The cryptocurrency sector started 2023 on a high note as its total market capitalization grew from $820 billion to over $848 billion in week 1. Although that is only a small more than a 3% increase, the reversal of the sustainable slightly bearish trend is what we are most excited to finally see. Moreover, many blockchain projects are entering the new year with great development momentum and several important updates are expected to be rolled out to various leading blockchains in the first quarter of 2023. There really seems to be a glimmer of optimism. finally shone on the cryptocurrency community in early 2023.
3. Cosmos (ATOM)
Cosmos is a blockchain network that facilitates interoperability between otherwise incompatible blockchain environments. Cosmos’ Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol currently already supports 49 different blockchains. The Cosmos network consists of two layers – the Tendermint BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant), which combines the network and consensus layers, and the application layer. At the application layer, developers can use the Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK) to translate code from popular programming languages into code readable by the Cosmos protocol. The success of the project is best reflected in the rapid growth of the Cosmos network, which in less than four years has grown from a small ICO to a thriving ecosystem.
A set of security and governance improvements to roll out to Cosmos in Q1 2023, new project roadmap reveals
The Cosmos team recently released an update to the project roadmap, which revealed that Cosmos users can expect two major upgrades, namely the v8-Rho upgrade and the v9-Lambda upgrade, in the first quarter of 2023. While the Rho upgrade will focus on improving cross-chain security by introducing mandatory participation of vendor chain validators, the Lambda upgrade will bring most of the changes to the Interchain governance module and account message authorization module. In December 2022, the Cosmos project was praised for being one of the best blockchain projects by Ethereum lead developer Vitalik Buterin himself.
Moreover, Cosmos has a large number of active developers and has even claimed the title of the second most actively developed project, behind only Polkadot in 2022. If this continuous development effort is recognized by users and other developers, which seems Likely, this could give a big boost to Cosmos network activity as well as ATOM price.
2. Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin was launched in December 2013 as a prank born out of the Shiba Inu doge meme that went viral the same year. Despite its meme-inspired beginnings, the community quickly took to the slightly inflationary digital currency, offering much lower transaction costs and throughput than some of the major cryptonets, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the 12 months between May 2020 and May 2021, the DOGE token experienced a historic bull run that saw its price increase by over 30,000%. The rally was primarily driven by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s publicly shared bullish stance on memecoin and the subsequent exposure the token received from a wider audience of regular investors. Today, Dogecoin’s use cases go far beyond simple tipping and performing similar micro-transactions, as the world’s largest memecoin is widely used for larger payments as well as in apps. Challenge.
5 million DOGE for the development of Dogecoin Core
The Dogecoin Foundation recently announced that it is allocating 5 million DOGE, worth around $360,000 at the time of writing, to a dedicated Dogecoin Core development fund or in short, the CoreFund. The fund is essentially a multi-signature wallet that has five custodians, who are Dogecoin Foundation board members or active/former Dogecoin Core developers: chromatic, Marshall Hayner, Michi Lumin, Patrick Lodder, and Ross Nicoll. The wallet, which is here, should require three out of five signatures to confirm transactions. With this allocation, the Dogecoin Foundation has obtained funds for the development of the Dogecoin Core protocol, which is essential and for the benefit of the entire Dogecoin ecosystem. It is also worth mentioning that DOGE emerged as one of the most resilient cryptocurrencies in the bear market of 2022. Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, DOGE was the third best performing asset, falling “only” 58 % throughout the last year, trailing only behind XRP and BNB, which recorded annual losses of 57.2% and 53% respectively. Most notably, DOGE has far outperformed its main competitor SHIBA INU (SHIB), which fell 76% in 2022. Can Dogecoin’s resilience to depreciation in 2022, however, turn into an upward trend in 2023?
1. Solana (SOL)
Solana is a smart contract-enabled blockchain platform developed with a focus on scalability. Due to its high throughput of 65,000 transactions per second and absurdly low transaction fees (an average transaction on the blockchain costs just $0.00025), Solana is considered one of Ethereum’s strongest competitors. . Such high blockchain efficiency is made possible by using an innovative proof-of-stake consensus mechanism combined with a proof-of-history (PoH) timestamp mechanism. These reasons make Solana very popular among various non-fungible token (NFT) projects and decentralized financial applications of all kinds. Blockchain developers also appreciate that Solana is backed by major investors such as Polychain and Andreessen Horowitz, who provide Solana Labs with more than sufficient funds for the future development of the Solana ecosystem.
BONK Token Launch on Solana Sparks Significant Commercial Activity and Investment
After a disastrous 2022, in which SOL lost over 93% of its value, Solana is on the rise in early 2023. Some believe the coin may have found its bottom and is now heading for recovery. This type of thinking was especially prevalent after BONK’s lunch on Solana attracted a lot of attention as well as investors and sent SOL’s price soaring by more than 30% in a matter of days.
Bonk is a Shiba Inu-inspired meme token that launched on December 25 and peaked at $0.000005 after rallying a few hundred percent. 50% of the BONK token supply was airdropped to Solana users and airdropped tokens generated over $20 million in trading volume according to data from decentralized exchange Solana Orca. Additionally, activity in the Solana network is increasing as users seek out high yielding opportunities within the Solana ecosystem. Although the surge may have been partly driven by hype, SOL has managed to keep the price around $13 per token ever since. Additionally, even several on-chain Solana metrics recover – the number of daily active Solana addresses, for example, is 3 times higher than it was in the period before the collapse of FTX. Do you also think that the Solana trend is reversed and that SOL is on the verge of further growth?
Andrew is a writer who does most of his work on cryptocurrency-related topics. Although he is primarily interested in Bitcoin, he also follows major altcoins and the innovative ideas that new cryptocurrency and blockchain projects are bringing to the table.
