On-chain activity decouples from price action as utility projects dominate 2025

The past year 2025 ended with robust on-chain activity, defying the underwhelming gains for most crypto assets, with around 5% in overall net gains. Despite the slow price action and corrections, on-chain adoption maintained upward trajectory, decoupling from speculative action. 

The past year was marked by underwhelming price action for both BTC and altcoins. However, the shift in on-chain usage was notable, as detailed in the Cryptopolitan 2025 on-chain activity report. 

The past year ended with a 5% net loss for all assets, and an even bigger drawdown of 19% for altcoins. Only a handful of projects outperformed the market, breaking the expectation for a rally that would lift all assets. 

On-chain adoption decoupled from price action

Despite the muted price reactions, adoption of apps and on-chain activity continued to expand. While the previous 2021 bull cycle expanded prices with almost no real use cases, in 2025, crypto apps with real utility took over. On-chain participation also picked up with the expansion of prediction markets, tapping interest from mainstream users with expanded prediction pairs. 

Activity clustered to chains with sufficient liquidity or utility, creating real economic use. Hyperliquid’s main network was one of the winners, as it was tied to one of the most active perpetual futures exchanges. Some projects still rose on the basis of incentives and point farming, but others attracted users simply by concentrating activity and trading opportunities. 

Other use cases included tokenized real-world assets, stablecoin infrastructure, on-chain creator compensation, as well as the growing prediction markets. 

Spot and futures markets moved on-chain

The biggest source of blockchain activity was the shift of spot and futures markets from centralized venues to on-chain apps. As decentralized exchanges became more influential and secure, some of the trading activity shifted to direct swaps. 

Decentralized spot markets had additional tools like aggregators and routing apps, while decentralized trading became easier through multi-functional wallets. At the start of 2025, 10.32% of spot trading happened on-chain, rising to 17.36% at the end of the year. 

The shift for futures markets was even more dramatic, from 4.9% of centralized trades in 2024 up to 17.9% in 2025. Trading volumes on futures exchanges also rose by over 56% in the past year. Part of the growth was connected to the rise of Hyperliquid to record levels, with further increase after the launch of Aster perpetual futures DEX. 

Stablecoins and RWA added to on-chain transactions

Asset tokenization and stablecoins remained one of the robust trends in 2025. After years of experiments, tokenized equities finally picked up in the past year, growing from $31.57M in January to a total valuation of $858.43M by December, a 27X increase in a single year. The main creators of tokenized stocks were XStocks and Ondo Global Markets. 

Stablecoins also pointed to a maturing crypto market, with a steady growth of supply and record on-chain active wallets. Stablecoin supply expanded from 216B to over 306B tokens in December, growing by 42% in the past year. Stablecoin activity was linked to P2P payment and settlements, and not just speculative activity.

Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.