2025 Q2 Dapp Market Report: AI Agent Applications Surge to the Top, RWA and Gaming Drive NFT Revival

Written by: Sara Gherghelas, DappRadar

Compiled by: Tim, PANews

Despite the rebound in cryptocurrency market prices and improved sentiment, the DApp ecosystem presents a different picture: AI agents are experiencing explosive growth, the value of NFTs is shifting from ostentation to functionality, while DeFi is navigating the gap between rising TVL and shrinking financing. These data not only showcase market activity but also reveal the real user trends, the areas that are falling behind, and the key trends that are reshaping the future of DApps.

The era we are in today, where market trends can be driven solely by hype, is no longer existent. Users are beginning to pursue real value: whether it's AI agents that can complete tasks, NFTs associated with RWA, or DeFi platforms that provide sustainable returns. Yet, at the same time, risks remain high: losses from exploitation incidents are sharply rising, indicating that trust is so fragile, and even minor oversights can be exploited by malicious actors.

This report delves into the changes in industry patterns, providing a comprehensive analysis of data dynamics in areas such as DeFi, NFT, gaming, and AI. From wallet activity, transaction volumes to applications and capital flows, we track key signals and focus on observing the core narratives shaping the cryptocurrency industry in the second quarter of 2025.

Key points:

In the second quarter of 2025, the average daily active independent wallets for DApps was 24.3 million, a month-on-month decrease of 2.5%, but still surged by 247% compared to early 2024.

The total locked value in DeFi reached $200 billion, with a quarter-on-quarter growth of 28%, mainly benefiting from a 36% rebound in Ethereum. However, financing in the DeFi sector declined by 50% quarter-on-quarter, with only $483 million raised in the second quarter, bringing the total financing amount to $1.4 billion in the first two quarters of 2025.

NFT trading volume plummeted 45% to $867 million, but the number of sales surged 78% to 14.9 million, reflecting a sharp decline in the average market price, while the number of traders increased by 20%.

RWA NFT trading volume increased by 29%, rising to the second position in the sector, with the Courtyard platform becoming the second-largest NFT market by trading volume this quarter.

Guild of Guardians NFT trading volume has surged to first and fourth place, surpassing BAYC and CryptoPunks, marking a turning point for game-related NFTs.

Web3 suffered a loss of $6.3 billion due to security incidents, an increase of 215% compared to the previous period. The Mantra vulnerability exploitation case alone resulted in a loss of $5.5 billion, making it the second largest security incident in the crypto industry since the FTX bankruptcy case in 2022 (which resulted in a loss of $8 billion).

1. The number of daily active independent wallets for Dapps remains stable at 24 million, with significant growth in the AI and social sectors.

The active Dapp activity this quarter has decreased by 2.5%, with the average number of daily active unique wallets at 24.3 million. Nevertheless, we can still consider that the ecosystem has stabilized at this level, which is both a sign of the industry's increasing maturity and proof that users are continuously interacting with Dapps across multiple application areas. It is worth noting that many users operate multiple wallets, so there is a discrepancy between the number of daily active unique wallets and the actual number of users. However, this metric remains a strong basis for measuring user engagement. Just a few quarters ago, the number of daily active unique wallets was around 5 million, and its growth rate is quite evident.

The number of active wallets for DeFi and GameFi has both declined, with DeFi down 33% and GameFi down 17%. On the other hand, Social and AI-related Dapps have seen growth, which aligns with broader industry trends.

In the Social domain, the rise of InfoFi is noteworthy, with platforms like Kaito and Cookie DAO leading the way. In the AI field, agent-based Dapps are showing strong momentum, with Virtuals Protocol standing out.

As expected, these sector-level changes have also impacted the distribution of dominance. The decrease in activity in the DeFi and Gaming sectors has led to a reduction in their market share, while the AI and Social sectors have captured and expanded more share. Comparing the second quarter of 2025 with the first quarter, it is clear that the AI sector is experiencing rapid growth, while the Social sector is also following closely behind. I believe that by the end of this year, it would not be surprising if AI surpasses either Gaming or DeFi in terms of dominance.

In fact, among the top-ranking Dapps in terms of independent wallet numbers this quarter, there is an artificial intelligence Dapp that ranks first.

The remaining spots on this list are occupied by many well-known projects, primarily from the DeFi sector. Given that these projects have maintained long-term stable operations amid the Meme coin craze and the Agent token frenzy, such a distribution is understandable.

In addition, another perspective worth noting is that this quarter we have added the "Dormant Dapp" metric, which specifically tracks decentralized applications that were active in the first quarter of 2025 but completely ceased activity in the second quarter.

We focus on analyzing several major categories: the number of inactive decentralized applications in the DeFi sector increased by 2%, game-related applications grew by 9%, and NFT applications rose by 10%. This analysis particularly includes high-risk applications, which saw a significant reduction in inactivity by 40%, indicating that they are still in use and rarely abandoned. However, the most surprising finding is in the artificial intelligence sector, where inactive AI applications surged by 129%. Although this percentage seems astonishing, it actually corresponds to only 16 applications. Nevertheless, this phenomenon raises important considerations: it highlights that these projects (especially in gaming and AI) are still in their early stages of development, and without sufficient funding support, achieving mainstream adoption is incredibly difficult. In the Web3 space, user retention remains the most severe challenge, and this data undoubtedly confirms that.

In the second quarter of 2025, the total locked value in DeFi soared to 200 billion USD, but the financing amount plummeted by 50%.

This quarter's macroeconomics has been as tumultuous as a roller coaster, and the DeFi sector has not been able to remain unaffected amidst this turmoil. Nevertheless, the market still shows positive signals: first, the cryptocurrency market prices have rebounded strongly, with Bitcoin rising 30% compared to the first quarter of 2025, Ethereum climbing 36%, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies increasing by 25% quarter-on-quarter. Naturally, the DeFi sector follows this upward momentum, with the total value locked surpassing the $200 billion mark, achieving a quarter-on-quarter growth of 28%.

Observing the total locked value performance of various major blockchains, most chains recorded steady growth, while Tron showed a downward trend, with a decline of 8%. In terms of market share, Ethereum still holds an absolute advantage in the DeFi sector with a total TVL of 62%, maintaining its leading position, followed closely by Solana with a share of 10%.

The highlight of this quarter is Hyperliquid L1, whose TVL skyrocketed by 547%. This high-performance Layer 1 blockchain is designed for on-chain perpetual contracts and spot trading, utilizing the HyperBFT consensus model inspired by HotStuff.

We also researched the most active DeFi decentralized applications in the second quarter of 2025, deeply analyzing the areas with the highest current user participation.

In the end, we analyzed the investment influx into the DeFi sector this quarter. The sector raised a total of $483 million, a decline of 50% compared to the first quarter. So far in 2025, DeFi projects have secured approximately $1.4 billion in funding. Although this figure indicates a slowdown compared to the explosive growth we have seen in previous cycles, it still shows a stable interest from capital in the sector, which may also suggest a more mature direction for capital allocation. Let’s see how the trends develop for the rest of this year, but for now, it seems that the trend is stabilizing.

3. NFT sales surged by 78%, but trading volume declined: RWA and gaming lead market transformation.

We all expect the NFT market to recover, although overall attention remains, some core data is still not optimistic. This quarter, NFT trading volume plummeted by 45%, but trading volume increased by 78% against the trend. This confirms a trend we have observed for a long time: NFTs are becoming increasingly affordable, but the market's enthusiasm has not faded; instead, it has shifted in nature.

To better understand the reasons behind this shift, we have sorted out the NFT categories with the highest trading volume this quarter. The data reveals an interesting phenomenon: new narratives are emerging while old narrative patterns are making a comeback.

Data shows that the trading volume of personal avatar NFTs has suffered a heavy blow, plummeting by 72%. Meanwhile, real-world asset (RWA) NFTs have surged to the second position on the trading volume leaderboard with a 29% increase. The trading volume of art NFTs has decreased by 51%, but the transaction volume has skyrocketed by 400%, indicating that the prices of artworks have significantly dropped, making art NFTs more accessible to ordinary buyers.

The recent trend of returning is domain NFTs, with both trading volume and sales rising sharply. This growth is mainly driven by the TON public chain ecosystem, with Telegram users rushing to purchase anonymous domain names based on digital numbers. Such domain names can be linked to Telegram accounts without the need to bind a SIM card, and this usage scenario that perfectly meets specific needs has clearly triggered market enthusiasm.

After understanding which categories are becoming trends, we began to focus on the number of traders to determine whether market participants are continuously growing or are returning.

In this quarter, the average monthly NFT traders reached 668,598, an increase of 20% compared to the previous quarter. Coupled with the surge in sales, this indicates that users are slowly and steadily returning to the NFT space, although their motivations may differ from those during past booms.

Despite a significant drop in trading volume, OpenSea still maintains its leading position. However, its sales have risen in sync with the Courtyard platform. This recent growth for OpenSea is closely related to the news of its upcoming SEA token launch. The airdrop will target both old users and those currently active on the updated version of the platform. As a result, many users are actively trading low-priced NFT collectibles to earn points, trying to maximize their future reward returns, which is a common strategy seen in other airdrop activities.

At the same time, the Courtyard platform has quickly risen to the second position in the industry. This clearly indicates that the narrative of RWA is not only continuing to heat up in the DeFi space but is also creating waves in the NFT sector. Frankly speaking, this development trend is encouraging. The tokenization process of physical assets is likely to become a key catalyst for pushing NFTs into the mainstream.

We also investigated which product lines would dominate in the second quarter of 2025, and the data showed an unexpected shift.

After a considerable amount of time (possibly several years), a game NFT collection has topped the quarterly trading volume list for the first time. Guild of Guardians not only made it into the top five but also occupied two positions, surpassing blue-chip projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. This confirms the overall trend we have observed: the NFT market activity in the second quarter was primarily driven by RWA and gaming assets. Now, we finally have data to support this assertion.

4. The second quarter lost 6.3 billion dollars due to a vulnerability attack, marking one of the worst quarters since the FTX collapse.

We had hoped that after so many years, the entire industry would have learned lessons and remained vigilant, treating user funds more cautiously and achieving at least a certain level of mature development. Unfortunately, the reality this quarter is just the opposite. In the second quarter of 2025, the Web3 sector lost $6.3 billion due to hacking and security vulnerabilities, an increase of 215% from the previous quarter, marking one of the heaviest losses since the collapse of FTX.

If there is still a glimmer of hope in the situation, despite it being extremely slim, it is that 87% of the losses came from a single event: the Mantra crash incident. From certain perspectives, this could be a positive signal: a total of only 31 security incidents for the entire year isn't too many, but the severity of a single case has inflated the overall losses. That said, it inevitably raises the question: are we truly building safer and more reliable products, or are we simply relying on luck to narrowly escape disaster?

To be specific, the top five events this quarter are as follows:

Mantra Insider Sell-off Incident (April 13, 2025): The price of Mantra's token OM plummeted over 90%, with a market value of $5.5 billion evaporating in an instant. This incident was confirmed to be caused by coordinated selling by insiders, rather than a technical flaw in the smart contract.

Individual user private key theft incident (April 28, 2025): Due to a social engineering attack, a personal user's crypto wallet was stolen of 3,520 bitcoins (approximately $330.7 million).

Cetus Protocol Hacking Incident (May 22, 2025): The mainstream DEX of the Sui ecosystem was attacked, with $260 million stolen, causing the platform's token price to plummet by over 90%, and smart contract activities were forced to pause.

Nobitex Exchange Hacking Incident (June 18, 2025): Iranian cryptocurrency exchange Nobitex was attacked by hackers, resulting in losses exceeding $82 million. The pro-Israel radical hacker group Gonjeshke Darande claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened to leak the platform's internal code and user data.

Regarding the UPCX protocol vulnerability incident that occurred on April 1, 2025: attackers infiltrated the ProxyAdmin smart contract, implemented illegal upgrades, and abused administrative privileges to empty the funds of three management accounts in three phases, stealing a total of 18.4 million UPC (approximately 70 million USD).

This is indeed frustrating. It makes you question how much progress we have really made. But at the same time, we know that many projects are actively advancing more robust security infrastructure, audits, and emergency response plans.

As developers, investors, and users, the most we can do is to pay attention to security, stay informed, and act cautiously.

Use tools like DappRadar to verify the projects you interact with. While this is not always foolproof, it is a good starting point.

5. Conclusion

As the second quarter of 2025 comes to a close, DApps are clearly entering a new phase, characterized by integration and transformation. Although overall activity (referring to the number of daily active wallets) remains stable at around 24 million, we are witnessing a notable shift in user behavior and industry dominance. Driven by emerging narratives such as InfoFi and the AI agent economy, AI-related and social DApps are rapidly rising. The NFT space is also undergoing a transformation, with RWA and gaming assets taking center stage, indicating that the sector is experiencing a directional shift from speculative hype to practical value.

Even with the cooling of capital, DeFi continues to maintain its core pillar status through strong growth in total locked value and price recovery. However, the surge in losses due to exploitations serves as a stark reminder to the industry: the lack of reliable security measures may hinder its development.

It is evident that users have not left this field; they have simply chosen different ways to experience it. The current challenge is to create Dapps that are not only attractive but also ensure safety, sustainability, and create real value. We will closely monitor these future developments and continue to provide in-depth reports.