The current bullish trend in the cryptocurrency market has caught the eye of new investors. Analysts are optimistic about the year ahead, with promising forecasts. Beyond Bitcoin, other coins are showing intriguing behavior, while numerous projects appear to hold profit potential.
We have made an overview of promising crypto projects in 2024 along with guidance on selecting a profitable endeavor.
Criteria for selection
Before investing in a project, you shouldn’t blindly rely on someone's opinion, informational noise, or advertising (although this also matters), you need to conduct your own analysis of the product according to the following criteria.
1. Market capitalization. As in the stock market, it is believed that the larger the market capitalization, the more reliable the company.
Cryptocurrency market capitalization is the total market value of all coins traded on crypto exchanges.
The market capitalization of any existing coin can be easily checked on CoinMarketCap.
2. Liquidity. Everything works similarly here — the higher the liquidity, the better for the investor.
Liquidity is the ability to quickly sell an asset and get money. That is, the more liquid the coin, the more investors are ready to buy it on the stock exchange.
If the liquidity of the project is small, then the buyer for such an asset can be expected forever or not wait at all, which means saying goodbye to the money.
3. Functionality and perspectives. The cryptocurrency itself is not backed up by state assets, as it works with the dollar, yen, and other fiat money.
Vague goals and functionality are likely to lead to the loss of project positions over time. Studying reviews of cryptocurrency publications and the project roadmap, you can understand what audience and market cryptocurrency is aimed at.
One of the fundamental factors in the growth of any coin is its functionality and adoption in the real economy. For example, XRP was created to speed up and reduce the cost of interbank payments. Today, the system is used by 38 of the 100 largest banks in the world, and the capitalization of the coin is $28.93 billion.
4. Schedule a trading activity. It happens that the creators do not issue a coin for open trading on the exchange and talk about the prospects for cryptocurrency growth only in Internet communities.
A horizontal line instead of a graph is often a sign of a scam project. Investors see not a market price, which is formed in the process of sales and purchases, supply and demand, but an artificial one taken from the head of the creators of the project.
If the graph does not show active purchases and sales, but only a direct line, then there is no point in investing in it.
5. Who buys and who finances. Big money goes into any project for a reason. If an asset buys a lot of private investors, it is often an emotional purchase. When hedge funds invest in crypto assets, this is a strategic investment. Transactions worth millions of dollars are not carried out without first collecting information and analyzing the market situation. Information on transactions of large funds is in the public domain, and such contracts can be traced.
6. Community activism. Regardless of cryptocurrency quotes today, a strong community is an important fundamental factor that determines its future. The high activity of the community and the increase in the number of subscribers on the official channels of the project suggest that interest in the coin is growing, which means there will be new purchases.
Official branches and groups of any cryptocurrency project can be searched on Reddit, Bitcointalk, Twitter, and Telegram.
Promising crypto projects
Solana (SOL)
Solana (SOL) is considered one of the most promising blockchains in the modern world of cryptocurrencies, due to its high performance and low transaction fees. Solana's main advantage is its incredible transaction speed, which is achieved through a unique approach to consensus and data processing mechanisms.
At the heart of Solana's technology is a consensus protocol called Proof of History (PoH), which allows the network to process transactions at exceptional speed. Unlike traditional blockchains, which take considerable time to reach consensus, Solana accelerates this process by inserting a timestamp into each transaction. This allows the network to process thousands of transactions per second, well ahead of most existing blockchain platforms.
In addition to its high transaction rate, Solana is also drawing attention for its low fees. This makes it attractive to a wide range of users, including decentralized application developers and individual investors.
In 2024, Solana aims at improving technical stability and maintaining high performance, which can significantly increase its attractiveness for investors and developers, strengthening its position in the crypto world.
Sui Network (SUI)
SUI is a first-level blockchain developed by Mysten Labs, founded by former Meta Novi Research executives. It consists of experts in the field of cryptography, programming languages, and distributed systems, i.e. sufficiently educated researchers, so the team inspires confidence among crypto users.
With a parallel SUI execution system, users can process multiple transactions simultaneously instead of executing one transaction after another. In the first phase, SUI will support up to 120,000 transactions per second.
One of the unique features of the Sui blockchain is how it handles gas fees. Unlike in traditional blockchain networks where gas fees fluctuate based on network demand, the SUI blockchain potentially provides a more consistent gas fee tied to specific epochs. The SUI blockchain operates in a series of 24-hour epochs governed by a committee of validators, with the set of validators refreshed from one epoch to the next. This approach ensures that gas prices remain steady for the duration of each 24-hour epoch, eliminating the constant minute-to-minute price fluctuations seen in other systems.
The SUI architecture is favorable for DApps developers. Based on the SUI SDK, software developers will be able to create new Web3 projects with improved UX. For example, according to the roadmap, the cool Web3 features that SUI supports are NFT updates, asset tokenization, and decentralized social networks.
Celestia (TIA)
Celestia is an innovative project that aims to solve one of the main problems of modern blockchain networks — scalability. This project offers a unique approach to blockchain structure that could radically change the way decentralized applications (DApps) are developed and used.
The main idea of Celestia is to separate the functions of consensus and transaction execution. In traditional blockchain systems, the two functions are usually closely related, which can lead to bottlenecks in network performance, especially as the number of transactions increases. Celestia offers a model in which data and transaction processing logic are separated from the consensus engine. This allows you to develop more scalable and efficient networks.
Another key aspect of Celestia is the use of sharding technology, which allows you to distribute the transaction processing load between different parts of the network. This significantly increases the overall throughput of the system and makes it more scalable.
Celestia also promises to simplify the process of creating and launching new blockchains. With their modular approach, developers can leverage Celestia's infrastructure to build consensus by focusing on developing unique features and applications for their projects. This could substantially reduce barriers to entry into the blockchain world for new projects.
In the near future, Celestia could become a milestone technology in the blockchain space, offering solutions to scale and simplify the development of decentralized systems. If the project proves its effectiveness and reliability, it could attract significant attention from DApps developers and large organizations interested in building their blockchain solutions.
Cosmos Hub (ATOM)
Cosmos itself is not a blockchain, but an ecosystem. And the main blockchain of the Cosmos ecosystem and its link is the Cosmos Hub.
Other blockchains can connect to the Hub-Zones (Osmosis, Juno, etc.). Zones can exchange data with each other just due to communication with the Hub. This connection allows you to make transactions quickly and with minimal commission.
The structure of Cosmos using the Tendermint consensus mechanism is not innovative, but Cosmos has additional functional advantages. This is the Cosmos SDK framework, which greatly simplifies the process of creating applications. Developers can create blockchain applications in any programming language. They can also use ready-made modules and import them into their products. However, they do not need to encode every line of code from scratch. Thus, by creating a blockchain on the Tendermint kernel, developers can focus all their attention on their own projects without worrying about consensus and security, developing applications in any language they like.
In addition to the advantages listed above, by choosing Cosmos as the basis for the project, developers get the opportunity to choose validators for their blockchain. This allows you to create both the most decentralized public networks with a number of validators, and private networks with specific validators.
Sponge V2 (SPONGEV2)
The game meme coin SPONGEV2 is dedicated to the famous cartoon character SpongeBob, which implies increased attention of gamers. This is a new version of the SPONGE coin, which showed 100 times growth last year. Now SPONGE V1 is traded on the 10 largest exchanges, and the number of holders has reached 13 thousand.
After such an impressive success, the developers added the Play-to-Earn algorithm to the ecosystem and now the "updated" coin will become part of the game system. This predicts more project growth, and participants will be able to earn more SPONGEV2 tokens. The launch of the game is planned after adding a coin to the listing on CEX.
Unlike its predecessor, a token cannot be bought on pre-sale, but it can be obtained by buying $SPONGE and placing it in a stacking.
Thus, the meme project provides an opportunity to earn money for gamers, game developers, and investors.
Future trends
In our list of promising projects, we have allocated these tokens for a reason. One of the trends in the crypto market is the development of L1, L2, and L3 blockchain networks and cross-chain protocols. Experts see the development of the market through increased interoperability, and it is cross-chain technologies that will help achieve this.
“The ability to seamlessly connect different blockchain networks will be key to creating a more inclusive and efficient cryptocurrency ecosystem. This trend is likely to reduce market fragmentation and create new opportunities for both users and developers,” says David Winkels, Communications Specialist at ICON Foundation.
According to experts, the implementation of scalable Web3 solutions requires the further development of first-level blockchain networks.
Ronen Cojocaru, CEO of 8081, believes: “L1 acts as a foundation layer for a variety of apps, each of which is intended for a specific purpose. In the context of global crypto adoption, Layer 1 is critical to enable cross-network payments, improve security, and facilitate the use of different applications. It’s the driving force that connects multiple protocols and networks in a single blockchain ecosystem.”
Experts also believe that the development of cross-chain protocols, together with L3 solutions, will contribute to more acceptance of cryptocurrencies in a wide range of users and will become a source for building new models for the adoption of blockchain technologies for narrow businesses. In general, the market development course in 2024 will be due to the growth of the compatibility of various platforms, which will lead to an increase in the number of involved and an increase in trading.
Another clear trend of the year is the GameFi sector development. The official launch of some high-quality online gaming projects in 2024 could further accelerate the growth of interested people in this area.
In order for crypto games to compete with traditional ones, there is still a lot to overcome, because the creation of an AAA project is a long and budget-consuming business. However, many believe that using blockchain technology can simplify the process. So despite the fact that analytics' views on the capabilities and prospects of the GameFi sector differ, the GameFi funding is increasing compared to previous years, which means that 2024 could be a turning point for the sector.
Conclusion
Crypto winter is finally over, and the confidence in the market continues to grow. There are many new projects. However, the diversity of today's cryptocurrency market does not always benefit the investor. Against the backdrop of a rising market, many crypto users have a question: which cryptocurrency to buy in 2024? In our review, we highlighted only some projects that demonstrate attractive market activity based on today's trends. We urge you to choose projects for investment carefully and conduct your own market research.