On-Chain Activity Decouples from Price Action as Utility Projects Dominate 2025
Blockchain networks are hitting record transaction volumes while token prices flatline—the great decoupling is here.
Utility Takes the Wheel
Forget speculative memecoins. Developers are building actual applications that people use daily. Decentralized social platforms, real-world asset tokenization, and privacy-preserving computation protocols are driving real engagement, not just trading volume. The metrics don't lie: user growth and active addresses are soaring independent of BTC's spot price.
The New Fundamentals
Investors who still judge projects solely by market cap are missing the plot. The new scorecard measures network throughput, average transaction fees, developer activity, and protocol revenue. Projects that solve tangible problems—scalability, data ownership, cross-chain interoperability—are attracting capital even in a sideways market. It's a quiet revolution happening under the nose of traditional finance.
A Cynical Nod to Wall Street
Meanwhile, traditional asset managers are still trying to figure out how to slap a ticker on 'digital gold' while missing the entire engine being built beneath it. Some things never change.
The takeaway? Price is becoming a lagging indicator. Sustainable value is being coded into networks one transaction at a time, regardless of what the charts scream next.
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.
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