Original title: Market Observation: From HYPE to ZEC, Grasping the 4 Narratives Behind the Recent Copycat Craze Original author: David, TechFlow
The crypto market has clearly seen some localized rallies this week.
Although the BTC dominance rate is still hovering around 60%, and the altcoin season index is only 35, far from the 75 threshold for confirming an altcoin season, if you are browsing English CT, you will find that funds are no longer waiting for macro signals.
Over the past week, at least four independent narratives have been running simultaneously:
1. The decentralized perpetual contract trading platform (perp DEX) is hitting new highs.
2. AI public blockchain rotation
3. Privacy coins are being repriced.
4. Meme coins are starting to reignite.
The seven cryptocurrencies that have been frequently mentioned recently—HYPE, LIT, NEAR, GRASS, WLD, ZEC, and USELESS—are typical examples, representing four directions of market attention.
Let's first look at their performance and see their trends:
Several pieces of information can be gleaned from the table.
First, ZEC and HYPE have the strongest 30-day gains and trading volume, which are the most fully confirmed by funds in their respective narratives; LIT leads in 7-day gains, but its market value is only 1/40 of HYPE's, so it has greater volatility but also greater drawdowns;
USELESS quietly rose nearly 70% on the 30th, but its market value is only $75 million, which is not in the same league as ZEC's tens of billions; WLD hardly rose, making it the weakest in price confirmation in this group, but there is still a lot of discussion about it in English CT.
Below, we will break down the logic of the narrative line by line.
1. PERP DEX line: HYPE hits a new high, LIT catches up.
Perp DEX has the most complete funding chain in this round of altcoin market boom. Among them, HYPE...Agreement revenue, institutional holdings, ETF packagingAll three levels of benefits will be realized simultaneously within the same month.
HYPE's foundation is its revenue. Hyperliquid accounts for approximately 70% of the open interest on perp DEX, generating $14 million in weekly fee revenue, or over $600 million annually. 97% of the agreement fees are automatically used to buy back HYPE.
This flywheel has been spinning since the token was launched at the end of 2024, and by May of this year, it had burned millions of circulating tokens. Arthur Hayes' Maelstrom fund publicly stated that it was selling its holdings of ENA, PENDLE, etc., to increase its holdings of HYPE, and set a target price of $150, citing this revenue-buyback model as its reason.
Institutional organizations are also following up.
On-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa tracked a wallet suspected to be associated with a16z, which cumulatively purchased approximately 9.18 million HYPE tokens, worth about $356 million, since mid-April (a16z has not confirmed this). On May 12th and 15th, two HYPE spot ETFs from 21Shares and Bitwise were listed on Nasdaq and NYSE respectively, with a combined net inflow of over $5.6 million in the first week.
BHYP's first-day trading volume broke the record for altcoin ETFs listed in 2026. Bitwise also allocated an additional 10% of its management fees for share buybacks. On May 21, HYPE hit a record high of $62.14, entering the top ten in market capitalization.
Revenue = foundation, institutions = amplifier, ETFs = entry point. Having all three layers in place simultaneously is indeed rare in altcoins.
The logic behind the spillover of popularity to other stocks in the same sector is quite straightforward. Lighter is the fourth-ranked player in the perp DEX sector, with approximately 10% market share, but its market capitalization is only 1/40th of HYPE's. Once HYPE reaches an all-time high and its market capitalization enters the top ten, traders will naturally follow the same narrative to find more volatile targets.
On May 18th, Vitalik Buterin mentioned in a public dialogue that Lighter is a "relatively successful new project" in the Ethereum ecosystem, essentially giving this potential for a price surge a celebrity endorsement. Lighter subsequently rose 30% in the following three days. Lighter itself also made moves: launching SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contracts, integrating with the Tealstreet trading platform, generating approximately $26.3 million in annualized revenue, and also featuring an automatic buyback mechanism.
However, the risks associated with LIT are more clearly defined compared to HYPE.
Lighter's previously high trading volume was partly due to its incentive program and zero-fee design. Market analysts have pointed out that its trading volume/open interest ratio is relatively high, and the possibility of wash trading remains to be seen. Only 25% of the total LIT supply is in circulation, with team and investor tokens starting to be released at the end of the year, at approximately 13.5 million tokens per month.
The other side of the catch-up rally is that once the HYPE theme cools down, LIT's pullback will be faster and deeper.
The author believes this main theme will likely continue to attract attention and investment in the short to medium term. Points to watch include:
1. Can the inflow of funds into HYPE ETFs reach the next level?
2. Can Hyperliquid's protocol revenue unlock new growth in traditional asset synthetic trading (such as crude oil and stock perps) (e.g., SPCX)?
If both of these conditions are met, there is still room for the perp DEX narrative; if ETF inflows stagnate and revenue growth slows, the pressure from long-short switching around HYPE near ATH will quickly be transmitted to LIT.
2. AI Line: NEAR is in the lead, GRASS and WLD each have their own obstacles.
AI narratives are not new in the crypto market, but the attitude shown by this round of funding has changed.
NEAR rose 50% in 30 days, GRASS rose 8%, and WLD rose 5%. All three are associated with AI, yet their price performance differed tenfold. The market is no longer indiscriminately buying into everything; it's starting to differentiate the different emotional values brought by new things and catalysts.
$NEAR: Privacy + AI Narrative
The reason why NEAR led the gains is directly related to its intensive product launches in the past two months.
On May 19th, NEAR AI launched a framework-level privacy feature:
When users send prompt words to external models such as ChatGPT and Claude,The system automatically removes passwords, API keys, and personal information.Developers can enable it by adding a header line.
This transforms into a narrative about AI privacy and identity, and it's relatively practical. Overseas technology narratives have always emphasized privacy and rights, and this wave of discussion combines AI with satisfying the emotional value of prioritizing privacy.
Meanwhile, the timing of this feature's release coincides with the AI community's buzz, with OpenAI having just released its Privacy Filter model at the end of April, and Microsoft also launching PII Shield around the same time.
NEAR essentially does the same thing, but runs on the blockchain, giving funds a reason to speculate.
Looking further back, the Near.com super app, launched in February this year, integrates wallets, cross-chain exchanges, and confidential transactions, and in March it introduced the Confidential Intents private execution layer. These products are all converging on the same narrative:
This allows AI agents to protect privacy while conducting on-chain transactions and coordination.
$GRASS: It has an app, but unlocking it is a hindrance.
But the situation is a little different for GRASS.
On the product side, it is one of the few projects in the DePIN track with real paying customers, including a "seven-figure" AI lab as reported by Blockworks. A portion of the revenue is used for GRASS buybacks.
On April 24, OKX launched trading pairs, which improved liquidity access to some extent, and the stock rose 28% in 7 days.
The issue dragging down price performance, in my opinion, is the supply-side unlocking problem. The Season 2 airdrop is releasing approximately 170 million GRASS tokens, and combined with unlocking by the team and investors, short-term supply has been suppressing the price. Community discussions are also focused on this point. Grass's business is running, but the token is currently more in a supply-demand game state, and hasn't yet developed into a trend-driven market.
$WLD: Identity + AI Narrative
In addition, WLD is the most easily misread word in this group.
Many people simply categorize WLD as "Sam Altman's shadow trading" and then skip over it.But in recent months, the basis of its narrative hype has actually been changing:
The more prevalent AI becomes, the more valuable it is to prove you are human. New variables surrounding this logic have been emerging rapidly in recent months.
1. Nasdaq-listed Eightco Holdings (ticker symbol ORBS) holds 283 million WLD tokens, representing 8.3% of the circulating supply, making it the world's largest publicly disclosed institutional holding.
2. Eightco also indirectly holds $90 million in OpenAI equity, with total assets of approximately $337 million, and has positioned itself as a packaged exposure of "AI + Identity + Creator Economy".
3. On May 1, World officially entered the US market, planning to deploy 7,500 Orb scanning devices within 12 months, several times the current global deployment.
The problem actually lies on the supply side. WLD has a total supply of 10 billion tokens, with approximately 3.4 billion currently in circulation. The team has been frequently depositing large amounts of tokens into Coinbase and Bybit. The unlocking rate will decrease by 43% after July 24th, which could be a potential turning point, but supply pressure will remain relatively high until then.
3. Privacy Trends: English-speaking regions are experiencing a renewed FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) on privacy coins; ZEC doubled in 30 days.
ZEC doesn't really need much explanation; you can refer to our previous article: "Doubling in 30 Days, 15 Times Increase This Year: Why is the English-Speaking Community FOMO About $ZEC Again?"
Besides HYPE, the English CT scan showed ZEC all over the screen.
Previously, Naval Ravikant called ZEC "insurance against Bitcoin," Arthur Hayes stated on Consensus that his long-term target was "10% of the BTC price," and Multicoin Capital publicly disclosed a large position and overturned its 2019 judgment that "privacy is not worth paying for separately"... Several hard catalysts behind this wave of hype are simultaneously materializing:
The SEC has confirmed the end of its three-year investigation into the Zcash Foundation and has not recommended any enforcement action.
Robinhood launched ZEC trading across the US on April 23, opening up retail access. Grayscale's ZEC Trust is applying to convert to a spot ETF (ticker symbol ZCSH), which, if approved, would be the first privacy coin ETF in the US.
AI and privacy are almost ubiquitous in the English-language CT narrative, with ZEC demonstrating a clear leading effect.
4. Meme Line: Usability doesn't require fundamentals, but it does require liquidity.
USELESS rose nearly 70% on the 30th, second only to ZEC.
Last summer, during the launchpad battle on Solana (pump.fun, letsBONK, and BelieveApp vying for traffic), USELESS was one of the few survivors who emerged from letsBONK, and its name itself was a point of dissemination: "I am completely useless, and I don't pretend to be useful."
This round of recovery has nothing to do with fundamentals; meme coins don't really rely on fundamentals anyway. The key variable is the CEX entry point: Coinbase, Bybit, and Crypto.com have all listed it for trading, with approximately $25 million in 24-hour trading volume, providing sufficient liquidity for short-term trading. When meme funds rotate on Solana, an older meme with a CEX entry point, community recognition, and a name that naturally spreads can easily be brought back into the spotlight.
However, the risks of meme coins are well-known. Their popularity changes faster than any other type of coin, making them an amplifier of market sentiment.
The historical high of $0.43 is still far from the current level, and the price structure and previous significant pullbacks warrant close attention. Also, a reminder: memes like USELESS can easily lead to issues with identical token mappings across different aggregators; always verify the contract address before trading.
In summary, these seven coins correspond to four narratives, with significant differences in the sources of their popularity and the degree of their confirmation.
HYPE, NEAR, and ZEC are the assets with the highest certainty in their respective narratives, with verifiable catalysts and traceable funding sources.
LIT and GRASS are more dependent on the continuation of the main trend and the digestion of supply pressure, offering greater flexibility but lower certainty.
• WLD's demand narrative is evolving, but the supply pressure on the token side remains uncertain until July, requiring further direction. USELESS is purely an attention and sentiment-driven transaction, unsuitable for a fundamental framework.
For spot investors, grasping the general outline of these narrative threads is essential. While there are currently limited hot topics in the crypto market and prices may experience pullbacks, the main trends are unlikely to change in the short to medium term.
For contract traders, timing is even more important, requiring further examination of changes in open interest (OI) and funding rates over shorter timeframes (such as 1-2 days).
Finally, structural opportunities still exist in the market, and research remains a good way to find returns even when no one is paying attention.
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