"Mega Apps" as the New Focus of the Crypto Market
Date: 2025-09-11 Author: Henry Casey Categories: BUSINESS
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said that so-called "mega apps" are becoming a key topic of discussion among institutional players. According to him, the latest research on the crypto market confirms that professional investors are paying special attention to this concept.
Starkiller Capital supported the thesis with statistics: over the past year, the SOL/BTC pair has fallen by 16.11%, while app tokens, including Hyperliquid, have shown significant growth. Analysts emphasize that these are the projects that are demonstrating the highest profitability today, and HYPE has become one of the most successful assets on the market.
From “mega protocols” to “mega applications”
The “mega protocol” theory proposed by Joel Monegro back in 2016 assumed that the main value should be secured at the level of the base blockchains — Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others. However, in recent years, interest has increasingly shifted to application-level platforms such as Polymarket or PumpSwap, as can be seen from Dune data.
Back in 2021, Arca investment director Jeff Dorman wrote that the idea of “mega protocols” has not proven its worth. In his opinion, retail investors perceive L1 networks more as an index asset, while venture funds prefer to look for large-scale opportunities at the application level.
Dorman emphasized that venture investments in the crypto industry are still shaping its trajectory, and their focus is on future potential, not current valuations. In early 2025, he even called the “mega protocol” theory harmful to the industry. The reason, according to him, is that it causes many projects to try to turn into L1 blockchains, and billions of dollars are invested in structures that have no real value.
Different points of view
According to Dorman’s forecasts, only a limited number of basic blockchains will remain in the end, and their total value will be less than the total capitalization of applications. However, Matt Hougan has a different view: he is confident that large L1s will maintain strong positions in the coming year. At the same time, the expert agrees that Starkiller Capital’s arguments cannot be ignored.
The growth of the HYPE token, Hougan believes, is clear evidence of a new paradigm: applications are becoming the center of demand. In early September, Hyperliquid set a new record for trading volume and revenue, once again confirming the relevance of this trend.
Thus, the debate over the distribution of value between base protocols and application platforms is intensifying, but the real market dynamics increasingly point to “mega-applications” as the main trend in the near future.
