Virtuals Protocol, Aave and Pudgy Penguins Lead Crypto Market Recovery
- Bitcoin has dropped over 11.2% in the past week, falling from a peak of US$108K (AU$173K).
- While most large-cap crypto assets have struggled, Aave and Virtuals Protocol have surged by triple-digits in the last 30 days, leading this week’s market.
The crypto market has been struggling lately as Bitcoin (BTC) continues to drop, failing to recover its US$100K (AU$155K) mark.
A lot has changed in the crypto markets in just one week. Last Monday, Bitcoin was hitting an all-time high of US$108K (AU$173K), but now is down over 11.2% in the last seven days.
Ethereum (ETH), XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL), and other large-cap cryptocurrencies have also struggled on the weekly scale but managed to post decent single-digit gains today, around 3% to 4% each.
The crypto market is currently being spearheaded by certain experimental coins, starting with AI agents like Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUALS), which is up an insane 424% in the last 30 days.
Virtuals Protocol is a decentralised platform built on Base, the Ethereum layer-2 built by Coinbase. Its main purpose is to interact virtually with the entertainment and gaming sectors. It achieves this through collaborative, user-curated AI agents, which is a market worth over US$10B (AU$16.04B) as per CoinGecko data.
Related: Aussie Analyst Says Crypto Done for, He’s Out if This Happens
At its core, Virtuals Protocol focuses on creating co-owned, composable AI agents that can operate seamlessly across various platforms and games. The project reached a market capitalisation of over US$3.1B (AU$4.81B) in December 2024.
The AI Agent sector is blossoming in the crypto space despite being highly experimental (and volatile and speculative like all things crypto).
Aave Gaining Ground
Aave (AAVE), while not experimental like the other coins, has had an amazing month, surging over 110% in the last 30 days, as per CoinGecko data. In the last 24 hours alone, AAVE has posted gains of 19.5%, currently priced at US$375 (AU$600).
AAVE is up for several reasons, including more open-interest and long positions on centralised exchanges like Binance, and a few key partnerships. This week, Chainlink (LINK) launched Smart Value Recapture (SVR), an oracle service that allows decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols to reclaim around 40% non-toxic MEV.
The same day, Aave proposed integrating that system to return it to its community.
In short, MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) refers to the max amount of value (profit) that traders can extract from a single transaction block, often resulting in front-running, sandwich attacks, arbitrage and whatnot.
How’s The Penguin Doing?
PENGU, the native token of the Pudgy Penguin NFT project, appears to have had a good day today, as its value has increased over 11% in the last 24 hours. Its market cap is now over US$1.7B (AU$2.72).
This might be a relief after a controversial airdrop, which caused the Solana network to spike in activity with over 66 million transactions following the token’s launch.
