Karla Barker 
Three major altcoins face steep declines amid token unlocks and market pressure
Looking at the data from late 2025, it’s clear that several once-prominent altcoins took a serious beating. I think what’s interesting here isn’t just the numbers—though those are dramatic—but the specific reasons behind each drop. Celestia (TIA) lost about 90% of its value, Optimism (OP) dropped 84.5%, and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET/ASI) fell around 84%. These aren’t minor corrections; they’re substantial declines that tell us something about market dynamics.
Celestia’s situation seems particularly instructive. The blockchain, which is optimized for app creation, started 2025 at around $5.50 and ended near $0.46. That’s a massive slide. What drove it? Mostly token unlock dynamics and vesting schedules that kept steady selling pressure throughout the year. By summer, analysts were already calling it a textbook post-airdrop unwind. The liquidity was thin, and the emissions continued.
Then there was that buyback situation in August. The Celestia Foundation purchased 43.45 million TIA from Polychain Capital for about $62.5 million. They said it was to steady token supply, but the community reaction was… skeptical. One user called it “a new level of grift,” suggesting they were just moving tokens from one investor who was dumping to another who would dump later. Not great optics.
Optimism faces similar token supply issues
Optimism’s story has some parallels. The layer-2 solution on Ethereum also faced persistent token unlocks throughout 2025—late May, late April, and a scheduled December 31 tranche of around $8.6 million. Each of these added token supply during periods of weak demand. It’s like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it.
Competition in the L2 space didn’t help either. Even as Optimism made technical progress with fault-proofs and decentralization efforts, the trading reflected what felt like sector fatigue. By September, media coverage was framing OP as one of the L2 laggards. The slide just continued into the fourth quarter.
AI alliance struggles with operational challenges
The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance situation is perhaps the most complex. This collaboration between SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol launched during the AI hype wave of 2024. But 2025 was a different story. The multi-token merger didn’t go smoothly—some exchanges supported auto-conversions while others like Coinbase declined, creating uncertainty.
Then in October 2025, Ocean Protocol exited the alliance entirely. That prompted governance disputes, legal threats, and another drop in FET price. The ASI board had to temporarily suspend the conversion bridge while seeking legal advice. It was messy.
Beyond the specific alliance issues, AI tokens broadly faced headwinds in late 2025. According to Coingecko data, AI was no longer the most profitable crypto narrative—that title went back to real-world assets (RWA), which gained around 180%. AI coins as a category lost about 50% in 2025.
The broader market context matters
It’s worth noting that late 2025 brought macro stress across markets—tariff shocks, tight liquidity, tech-led risk aversion. This hit crypto broadly and compounded the token-specific supply issues. End-of-year reviews documented what felt like a wholesale risk-off turn and sharp liquidations across digital assets.
But here’s what I keep thinking about: these aren’t necessarily failures of the underlying technology. Celestia still has its blockchain architecture. Optimism still provides L2 scaling. The AI projects still have their technical foundations. The market dynamics—token unlocks, supply overhangs, sector rotation—these can create price movements that don’t necessarily reflect long-term potential.
That said, when you see 80-90% declines, it’s hard to ignore the market’s message. The valuation versus usage gap that analysts noted for Celestia—with very low data utilization and fee revenue—that’s a real concern. It suggests maybe the market was pricing in expectations that haven’t materialized yet.
What happens next? That’s the real question. Token unlocks will eventually complete. Market cycles turn. But for investors who held through 2025, it was undoubtedly a painful year. The lesson, perhaps, is that even promising technology projects face serious headwinds when market conditions shift and supply dynamics work against them.