ICOs, DeFi, and NFTs as the main drivers of the previous bull runs while this cycle of bull run is targeted at hypes around tokenized real-world assets aka RWAs, Layer 2 scaling solutions, AI powered projects and the evolution of DeFi.
The "narratives" you mentioned seem to drive mainly the altcoin market. In my opinion however, these narratives are currently dying down as shown by Bitcoin's increased dominance. The problem is that many altcoin projects fail to show why their "solutions" have to be implemented via blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. Most AI, RWA, "DeFi" and other coins/tokens could be implemented without problems as simple IOUs, as they are completely centralized.
Thus I agree with most of the other posters in this thread: those altcoin hypes are short-lived and speculative, and there will be less and less opportunities to ride such waves.
It is however a good idea to identify the narratives reigning the
Bitcoin market. In my opinion the most important narratives since 2023 were the ETFs in the US (early bull market until March 2024), the lowering of interest rates by the main Central Banks of the world during 2024, and later the supposedly crypto-friendly policy of Donald Trump. The latter is an example for narratives influencing both the Bitcoin and the altcoin markets, and also there are examples where "pure" altcoin narratives influence the Bitcoin market. The big first ICO boom of 2017/18 may have had influence on Bitcoin's stellar performance that year and also on the crash in 2018 when the ICO bubble popped.