min read
Ryan S. Gladwin
Dec 25
Off the Grid is GG's 2024 Game of the Year.

GG’s 2024 Game of the Year: Off the Grid

Off the Grid has only been available for a couple months, but it's by far the best crypto game of the year—and it’s not even really close. If we're talking pure numbers, then Hamster Kombat blew most games out of the water by racking up 300 million players this summer. But the monotonous tap-to-earn mini app ultimately felt like a financialized gimmick thinly veiled as a game, and the resulting airdrop hardly justified the hype. As for Off the Grid, the game impressed both Web2 and Web3-native g...

Deep DivesLong Reads
9 min read
Ryan S. Gladwin
Dec 24
AI visionary Yann LeCun is Emerge's 2024 Person of the Year.

Emerge’s 2024 Person of the Year: AI Visionary Yann LeCun

Yann LeCun, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist and a Turing Award laureate, has long been a pivotal figure in artificial intelligence. During the past year, however, his work has not only continued to push the boundaries of AI research but also sparked critical discussions about how society should approach the opportunities and risks posed by this transformative technology. Born in 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France, LeCun has been a driving force in AI innovation. From being the founding director of...

Deep DivesProfiles
7 min read
Jason Nelson
Dec 23
Iggy Azalea is SCENE's 2024 Person of the Year.

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...

Deep DivesProfiles
9 min read
Ryan S. Gladwin
Dec 19
Solana meme coin machine Pump.fun is Decrypt's Project of the Year for 2024.

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...

Deep DivesLong Reads
15 min read
Ryan S. Gladwin
Dec 13
Polymarket's CEO is a 26-year-old who views the world through the lens of probabilities.

Decrypt's 2024 Person of the Year: Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan

Four years ago, he was just another callow entrepreneur, hacking away in a makeshift bathroom office at his passion project—a prediction market that would blend gambling with real world events. This year that project, Polymarket, emerged as one of the most interesting and potentially valuable use cases in the burgeoning crypto industry. Shayne Coplan’s blockchain-based prediction platform captivated bettors and spectators alike this year. With each twist and turn in the 2024 U.S. presidential ra...

Deep DivesProfiles
10 min read
André Beganski
Dec 11
How crypto money influenced the 2024 election, and what it means for the American political process going forward, is Decrypt's Story of the Year.

Decrypt’s 2024 Story of the Year: How Crypto Money Changed American Politics

It was December 2022, FTX had just collapsed into a $32 billion dollar cloud of vapor, Sam Bankman-Fried was adjusting to life in the sick bay of a Bahamian prison, and Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad was feeling cautiously optimistic.  Shirzad was a battle-tested D.C. insider with decades of experience navigating the inner sanctums of Congress and the White House. As the steward of Coinbase’s reputation on Capitol Hill, there was certainly plenty about the implosion of fellow crypt...

Deep DivesLong Reads
14 min read
Sander Lutz