Over the past week (February 23–March 2), the crypto market continued its recovery, driven by a marginal improvement in macro sentiment and shifts in capital allocation. Bitcoin advanced steadily amid consolidating price action, signaling a gradual restoration of risk appetite. According to data from HTX, market capital is no longer concentrated solely on top-tier assets but is increasingly flowing into high-beta sectors such as AI and DeFi. PERP surged over 100% in a single week, while multiple AI-focused tokens posted strong gains—highlighting sustained investor interest in projects that combine innovative narratives with real-world utility.

DeFi Sector Rebounds Strongly: PERP Leads Gains; RIVER Maintains Momentum

In the current market environment, the broader DeFi sector is experiencing a robust recovery, with “application-oriented” protocols—those backed by genuine transactional use cases and liquidity foundations—receiving stronger capital recognition.

• PERP (Perpetual Protocol): Top performer of the week, up 106%. Perpetual Protocol is a decentralized derivatives exchange (DEX) built on Ethereum and the xDai network, enabling traders to engage in leveraged trading (up to 10x) on assets including BTC, ETH, DOT, SNX, and YFI.
• RIVER (River): Up 75% this week. As a key complementary project within the DeFi ecosystem, River is building a chain-abstracted stablecoin system designed to interconnect assets, liquidity, and yield across multiple blockchains. HTX has launched a $RIVER staking product offering an annualized yield of 20%, further enriching its yield-generation capabilities.

AI Sector Ignites Across Multiple Fronts: ROBO, SAHARA, and ALICE Drive Sector-Wide Momentum

AI remains one of the highest-priority narratives in today’s market. Overall, AI-related assets are transitioning from isolated surges to coordinated, sector-wide strength—reflecting deepening market exploration of viable integration pathways between AI and crypto.

• ROBO (Fabric Protocol): Up 79% for the week. Fabric is one of the most prominent recent AI projects, representing the convergence of AI and robotics. It has drawn broad attention to the Openmind ecosystem. As AI applications expand beyond software into physical environments, related concept tokens offer enhanced upside potential.
• SAHARA (Sahara AI): Up 72% this week. Sahara AI is the first fully stack “AI-native” blockchain platform, empowering anyone to create, contribute to, and monetize AI development outputs—making future AI more open, inclusive, and equitable. Against the backdrop of intensifying convergence among compute power, models, and on-chain data, infrastructure- and compute-network-focused AI projects warrant close attention.

ALICE (My Neighbor Alice): Up 45% for the week. My Neighbor Alice is a multiplayer building game where players can purchase and own virtual islands, collect and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and make new friends. The game draws inspiration from successful titles such as *Animal Crossing*.

Meme and Layer-1 Sectors Recover: BEBE and ESP Shine

• BEBE: The meme sector showed clear signs of revival this week, with BEBE surging 86%. BEBE is an AI-powered cryptocurrency and GameFi project. Meme assets often exhibit high elasticity during phases of improving market sentiment and serve as key vehicles for short-term capital positioning.
• ESP (Espresso): Layer-1 representative asset ESP rose 77% this week. Espresso functions as a global confirmation layer, delivering fast and reliable transaction finality to L2 chains via BFT consensus. Expansion of the public-chain ecosystem and rising developer activity have become critical drivers behind its valuation recovery.

Multi-Sector Rotation Pattern Solidifies; Structural Bullishness Continues

Across the February 23–March 2 period, HTX-listed assets demonstrated rising risk appetite and early outperformance by high-beta assets. AI and DeFi formed the core thematic pillars, while Layer-1 and meme sectors concurrently rallied—marking a transition from structural strength toward broader market recovery.

As AI applications mature, DeFi functionality evolves, and infrastructure upgrades accelerate, the next phase may bring even clearer thematic leadership—and continued rotation opportunities across high-quality assets across multiple sectors. HTX remains committed to rigorously curating top-tier assets across promising verticals to help users seize emerging market opportunities.

About HTX

Founded in 2013, HTX has evolved over 12 years from a cryptocurrency exchange into a comprehensive blockchain business ecosystem encompassing digital asset trading, financial derivatives, research, investment, incubation, and more.

As a leading global Web3 gateway, HTX pursues a strategic vision centered on global expansion, ecosystem prosperity, wealth creation, and security-compliance—delivering comprehensive, secure, and reliable value and services to cryptocurrency enthusiasts worldwide.

To learn more about HTX, please visit https://www.htx.com/ or HTX Square, and follow us on X, Telegram, and Discord. For further inquiries, please contact [email protected].