Inspired by the success story of bitcoin (BTC), hundreds of other peer-to-peer digital currencies have emerged over the last couple of years. These digital currencies, better known as altcoins, are primarily designed to overcome the limitations of BTC while supporting a myriad of real-world use cases.
Owing to the growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, the increased use of smart contracts, and the introduction of environmentally-friendly consensus mechanisms, altcoins have expanded their market capitalization manifold, especially between 2020 and 2021. Today, over 5,000 altcoins exist, but the most promising ones stand out from the competition by offering more than just speculative opportunities.
Many blockchain companies and projects issue their own cryptocurrency tokens, making them the primary utility token for users to interact with their network. Since there are hundreds of projects and DeFi opportunities available, such as staking and yield farming, together with an open market to choose from, it can be a bit challenging to determine the most promising projects.
With that in mind, here are our picks for seven top altcoins to look out for in the coming months.
Rocket Vault
When it comes to creating vault strategies that limit losses while maximizing earning potential, Rocket Vault relies on machine learning algorithms to deliver the best annual percentage yield (APY) on stablecoins. Rocket Vault’s RocketX, the world’s first global liquidity aggregator that supports cross-chain swaps, is designed to simplify crypto trading by bringing together the liquidity of CEXs and DEXS in a single interface.
The upcoming product solves one of the most critical problems of the DeFi ecosystem and is thus receiving support and backing from prominent players within the industry. One of the fastest-growing blockchain networks, Polygon recently offered a Developer Grant to develop Rocket X to support the Polygon Chain.
The team behind Rocket Vault launched its new product, Rocket Vault-as-a-Service, a non-custodial vault on September 29th designed to help institutions achieve the highest APY, starting with “ETH Vault.” The native token of Rocket Vault, RVF, is an ERC-20 token offering users access to the vault, liquidity, and yield farming. With a current market capitalization of a bit more than $5 million, the RVF token has considerable potential to appreciate in the coming months.
BitDAO
One of the largest DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) globally, BitDAO, aims to build the future of open finance and a fully decentralized crypto ecosystem. It is one of the world’s first and largest DAOs focused on DeFi, managed by holders of BIT tokens.
BitDAO isn’t just an attempt limited to serving as an automated market maker (AMM) or a lending platform, but a community that contributes to the overall growth and development of DeFi through active participation in research and development (R&D), liquidity, and support ongoing development via grants.
The platform will control one of the largest pools of assets, which can, in turn, provide liquidity to partner protocols. BitDAO recently launched its governance token BIT on SushiSwap’s token launchpad MISO, raising 112,000 ETH from upwards of 9,200 participants.
Constellation
Constellation (DAG) is a distributed network that delivers fast, scalable solutions to organizations that require secure payment processing, data transfer, and interoperability for their connected sensors and devices.
Powered by its distributed and decentralized network, Hypergraph, Constellation employs a directed acyclic graph (DAG) network and mathematical proofs to promote its network’s speed and security. Together, these attributes deliver impressive scalability compared to other chains like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Since its launch, Constellation has witnessed a growing list of partners, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), the US Airforce, and crypto brands like Chainlink and KuCoin exchange. In addition, Constellation’s native token DAG supports a second functional value via tokenized throughput or bandwidth on the network compared to cryptocurrencies like BTC which exhibit more limited utility. The DAG token has performed exceptionally well in the last few months, making it one of the most promising altcoins to monitor.
Nexo
Launched in 2018, Nexo has emerged as one of the first altcoin projects offering instant crypto-collateralized credit lines. With more than a million registered users across 200+ countries and the total asset value managed at over $5 billion, Nexo’s has created a full retail banking suite with several features, including borrowing, interest-yielding crypto, stablecoins, and fiat savings account, and an exchange with over 75 tradeable crypto assets.
The platform’s native token, NEXO, offers many attractive features to its holders, including a stable APR of 8%, as low as 6.9% APR for using Nexo credit lines, and governance voting. NEXO is listed and available for purchase on more than 15 exchanges. Beyond its core products, the platform has also launched several highly successful initiatives to boost the visibility of its NEXO token. These include the recent Earn X3 in BTC campaign, where users enjoyed the opportunity to earn triple interest and have the bonuses paid in bitcoin (BTC).
Nexo offers its customers a loyalty program that rewards them for holding NEXO in their accounts through preferential interest rates on loans and higher interest yields on savings. Additionally, the platform distributes 30% of its profits as dividends to NEXO token holders. $NEXO has performed exceptionally well over this year, generating upwards of a 1,000% return since inception.
QANplatform
Aiming to solve the existing problems of legacy chains, the team behind QANplatform designed a hybrid blockchain platform where next-generation dApps can be developed in multiple programming languages. It is quantum-proof, fast, extremely energy efficient, and uses a new consensus mechanism called the Proof-of- Randomness (PoR).
As a 5G-friendly blockchain platform, QANplatform overcomes the limits of legacy blockchains like Ethereum while also adhering to the standard set by Ethereum by running generic Turing-complete, token-metered smart contracts. By design, the platform cuts average blockchain deployment time to cloud platforms by 80%. The platform is currently focused on integrating existing and widely used programming languages, DevOps technologies, and cloud platforms.
Investing in QANplatform is an intriguing option because it has already surpassed several noteworthy fundraising milestones, including a venture capital round and initial DEX offering (IDO). Additionally, the platform’s native token QANX launched on UniSwap and PancakeSwap in June with almost $250k starting liquidity. And with the launch of the QANX staking feature on BSC, there is a high possibility of QANX surpassing its current all-time-high (ATH).
Elrond
As the demand for fast, scalable protocols continues to surge, Elrond, the internet-scale blockchain, is seeing significant gains over the past few months. Built for speed, security, and scalability, Elrond offers breakneck transaction speeds via sharding.
With its unique Secure proof-of-stake (SPoS) consensus mechanism and adaptive sharding technology, Elrond eliminates PoW computational waste while solving the blockchain trilemma, ensuring up to 1000x improvement in speed, cost, scalability, and user experience. Additionally, the Elrond ecosystem valuation has grown from roughly $10 million to almost $500 million, with more than 115 projects currently being developed on it.
Since its launch, the Elrond team has been busy expanding the blockchain’s capabilities, all while establishing real-world protocol integrations. Powered by its native token EGLD (Electronic Gold), the Elrond Network serves as a platform that can deploy smart contracts, dApps, and even entire blockchain protocols. As a result, EGLD, with its multifaceted functionality, fast throughput, and low fees, is well-positioned for further growth as blockchain technology gains spread into mainstream society.