Article Highlights
- Introduction to the outperformance of legacy cryptocurrencies in a down market.
- Analysis of Zcash (ZEC) performance and factors driving its surge.
- Overview of Dash (DASH) and its developmental initiatives.
- Assessment of Monero (XMR) performance and increased focus on privacy.
- Review of NEAR Protocol (NEAR) and its AI initiatives.
- Analysis of Internet Computer (ICP) surge and AI's role.
- Assessment of Uniswap (UNI) and the impact of new governance proposals.
- Overview of Filecoin (FIL) and its transition to decentralized cloud services.
- Analysis of Arweave (AR) and increasing demand for storage solutions.
- Assessment of Starknet (STRK) performance and focus on zero-knowledge proof technology.
- Overview of ZKsync (ZK) and developments in ZK technology.
- Assessment of Neo (NEO) and its technical advancements.
Introduction
Recently, the cryptocurrency market has experienced an overall weakening trend, with most assets erasing their year-to-date gains in the short term. Surprisingly, a batch of older projects, which have undergone multiple cycles, have risen against the tide when liquidity tightened. These projects, which have been stripped of their glamour by the market, have raised concerns about a “doomsday chariot” ride. This article from PANews compiles 11 old projects that have seen significant gains recently. As of November 11, they have risen by an average of approximately 55.3% in the past 30 days, with ZEC and ICP performing particularly well, both recovering from the sharp declines on October 11, but the decline is still generally as high as approximately 90% compared to historical peaks. The reason behind the "rejuvenation of these old trees" lies not only in the promotion by the market, but also in multiple factors such as technological upgrades, ecosystem construction, and token empowerment.
Zcash (ZEC)
Zcash is the main driver behind this wave of privacy craze. CoinGecko data shows that ZEC has risen by 151.2% in the past 30 days, once hitting a new high since January 2018, but is still down approximately 79.1% from its all-time high. Part of the increased market attention comes from public promotion by Silicon Valley angel investors such as Naval and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes. At the same time, the progress of Zcash's products and ecosystem is in line with the price increase. In October of this year, Grayscale announced that the Zcash Trust is open for private placement to qualified investors; in November, Zcash developer ECC unveiled its Q4 roadmap, focusing on reducing technical debt, improving Zashi user privacy and usability, and ensuring the smooth management of the development fund; subsequently, the Zcash Foundation released a brand-new official website to strengthen the privacy financial infrastructure. In addition, because Zcash completed its second halving in November 2024, which led to a reduction in block rewards and a reduction in new supply in the market, it also provided certain support for the price.
Dash (DASH)
CoinGecko data shows that DASH's gains in the past 30 days were approximately 104.5%, hitting a new high since December 2021, but it is still down 94.6% from its all-time high. In response, Dash stated that its recent price performance was not achieved overnight, but stemmed from long-term fundamental construction. The five major achievements made in the past few years are: releasing DashSpend, conducting in-depth research on bill payment problems, comprehensively improving confidential payment functions, DEX support (added to Maya Protocol), and launching the decentralized application platform Evolution.
Monero (XMR)
As the privacy narrative becomes a market hotspot, attention to Monero has increased significantly. According to CoinGecko data, the price of XMR has risen by 43.6% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since May 2021, but is still 22.7% lower than its all-time high. In October of this year, Monero released an important Fluorine Fermi upgrade, which greatly enhanced users' protection against "spy nodes". After that, it successively released software and wallet updates, and held several technical, research and community conferences that will be held soon, and continued to promote the Community Proposal System (CCS).
NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
CoinGecko data shows that NEAR has risen by 20.6% in the past month, but is still down 85.5% from its all-time high. Last month, NEAR Protocol announced that House of Stake has been officially launched on the mainnet, and users can lock NEAR, not only to obtain protocol governance rights, but also to obtain corresponding rewards. At the same time, NEAR Protocol's transaction execution framework Near Intents (which supports cross-chain native transactions, ultra-fast settlement and AI-friendly functions) is also an important engine for its ecosystem recovery. The cumulative transaction volume has reached US$4.5 billion, the recent 7-day transaction volume is US$1.1 billion, and the cumulative fees have reached US$8.2 million. In terms of tokens, the recent proposal to halve NEAR's annual inflation rate to 2.5% was not passed because it did not reach the voting threshold, so it was not passed, but the core team still plans to incorporate the content related to halving inflation into the upcoming protocol upgrade. Not only that, but Nasdaq-listed shipping company OceanPal announced in October that it had completed a US$120 million PIPE to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, SovereignAI, to cooperate with the NEAR Foundation to create a crypto treasury and confidential AI cloud platform based on NEAR.
Internet Computer (ICP)
Due to the promotion of AI products, Internet Computer has once again received market attention. CoinGecko data shows that ICP has risen by 111.1% in the past 30 days, once hitting a new high this year, but is still down 99% from its all-time high. Not long ago, the DFINITY Foundation released a product update for the DeAI platform Caffeine running on ICP, and it is now available to everyone. This product allows users to quickly create, deploy and iterate complete Web3 applications through natural language conversation, without the need for programming skills.
Uniswap
On November 11, with the release of Uniswap's proposal to initiate a protocol fee mechanism and UNI destruction mechanism, the price of UNI rose in response. CoinGecko data shows that UNI has risen by 43.6% in the past 30 days. Compared with the historical high, UNI is still down 80.4%. On November 11, Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation jointly launched a governance proposal called the "UNIfication Proposal" with the aim of unifying the incentive mechanism of the entire Uniswap ecosystem by activating the protocol fee mechanism, achieving UNI token destruction, and establishing a Uniswap growth budget, so that The Uniswap protocol becomes the default DEX for tokenized value.
Filecoin (FIL)
CoinGecko data shows that FIL has risen by approximately 51.5% in the past 30 days, hitting a new high in nearly 8 months, but is still down approximately 98.9% from its all-time high. Filecoin is combining AI and DePIN narratives to accelerate the transition from decentralized storage to chained cloud services. In the past month, Filecoin has continued its efforts in infrastructure and ecosystem construction, focusing on aspects such as data storage, cross-chain interoperability and fee optimization. For example, Filecoin Pin was officially released in October, supporting one-click anchoring of IPFS content to the Filecoin chain, realizing encrypted verifiable persistent storage, and integrating CLI and GitHub Actions to greatly reduce the threshold for developers on the chain; after the v26 network upgrade was implemented, Gas fees were halved, driving an increase in daily new storage contracts and active contract volume; the ecosystem fund injected 500,000 FIL (worth millions of dollars) into more than 200 ecosystem projects through the RetroPGF-3 program; and recently, Filecoin hinted that it will transition from a storage network to an on-chain cloud service, supporting on-chain data extraction and computing services. The official page has been launched and the whitelist application has been opened; Filecoin recently jointly launched a decentralized object storage service compatible with the S3 interface with Akave Cloud to help companies and DePIN migrate to blockchain storage.
Arweave (AR)
With the rapid expansion of AI applications and the continuous acceleration of the construction of global data center infrastructure, the demand for high-performance storage chips continues to rise, driving a comprehensive rise in the storage-related ecosystem. Decentralized storage projects such as Arweave have also received funding attention. CoinGecko data shows that AR has risen by approximately 31.7% in the past 30 days, hitting a new high in nearly 3 months, but is still down approximately 93.8% from its all-time high.
Starknet (STRK)
Recently, with the rise of zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology and the privacy space, Starknet has received market attention. It is worth noting that the co-founders of Starknet and Zcash are both Eli Ben-Sasson, which has also helped increase their attention to a certain extent. According to CoinGecko data, STRK has risen by approximately 50.3% in the past 30 days, but is still down approximately 96.1% from its all-time high. At the technical and ecological levels, Starknet has had a series of recent actions. For example, Starknet recently launched the Bitcoin yield product Starknet Earn and started beta testing; Circle's native USDC and CCTP V2 announced their launch on Starknet; Starkware released a new version of Starknet v0.14.1; recently, StarkWare announced that it has deployed its next-generation open-source S-two test on the Starknet mainnet;
ZKsync (ZK)
Recently, ZKsync has received considerable attention due to the endorsement of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and its ZK technology. According to CoinGecko data, ZK has risen by approximately 39.8% in the past 30 days, but is still down approximately 82.8% from its all-time high. Technically, ZKsync recently launched the Atlas upgrade of ZK Stack, introducing a high-performance sequencer to achieve sub-second transaction confirmations and faster cross-chain settlement. This provides a faster and more flexible infrastructure for businesses and institutions to migrate their businesses to blockchain. In terms of tokens, ZKsync founder Alex recently proposed a major update to the token economic model. In the future, ZK tokens will not only be used for governance, but the core mechanism will be: all income generated by the network will be used to repurchase and destroy ZK tokens, thereby promoting ZKsync to form a self-reinforcing perpetual ecosystem.
Neo (NEO)
CoinGecko data shows that NEO has risen by 16.1% in the past 30 days, and the drop from its all-time high has reached 97.3%. In the past month, Neo has made multi-line progress in technology and marketing. For example, Neo deployed the NEO X mainnet v0.4.2 upgrade, and introduced protection measures against maximum extractable value (MEV) exploitation at the consensus level; Neo officially closed the Legacy mainnet; the Neo X core code base was officially opened to the community; recently, Neo and SpoonOS jointly launched the Scoop AI hackathon.
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