Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher
In the current situation of lacking new narratives and financing difficulties, does the crypto industry still have enough excellent new projects being born? This question is becoming the focus of discussion for more and more practitioners in the crypto industry.
The number of high-quality new projects and new assets determines the level of investment from elements like capital, attention, and even policy into the crypto industry, as well as the market's activity level.
It must be acknowledged that with the amount of financing in the crypto industry hitting a new low since 2020, crypto capital markets have fallen into a long-awaited cold wave, with more and more well-known projects announcing they are stopping operations due to lack of operational funds. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market remains sluggish, and crypto entrepreneurs are facing an extremely poor startup environment.
However, there is good news. In the past, crypto projects had very high human costs in terms of technology and operations, thus requiring substantial financing for their continued development, but the maturity of AI technology allows many tasks to be replaced by AI, significantly reducing operational costs. The huge success of Hyperliquid also provides motivation and inspiration for small teams to create pioneering products without the need for financing.
From January to April, RootData recorded over 1,070 new projects, a decrease of about 32% compared to the same period last year. However, considering that many projects early last year were of the meme type, and there is a lack of clear hotspots in the market recently, the absolute number of new projects born in the first four months of this year is still quite substantial, including several early projects with high-quality team backgrounds and market influence.
In terms of the RD growth index, MojoAI, Invent Money, JAR Chain, ABFinance, and Derpetual are the top five projects among the new projects recorded in 2026, with scores higher than 200. This index is based on a comprehensive calculation of the project’s track, team, financing, and X influence on RootData.
From the X influence index, xStocks, Arc, Ventuals, Surf, Earlybird, Bantr, Flying Tulip, nof1, Minara AI, and Liquid are the top ten projects established since 2025, with scores higher than 530. This index is weighted by the number of top followers who follow the project's X account compared to ordinary fans.
In terms of project transparency, DeFi Development, Forum, Perle Labs, AlloyX, Nava, Stable, N3XT, Meld, AllScale, and Anchorpoint are the top ten new projects established since 2025, all scoring higher than 67%.
It can be seen that most of the top-ranked projects are integrated projects in the fields of payment, AI agents, and RWA, and future high-growth projects are likely to emerge from these areas.
RootData is currently the platform with the largest number of recorded projects in the crypto industry, with over 21,000 projects recorded in total, and it is also the platform that records new projects most timely, with at least 10 new projects recorded every day. This relies on the following three collection tracking methods.
First, X’s follow dynamics. When a newly registered Twitter account, less than six months old, appears in multiple new follow lists of top followers and is identified as a crypto project party, rather than a KOL or other individuals, it will automatically enter our pre-database, where dedicated staff will check the project quality and select for entry.
Second, media reports. When a crypto project appears in dedicated reports from well-known media (financing, launching new products, partnerships, etc.), RootData will automatically check whether the project has been recorded by the system, and if not, it will enter the pre-recording database for further processing by dedicated staff.
Third, project parties proactively applying for recording. The RootData website has opened a portal for project parties to independently apply for recording, and regularly reviews the information submitted by project parties, with over 2,000 projects recorded through this channel in RootData.
Overall, the current crypto industry is not "lacking new projects," but has entered a phase closer to a real entrepreneurial environment: financing is no longer readily available, narratives are no longer easily established, but at the same time, advancements in technological tools and changes in cost structures are fostering a new generation of projects that are more efficient and restrained. In other words, the decline in quantity may be unavoidable, but the proportion of "effective supply" is quietly rising.
New Projects Worth Attention
Below is a list of some of the new projects on RootData that have seen the fastest growth in attention this year.
Nava is an AI agent security infrastructure that sits between agent intent and on-chain execution, intercepting transactions after the agent constructs them and before they reach the blockchain. Every transaction proposed by the agent undergoes a verification process by Nava before fund transfer.
In April of this year, the project raised $8.3 million, with investments from firms like Polychain, Archetype, and Hack VC. Moreover, in April, the project gained 45 new top followers on the X platform, ranking first among all crypto projects.
Delphi is an information market based on the distributed AI computing network Gensyn. It allows users to create markets on any topic, where others can buy and sell bets on various possible outcomes, settled by AI. Participants put funds into the outcomes they believe are most likely, and the market odds change in real-time based on collective sentiment.
In the last two weeks, over 13 top followers including CoinFund, Delphi Digital co-founder Tom Shaughnessy, Framework Ventures Roy Learner, and partner KOL Leo the Horseman have followed this project.
Derpetual is a decentralized derivatives trading protocol, with its main product being abstract futures trading. When trading abstract futures, traders settle gains and losses directly with each other, without needing to go through an order book.
In the last two weeks, well-known accounts like Solana, SolanaLegend, zac.eth, sanyi.eth, Grail.eth, and others have shown interest.
Unipeg has become the new project that attracted the most KOL attention in the past two weeks, with influencers like Yuzhong Kuangshui, Xueqiu, spark, Chen Mo, zac.eth, LaserCat397.eth, and others already following it.
According to the introduction, Unipeg is an experimental on-chain object project based on Uniswap v4 Hooks, not a traditional token or NFT. Each swap by the user automatically generates a 24×24 pixel unicorn SVG image, and holding an integer number of uPEG (such as 1, 2, 3...) corresponds to a unique image generated based on the transaction hash, with a total supply fixed at 10,000.
In other words, Unipeg turns the technical potential of Uniswap v4 into a fun, visual, and tradable toy, becoming one of the rare new types of assets in the market recently, thus receiving a lot of hype from KOLs, briefly surpassing $12 million, and the unit price once exceeding $1,000.
MojoAI is a smart trading operating system that can convert trader instructions into real-time trading agents that operate around the clock.
This project was founded this year by Forest Bai, co-founder of Foresight Ventures, and has already attracted the attention of over 20 top followers.
ABFinance is a one-stop crypto financial platform with functions like deposits, earning, trading, and consumption.
This project was founded this year by Helen Liu, the former Chief Operating Officer of Bybit, and has already attracted the attention of 13 top followers, including Lily Liu.
JAR (short for Join-Accumulate Refine) is a blockchain protocol aimed at smart agent workloads. Its entire codebase is written by AI agents, and strategic decisions are supervised by humans. JAR uses its own genesis mechanism—Proof of Intelligence—to allocate tokens based on the quality of contributions to the protocol itself.
Netrun is a meta protocol based on Solana and employing the Metaplex standard, aimed at introducing a flexible and programmable layer for non-fungible systems. Netrun draws inspiration from BRC-20 ordinals, achieving richer on-chain data representation while avoiding the limitations of low throughput environments.
CardChase is a real-money binary prediction market based on Pokémon card prices. Users place bets with USDC tokens on whether card prices will go "up" or "down" within a fixed period.
Caspius is a data collection platform used for training embodied AI world models. The on-chain layer is built around $CAS, used to reward users who contribute to the protocol.
WorldClaw is an agent operating system built on WLFI that provides optimized costs and unified access to over 300 AI models, supporting users’ OpenClaw and any AI products.
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