The Bankless analysis team recently made predictions on the rise and fall of 16 tokens in the next three months, including mainstream tokens and popular tokens on the Layer1 track, Layer2 track, LSD track and other tracks. This article will compile the predictions and reasons of the Bankless analyst team for readers’ own reference.
Layer1 section
Solana（$SOL）
View: Bearish
Reason: Meme market is not doing well, selling pressure increases
Forecast period: June 21, 2024 to September 21, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $132.79
Predicted currency price performance so far: up 5.88%
The Bankless analysis team expects SOL to underperform Ethereum as the meme coin craze further subsides.
While $SOL had an incredible run from October 2023 to March 2024, with prices subsequently peaking at $200, the novelty of the ecosystem appears to have peaked, with key on-chain metrics including daily active addresses and DEX transactions volume) remained stagnant throughout June.
Solana has seized the spotlight on meme currency issuance in this cycle with its two characteristics of low fees and unified global status. However, the performance of meme coins in recent weeks has been unsatisfactory.
The top native meme coins on Solana, $WIF and $BONK, have fallen by more than 50% from their May highs, while other meme coins have performed even worse. Most of the previously popular celebrity meme coins are close to zero, although some The view is that the meme craze subsides is a sign that Solana is on a healthy path towards mass adoption, but as Solana users become increasingly aware of the limited profits they can make from on-chain meme coins, they may consider cashing out, resulting in Solana Fundamentals deteriorate and selling pressure increases on $SOL.
Polkadot（$DOT）
View: Bearish
Reason: Huge improper expenditures coupled with increasing token inflation
Forecast period: July 3, 2024 to October 3, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $2.38
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 7.98%
The Bankless analytics team believes its foundation may go bankrupt sooner than expected, as future spending and inflation of $DOT will further depress the token price.
On June 28, the Polkadot Web3 Foundation released its largest financial report to date as part of its OpenGov initiative, which was implemented a year ago to give the community better understanding and control of the chain’s governance process.
In the first half of 2024, Polkadot's fiscal year net loss was approximately $17 million ($108 million). Assuming that the price of $DOT (96% of fiscal value) remains unchanged, at the current consumption rate, funds can only be maintained for another Two years of project operation.
The largest spending category was “promotion,” which totaled $37 million, including some outrageous items like: $10 million for sports team sponsorships, $7.9 million for conference events, and $478,000 for an animated logo for the Coinmarketcap homepage , and $180,000 for promotional livery on private jets.
While the Polkadot ecosystem spent heavily in 2024 in an attempt to gain traction, its token lost more than 50% against Ethereum in the first six months of the year.
Polkadot continues to be controversial! 37 million magnesium marketing dollars were burned in vain, and are you still discriminating against Asian developers?
Toncoin（$TON）
Viewpoint: Neutral
Reason: Possible for future growth, but overly dependent on Telegram
Forecast period: June 17, 2024 to September 17, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $7.88
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 4.42%
The Bankless analysis team acknowledges that the network is poised for future growth, but is concerned that at a fully diluted valuation of $40 billion, the value of the investment in the company's dedicated blockchain is unclear.
While the $TON network has previously struggled to gain effective adoption, its growth has accelerated exponentially as its creator, Telegram, has brought more and more utility to the network.
Telegram launched a self-hosted crypto wallet last September that allows users to easily access the $TON network. In February, Telegram doubled down on its push for cryptocurrency adoption, announcing it would allow advertisers to use $TON to purchase promotions on their channels and share 50% of the fees with channel operators. Then in April, Telegram partnered with Tether to allow its wallet users to send $USDT for free.
In 2024, the $TON network’s TVL surged 4,200% to $610 million, while the number of daily active addresses also increased significantly.
The $TON network appears to be in the early stages of establishing a unique and viable on-chain ecosystem; its native Notcoin meme coin has reached a $2 billion valuation, and more than 150 million addresses participate in Hamster Combat, a click-to-earn money program. game, which promises to airdrop tokens to participants.
While the TON network has certainly managed to gain a lot of growth so far, the future of TON is still somewhat unclear. If Telegram’s model of generating revenue through a proprietary blockchain proves successful, other companies may eventually launch their own networks to compete with the TON Network. But it is undeniable that bringing in new users now will have a strong first-mover advantage, making the TON Network a universal blockchain solution for other companies looking to experiment on-chain.
Avalanche（$AVAX）
View: Bullish
Reason: $AVAX futures are expected to be listed, and there is little resistance to the approval of the spot $AVAX ETF
Forecast period: June 28, 2024 to September 28, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $27.99
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 8.41%
The Bankless analytics team expects the token to outperform in the coming months as the market begins to digest the previously unexpected ETF approval narrative.
On June 28, Coinbase Derivatives, a designated contract market (DCM) registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), submitted certification documents to its regulator to list $SHIB, $LINK, $AVAX, $XLM and $DOT futures.
While the recent filing of the spot $SOL ETF fueled hopes that Solana will be the next crypto asset to offer traditional finance, the SEC has maintained that SOL is a security in multiple lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges, adding that In the absence of a regulated futures market, the likelihood of its approval is slim.
In contrast to $SOL, $AVAX has not yet been designated a security by the SEC; future approval of CME futures clears the way for spot $AVAX ETF approval, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Near（$NEAR）
View: Bearish
Reason: Short-term hype with AI will lead to no competitive advantage in the long run
Forecast period: June 25, 2024 to September 25, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $5.5
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 5.48%
While $Near has attempted to position itself as a project in the circuit by capitalizing on the emerging (and yet unconfirmed) AI x Crypto hype from Huida's March developer conference, the network currently has few noteworthy developments in AI development .
Although Near founder Illia Polosukhin has worked as an AI researcher before, the reality is that any blockchain that can provide fast consensus can become the basis for AI development, and his project has a larger user base and more TVL. There is no competitive advantage in L1 projects.
Despite $NEAR’s strong short-term performance, without enough unique ecological applications to attract users and capital to join, the token is likely to once again underperform major competitors such as Ethereum and $SOL in the near future.
Layer2 section
Arbitrage ($ARB)
View: Bearish
Reason: Layer 2 track is saturated, token unlocking brings selling pressure
Forecast period: June 27, 2024 to September 27, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $0.82
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 5.26%
The Bankless analytics team anticipates that $ARB may outperform other Layer 2s in the coming months, but overall industry value dilution and the unlocking of $ARB should cause the token price to perform worse than Ethereum.
The Arbitrum DAO proposal aims to distribute 50% of the remaining orderer fees to $ARB delegators on its Tally governance hub, paying stakers an annualized yield of approximately 7% in ether. Staking rewards are not expected to go live until September, along with support for the $ARB liquid staking token, allowing delegators to earn additional yield in DeFi.
While adding non-inflationary real returns to $ARB creates additional economic value for holders, there is no guarantee that the $ARB token will outperform Ethereum. The launch of each new Layer2 token and the unlocking of existing tokens creates selling pressure from investors, diluting all Layer2 valuations as Layer2 technology becomes increasingly commoditized and decentralized.
Arbitrum alone is unlocking 100 million tokens per month to its team and investors, while the Arbitrum DAO holds 3.5 billion $ARB that it may distribute to the market and is already working on a controversial project over the next three years. $225 million ARB set aside for gaming incentive program.
Blast（$BLAST）
View: Bearish
Reason: Unsatisfactory valuation, high selling pressure after airdrop
Forecast period: June 26, 2024 to September 26, 2024
Coin price at the time of prediction: $0.02
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 25.08%
The Bankless analysis team predicts that future incentives will not inspire the interest of users as they did in the past, leading more and more holders to begin to realize the potential unsustainability of the network.
Shortly after BLAST was launched on June 26, its fully diluted valuation was approximately US$2 billion, ranking eighth among Ethereum Layer 2, far lower than the low-circulation Layer 2 at the top, and even lagging behind the low-adoption but circulating Layer 2. Layer2 with higher volume, such as Mantle and Immutable.
Throughout June, many Blast native ecosystem assets were sold off heavily. Although $BLAST attempted to rebound after its listing, it was unsuccessful, indicating that users were cashing out to look for other opportunities. The main motivation for users to deposit into Blast is to win airdrops. The unexpectedly low valuation of $BLAST reduces the attractiveness of future incentives. As on-chain fundamentals deteriorate in the coming months, $BLAST will face huge selling pressure.
StarkNet（$STRK）
View: Bearish
Reason: Competition is intensifying, and there are no ecologically popular applications to support development.
Forecast time period: June 18, 2024 to September 18, 2024
Coin price at the time of prediction: $0.75
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 0.07%
The Bankless analysis team expects the token to continue to underperform Ethereum in the absence of a sudden explosion of Starknet ecosystem adoption.
Although $STRK’s airdrop in late February briefly enlivened the chain, the ecosystem’s glory days appear to be long gone. Several of Starknet's key metrics, including daily trading volume and active addresses, peaked in September 2023 and later failed to regain their highs even with airdrop incentives.
Competitor zero-knowledge Rollup ZKsync announced that it would open claims for $ZK tokens on June 17. The launch of $ZK caused the price of $STRK to plummet by nearly 30% within hours of its release.
While Starknet implemented the Cairo virtual machine, allowing developers to bypass the technical limitations of the EVM chain, this made it difficult for both users and developers to interact with the ecosystem. Although there are views that this will be beneficial to the development of certain industries such as full-chain games, the Starknet ecosystem has yet to see breakthrough applications that can inspire long-lasting on-chain use.
The launch of $ZK provides investors with a liquidity token that can be purchased with a zero-knowledge proof technology narrative, undermining the technology-centric narrative of $STRK. At the same time, the large number of new Layer 2 tokens and expected industry token unlocks represent the supply that must be absorbed in the future, which will dilute the valuation of all Ethereum Rollup.
Optimism（$OP）
View: Bearish
Reason: User perception of new functions is low due to the impact of the general environment.
Forecast time period: June 11, 2024 to September 11, 2024
Predicted currency price: $2.14
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 16.84%
Although the release of the fault-proof function is an important step towards realizing a "super chain" on Optimism, which allows anyone to challenge incorrect information published by the sequencer and withdraw ETH/ERC-20 without permission, it fails to Positive impact on $OP token price. Ironically, the $OP token has actually slightly underperformed its competitors $MATIC and $ARB since the announcement of this major upgrade.
Crypto users have historically paid little attention to the security status of the Layer 2 they transact on, with large numbers of TVL migrating to insecure “Stage 0” Rollups (just glorified multi-sig). While Optimism now enjoys a similar "Stage 1" classification to Arbitrum One, this achievement is only the minimum requirement. Vitalik said in March that by the end of 2024, only Stage 1+ networks will be allowed to bear the title "Rollups."
On the contrary, in the environment of new Layer2 token issuance and token unlocking, the future performance of $OP token will be lower than that of Ethereum.
LSD section
ether.fi（$ETHFI）
View: Bearish
Reason: Competition intensifies and TVL stagnates
Forecast time period: July 2, 2024 to October 2, 2024
Predicted currency price: $6.5
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 7.54%
The Bankless analytics team expects that a significant portion of its funds will soon be rotated to Symbiotic Retaking via Mellow Finance, thus undermining the growth that comes with high valuations and causing the token price to fall further.
The TVL of the leading liquidity re-pledge project ether.fi basically stagnated in June, with a monthly growth rate of only 7%, which is the lowest growth rate since October 2023. Although $ETHFI’s collateral volume is less than 80%, its fully diluted valuation is still 40% higher than $LDO. This mispricing is common among all LRT issuers and is caused by the low circulation of their tokens and investors’ optimism about the industry’s growth potential.
Although ether.fi is trying to expand its business beyond the functional re-staking protocol by creating “Liquid” strategy vaults and proprietary credit cards, the protocol’s re-staking model with EigenLayer as its core faces fierce competition from other re-staking models.
Pendle Finance（$PENDLE）
View: Bullish
Reason: Good fundamentals, potential airdrop
Forecast time period: June 24, 2024 to September 24, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $5.58
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 1.81%
The Bankless analytics team expects the token to continue to outperform as the protocol is able to generate higher yields and capture potential airdrops.
In the first half of 2024, $PENDLE was undoubtedly one of the best-performing liquid crypto assets based on fundamentals (i.e. not meme coins), with over 500% year-to-year gains at its peak in April and May.
While the arrival of the Ethena and EigenLayer airdrops may have a negative impact on Pendle, the fact is that the protocol’s TVL increased by over 50% from its May lows and topped $7 billion multiple times in June.
Read（$LDO）
View: Bullish
Reason: Pledge and re-pledge develop together, with huge potential in the future
Forecast time period: June 12, 2024 to September 12, 2024
Coin price at the time of prediction: $1.88
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 7.98%
The Bankless analytics team predicts that the market is underestimating the powerful role that $stETH plays in re-hypothecation.
In 2024, re-hypothecation has been an important narrative in the crypto industry, increasing returns by re-hypothecating assets with minimal additional risk. LRT (Liquid Restaking Tokens) works similarly to Lido’s $stETH, but adds re-staking benefits and airdrop incentives (from EigenLayer and LRT issuers).
In response to competition, Lido partnered with Mellow Finance, an LRT platform that leverages Symbiotic, an EigenLayer competitor and backed by Lido’s core employees and investors, to re-hypothecate its LST.
A large part of users who deposit into the EigenLayer ecosystem do so for airdrops, so depositors can easily switch to Symbiotic due to airdrops.
Because Lido has invested in Symbiotic, they have an incentive to drive the development of the Symbiotic ecosystem, which means these whales can deposit large amounts of stETH into Mellow's vault to build the most liquid stETH re-staking protocol.
Lido makes itself the ideal staking solution by offering both a normal Ether staking product and a slightly riskier liquidity re-staking protocol, able to serve market participants with different risk appetites.
Other sectors
Worldcoin（$WLD）
View: Bearish
Reason: Huge amount of money to unlock, no key progress in the ecosystem
Forecast time period: July 1, 2024 to October 1, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $2.34
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 7.26%
The Bankless analysis team expects the $WLD token unlocking to further depress the price, and this selling pressure will be more obvious when the ecosystem lacks focused progress.
Huida has achieved significant share price growth in the first three months of 2024, fueling enthusiasm for AI. While $WLD, an AI-related cryptocurrency, didn’t start to show some performance until early February, the price also increased by 440% in just one month.
Worldcoin is arguably one of the most notorious low-circulation, high-valuation tokens of this cycle, a trait that makes it easier to manipulate prices and attract investor interest. But the internal unlocking starting on July 25 will increase selling pressure.
Although Worldcoin has expressed future plans to create real-world utility for $WLD and its authentication model, the project has made little significant progress in real-world adoption, and its core authentication process has been hampered by the existence of a black market for user identities. It also faces major doubts.
Velodrome（$VELO）
View: Bullish
Reason: Good intellectual property guarantee brings long-term benefits to the holder
Forecast time period: June 20, 2024 to September 20, 2024
Coin price at the time of prediction: $0.11
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 9.21%
The Business License (BSL) obtained by Velodrome limits counterfeiting and forking of the exchange, allowing only licensed participants to operate. This feature prompted Base’s native Aerodrome fork to allocate 40% of the initial $AERO supply to veVELO stakeholders as a reward rate agreed and approved by the DAO.
Coinbase launched $VELO and $AERO in February, and while both tokens have risen since then, $AERO has far outperformed on the back of Base Season hype and Coinbase’s direct investment through its Base Ecosystem Fund. Far superior to its predecessor.
While the $AERO token has attracted a lot of attention due to its recent good performance, $VELO holders will enjoy the benefits of BSL by staking, and may receive future benefits from forking projects that wish to use its code base to deploy long term gains.
Athena ($ENA)
View: Bearish
Reason: Insufficient revenue generation and security
Forecast time period: June 14, 2024 to September 14, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $0.72
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 37.22%
The Bankless analysis team believes that Ethena’s future revenue generation capabilities and security are insufficient.
In recent weeks, Ethena's deposits have also risen due to Ethena's decision to reduce the revenue cut rate on its insurance fund from 50% to 20%, increasing the rate of return for staking $USDe holders.
Bitcoin spot ETFs do see significant institutional adoption, but that’s mostly from hedge funds, which may be employing the same revenue-generating strategies as Ethena — adding to the competitiveness of these once-lucrative trades.
With an Ethereum spot ETF expected to begin trading this summer, giving hedge funds a second crypto asset to arbitrage, the basis Ethena generates through its risk-free arbitrage strategy is likely to continue to compress.
Returns generated from short Ethena perpetual futures fell significantly in June, with $sUSDe earning only half as much compared to the period before these changes were implemented, despite increasing the percentage of revenue paid to stakers.
Ethena's liabilities may have expanded to an all-time high, but the insurance fund to cover losses in the event of negative interest rates or the loss of user assets represents only 1% of this deposit base. When times worse than negative interest rates occur , the situation of $ENA becomes dangerous.
Curve Finance（$CRV）
View: Bearish
Reason: The current token model is not sustainable
Forecast time period: June 13, 2024 to September 13, 2024
Coin price at time of prediction: $0.28
Predicted currency price performance so far: down 3.24%
The Bankless analysis team stated that although the founder was forced to stop losses and triggered a decline, Curve's high-inflation token model may not be sustainable.
Founder Michael Egorov previously had nearly $100 million in outstanding stablecoin borrowings, collateralized by $350 million in CRV, spread across five different lending protocols. Subsequently, depositors of these protocols began to withdraw liquidity from the CRV market, whether out of spite or fear of bad debts caused by liquidations, and both utilization of $CRV collateral and borrowing rates surged, further squeezing Egorov.
While Egorov’s liquidation is now largely complete and the $CRV oversupply issue has been resolved, there’s no guarantee that the token price will only rise from here on out. The project’s inflationary token model has put tremendous pressure on $CRV since its existence, causing it to remain weak relative to Ethereum.
Curve incentivizes users to lock $CRV long-term to earn more token issuance and platform fees. The protocol’s TVL has seen nearly $300 million in outflows in June. As the price of CRV decreases, it reduces the value of rewards and negatively affects the fundamentals of the token, potentially triggering a TVL death spiral.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "Foresight News"
Original author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily
