PANews has published a market analysis arguing that several niche crypto narratives overlooked during the bear market are still worth watching as the market shifts into a bullish phase. The article was written by columnist Haotian, who also warned that most of the projects mentioned are already effectively dead and should be treated as research references rather than investment ideas.
Hooks built around Uniswap V4
The first theme in the piece is Uniswap V4 Hooks. The article describes them as externally customizable smart contracts that can insert custom logic at key points in an AMM pool lifecycle, including initialization, adding or removing liquidity, before and after swaps, donations, and fee handling.
The projects cited in this category are uPEG, SATO, and Slonks.
x402 and the return of HTTP 402
The second narrative is x402. According to the article, it revives the long-reserved but never truly used HTTP 402 Payment Required status code and turns it into foundational support for agent payments.
The examples listed in the piece are PAYAI and dreams.
RWAFI and tokenized traditional assets in DeFi
The article says RWAFI goes beyond simply moving assets on-chain. It frames the idea as either using TradFi assets as underlying liquidity or bringing tokenized-asset narratives into composable DeFi structures.
Projects named in that segment include Stonkbroker and INDEX.
Agentic Economy as an AI agent communication layer
The fourth theme is Agentic Economy. The article says Google has introduced an open protocol that allows AI agents built on different frameworks to discover one another, communicate, assign tasks, and collaborate, creating a communication layer for an agentic economy.
It adds that this could extend to agent-based social products, agent games, and applications in which agents take over tasks normally handled by people. Moltbook is one of the examples mentioned.
Other narratives still drawing attention
Beyond those four areas, the article says innovation around AI+Crypto remains active across agent infrastructure, applications, and protocols.
It also notes that prediction markets, perpetual DEX narratives, and privacy-focused narratives continue to stay hot.
Author’s caution
The piece closes by saying readers can add other interesting narratives in the comments, while stressing that most of the projects named above have already faded and are provided for reference only. PANews also states that the article reflects the columnist’s personal views and does not represent the outlet’s position or constitute investment advice.