2025 Q2 Dapp Market Report: AI agent applications top the list, RWA and games drive NFT recovery

Author: Sara Gherghelas , DappRadar

Compiled by: Tim, PANews

AI agents top the market, RWA redefines the value of NFT, DeFi attracts money but loses momentum, and the $6.3 billion hacker attack in the second quarter exposes the industry's vulnerability.

Despite the rebound in crypto market prices and improved sentiment, the DApp ecosystem presents a different picture: AI agents have experienced explosive growth, NFT value has shifted from ostentation to functionality, and DeFi is moving forward in the gap between rising TVL and shrinking financing. These data not only show the market activity, but also reveal the real flow of users, the areas that are lagging behind, and the key trends that are reshaping the future of DApp.

We are now in an era where hype alone no longer drives the market. Users are beginning to seek real value: whether it is an AI agent that can complete tasks, an NFT associated with RWA, or a DeFi platform that provides sustainable returns. But at the same time, the risks remain high: the losses caused by vulnerability exploits have risen sharply, which shows that trust is so fragile and the slightest negligence can be exploited by malicious people.

This report deeply analyzes the changes in the industry landscape and comprehensively analyzes the data dynamics in DeFi, NFT, games, AI and other fields. From wallet activity and transaction volume to applications and capital flows, we track key signals and focus on the core narrative that shapes the crypto industry in the second quarter of 2025.

Key Takeaways:

• In the second quarter of 2025, the average number of daily active independent wallets for DApps was 24.3 million, a decrease of 2.5% from the previous quarter, but still a surge of 247% from the beginning of 2024.
• The total locked value of DeFi reached $200 billion, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 28%, mainly benefiting from the 36% rebound of Ethereum. However, the amount of financing in the DeFi field fell by 50% quarter-on-quarter, with only $483 million raised in the second quarter, bringing the total financing in the first two quarters of 2025 to $1.4 billion.
• NFT trading volume plummeted 45% to $867 million, but sales volume surged 78% to 14.9 million, reflecting a sharp drop in the average market price, while the number of traders increased by 20%.
• RWA NFT transaction volume increased by 29%, rising to second place in the track, among which the Courtyard platform became the second largest NFT market in terms of transaction volume this quarter.
• Guild of Guardians NFT trading volume soared to first and fourth place, surpassing BAYC and CryptoPunks, marking a turning point for gaming NFTs.
• Web3 lost $6.3 billion due to security incidents, a 215% increase from the previous month. The Mantra vulnerability exploitation case alone caused a loss of $5.5 billion, becoming the second largest crypto industry security incident since the FTX bankruptcy in 2022 (loss of $8 billion).

1. The number of Dapp daily active independent wallets is stable at 24 million, with significant growth in AI and social fields

Dapp activity fell by 2.5% this quarter, with an average of 24.3 million daily active unique wallets. Despite this, we can still consider the ecosystem to have stabilized at this level, which is both a sign of the industry's increasing maturity and proof that users are continuing to interact with Dapps in multiple application areas. It is worth noting that many users operate multiple wallets, so there is a difference between the number of daily active unique wallets and the actual number of users. However, this indicator is still a strong basis for measuring user engagement. Just a few quarters ago, the number of daily active unique wallets remained at around 5 million, and its development speed is very obvious.

The number of active wallets for both DeFi and GameFi declined, with DeFi down 33% and GameFi down 17%. On the other hand, Social and AI Dapps saw growth, which is in line with broader industry trends.

In the social field, the rise of InfoFi is eye-catching, with platforms such as Kaito and Cookie DAO at the forefront. In the AI ​​field, agent-based Dapps have shown strong momentum, among which Virtuals Protocol stands out.

As expected, these sector-level shifts also affect the dominance distribution. Declining 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 Q2 2025 with Q1, it is clear that the AI ​​sector has risen rapidly, with the Social sector not far behind. I think it would not be surprising if AI surpassed either Gaming or DeFi in dominance by the end of this year.

In fact, looking at the top Dapps by unique wallet count this quarter, there is an AI Dapp that tops the list.

The rest of the list is occupied by many well-known projects, mainly from the DeFi field. Given that these projects have always maintained long-term stable operations during the Meme coin craze and Agent token mania, this distribution is understandable.

In addition, another perspective worth noting is that this quarter we added a new "dormant Dapp" indicator, which specifically tracks decentralized applications that were active in the first quarter of 2025 but completely stopped in the second quarter.

We focused our analysis on a few major categories: DeFi saw a 2% increase in inactive decentralized applications, games grew by 9%, and NFT applications rose by 10%. This analysis specifically included high-risk applications, which actually saw a 40% drop in inactivity, meaning they are still being used and rarely abandoned. But the biggest surprise was in artificial intelligence, where inactive AI applications surged by 129%. While this percentage may seem staggering, it actually only corresponds to 16 applications. Despite this, this phenomenon still raises important questions: it highlights that these projects (especially games and AI) are still in their early stages of development, and without sufficient financial support, it will be difficult to achieve mainstream application. In the Web3 field, user retention has always been the most severe challenge, and these data undoubtedly confirm this.

2. In the second quarter of 2025, the total locked amount of DeFi soared to US$200 billion, but the financing amount plummeted by 50%

The macroeconomic situation this quarter has been like a roller coaster, and the DeFi sector has not been immune to this turmoil. Despite this, the market still shows positive signs: first, the price of the crypto market has rebounded strongly, with Bitcoin up 30% from the first quarter of 2025, Ethereum up 36%, and the total market value of cryptocurrencies up 25% month-on-month. The DeFi sector naturally followed this upward momentum, with the total locked value exceeding the $200 billion mark, achieving a month-on-month increase of 28%.

Looking at the total locked value performance of major blockchains, most chains recorded steady growth, except for TRON, which showed a downward trend of 8%. In terms of market share, Ethereum still holds the leading position with an absolute advantage of 62% of the total TVL in the DeFi field, followed by Solana with 10%.

The highlight of this quarter is Hyperliquid L1, whose TVL surged 547%. This high-performance Layer1 blockchain is designed for on-chain perpetual contracts and spot trading, and uses the HyperBFT consensus model inspired by HotStuff.

We also surveyed the most active DeFi decentralized applications in the second quarter of 2025, and conducted in-depth analysis of the areas with the highest current user participation.

​​Finally, we analyzed the investment that poured into the DeFi space this quarter. The space raised a total of $483 million, a 50% drop from the first quarter. So far in 2025, DeFi projects have received approximately $1.4 billion in financing. While this number indicates a slowdown from the explosive growth we have seen in past cycles, it still shows a steady interest in the space and may also mean a more mature direction for capital allocation. Let's see how the rest of the year goes, but for now, the trend seems to be stabilizing. ​​

3. NFT sales surged 78%, but trading volume declined: RWA and games led the market transformation

We all expect the NFT market to recover. Although the overall attention is still there, some core data are still not optimistic. NFT transaction value plummeted by 45% this quarter, but transaction volume increased by 78% against the trend. This confirms the trend we have observed for a long time: NFT is becoming more and more affordable, but the market enthusiasm has not subsided, but has shifted in nature.

To better understand the reasons behind this shift, we combed through the NFT categories with the highest trading volume this quarter, and the data revealed an interesting phenomenon: new narrative stories are emerging, and old narrative models are making a comeback. ​​

From the data, we can see that the transaction volume of personal portrait NFTs suffered a heavy blow, plummeting by 72%. However, the real-world asset RWA NFT jumped to the second place in the transaction volume ranking with a 29% increase. The transaction volume of art NFTs fell by 51%, but the transaction volume soared by 400%, which shows that the price of art has fallen sharply, making art NFTs more friendly to ordinary buyers.

The trend that has returned recently is domain name NFT, with both transaction volume and sales climbing. This growth is mainly driven by the TON public chain ecosystem, and Telegram users are rushing to buy anonymous domain names based on digital numbers. Such domain names can be associated with Telegram accounts without binding SIM cards. This use scenario that is very suitable for specific needs has obviously attracted market attention.

After understanding which categories are trending, we start looking at the number of traders to determine if market participants are continuing to grow or are returning.

This quarter, the average monthly NFT trader reached 668,598, a 20% increase from the previous quarter. Combined with the surge in sales, this shows that users are slowly and steadily returning to the NFT field, although the driving force may be different from the motivations in the past craze.

OpenSea remains at the top despite a significant drop in trading volume. However, its sales are climbing in tandem with Courtyard. OpenSea’s growth is closely tied to the news of its upcoming SEA token launch. The airdrop will be available to both existing users and those currently active on the newer version of the platform. As a result, many users are actively trading low-priced NFTs for points in an attempt to maximize future rewards, a classic move seen in other airdrops.

Meanwhile, the Courtyard platform has quickly climbed to second place in the industry. This clearly shows that the RWA narrative continues to heat up not only in the DeFi field, but also in the NFT field. Frankly speaking, this development trend is gratifying. The tokenization process of physical assets is likely to become a key catalyst to promote NFT to the mainstream vision.

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

For the first time in quite some time (perhaps a few years), a collection of gaming NFTs topped the list in terms of quarterly transaction volume. Guild of Guardians not only made it into the top five, but also took two positions at once, surpassing blue chip projects such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape. This confirms the overall trend we have observed: NFT market activity in the second quarter was mainly driven by RWA and gaming assets. Now, we finally have data to support this assertion.

4. The second quarter saw a loss of $6.3 billion due to vulnerability attacks, making it one of the worst quarters since the FTX crash

We had hoped that after all these years, the industry would have learned its lesson, become more cautious with user funds, and achieve at least a certain degree of maturity. Unfortunately, the reality this quarter was the exact opposite. In the second quarter of 2025, the Web3 space lost $6.3 billion due to hacking and security vulnerabilities, up 215% from the previous quarter and one of the worst losses since the FTX crash.

If there is a silver lining, however slim, it is that 87% of the losses came from a single incident: the Mantra crash. In some ways, this may be a positive sign: only 31 security incidents throughout the year are not a lot, but the severity of each case increased the overall losses. That said, it makes people wonder: Are we building safer and more reliable products, or are we just relying on luck to avoid disaster?

Specifically, the top five events of this quarter are as follows:

• Mantra insider selling incident (April 13, 2025): The price of Mantra's token OM plummeted by more than 90%, and the market value of $5.5 billion evaporated in an instant. This incident was confirmed to be caused by insider coordinated selling, rather than a technical vulnerability in the smart contract.
• An individual user’s private key was stolen (April 28, 2025): Due to a social engineering attack, 3,520 bitcoins (approximately US$330.7 million) were stolen from an individual user’s crypto wallet.
• Cetus Protocol hacking incident (May 22, 2025): The mainstream DEX of Sui ecosystem was attacked and $260 million was stolen, causing the platform's currency price to plummet by more than 90%, and smart contract activities were forced to suspend.
• Nobitex exchange hack (June 18, 2025): Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex suffered a hacker attack, resulting in losses of more than $82 million. 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: the attacker hacked into the ProxyAdmin smart contract, implemented an illegal upgrade, abused the administrator's privileges, emptied the funds of three management accounts in three times, and stole a total of 18.4 million UPCs (approximately US$70 million).

It's frustrating. It makes you question how much progress we've made. But at the same time, we know that many projects are moving forward with better security infrastructure, audits, and incident response plans.

The best we can do as developers, investors, and users is to be safe, well-informed, and cautious.

Use a tool like DappRadar to verify the projects you interact with. While this isn’t always foolproof, it’s a good starting point.

5. Conclusion

​​As the second quarter of 2025 comes to an end, DApps are clearly entering a new phase, one marked by consolidation and transformation. Although overall activity (referring to the number of daily active wallets) has stabilized at around 24 million, we are witnessing a clear shift in user behavior and industry-leading sectors. Driven by emerging narratives such as InfoFi and the AI ​​agent economy, AI and social Dapps are accelerating their rise. The NFT space is also in transition, with RWA and gaming assets dominating, indicating that the space is undergoing a directional shift from speculative hype to practical value. ​​

Even as capital cools, DeFi remains a core pillar with strong total locked volume growth and price recovery. But the surge in losses caused by vulnerability exploits is a stark reminder to the industry that the development boom without reliable security measures may hinder its development.

It is clear that users have not left the space, they are just choosing to experience it in a different way. The challenge now is to build Dapps that are both attractive and secure, sustainable, and create real value. We will be keeping a close eye on these future developments and continue to provide in-depth coverage.