Although it is said that in a bull market, there is speculation in the new rather than in the old. However, after some veteran project developers who have survived the long bear market returned to the poker table and started a new narrative, there are still people in the market paying the price.
Some project parties have initially tasted the benefits. After Arweave (AR) announced its conversion from decentralized data storage to "Ethereum killer", it surged 50% within 24 hours; Nervos Network (CKB) transformed from UTXO-based Layer 1 to a popular After Bitcoin Layer 2, it has increased by more than 300% in the past month.
The currently popular Bitcoin Layer2, AI, and DePIN are the focus of transformation of old projects. What else can be ambushed?
Arweave (AR) – From storage to AI-enabled parallel computing and the “Ethereum killer”
Arweave (AR), founded in 2017, is an established decentralized storage network. On February 27th, Eastern Time, Forward Research, the core organization of the Arweave ecosystem, held an online conference and officially launched the decentralized parallel computing layer AO based on the Arweave permanent storage network to design computing layers for social media and AI.
Subsequently, the price of its native token AR experienced successive breakthroughs and rose, rising from around US$15 to a maximum of US$39.6. It has now fallen back to US$36.9, more than doubling.
The reason behind the surge in AR prices may be that there are two major narrative highlights in Arweave’s AO test network. One is that AO is a hyper-parallel computer that allows any number of processes to be run in parallel at the same time, which is similar to Ethereum's "supercomputer" statement. Arweave founder Williams also claimed that Arweave AO is confident in competing with Ethereum, calling itself an “Ethereum competitor.”
Additionally, Arweave AO allows AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to run directly within smart contracts. It fits in with the popular AI+Crypto narrative. Williams said that the difference between Arweave AO and other high-performance blockchains such as Aptos and Sui is that it can support the storage of large amounts of data, such as AI models.
At present, Arweave AO has launched the test network, and major projects in the Arweave ecosystem, including everPay, MEM, Warp, and Permaswap, have announced plans to access the AO test network.
Nervos (CKB) – From UTXO-based Layer1 to Bitcoin Layer2
Nervos Network (CKB) was established in 2018 and is one of the star public chains in China. It designs Layer 1 underlying public chain solutions specifically for Layer 2.
The Nervos team is considered a star team. The Nervos architect is Xie Hanjian, who co-developed Casper and Sharding with Vitalik Buterin. The founding team includes Terry Tai, the core developer of the Yunbi trading platform, and the former CTO of Yunbi.com and co-founder of imToken. Lu Guoning (Daniel) of people.
Nervos Network received a total of US$100 million in financing in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and many well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Wanxiang Blockchain and China Merchants International participated in the investment.
Nervos started in the second half of 2022 and made little noise. When it reappeared at the end of 2023, its positioning had been switched to Bitcoin Layer 2, and it gained attention because of the differentiation of its technical route.
Although the current Bitcoin Layer 2 track is very popular, there are not many related concept tokens to choose from at the second level. CKB can be said to have taken advantage of the east wind, with the token rising 328% in the past month.
Recently, RGB++ released a roadmap, scheduled to go online at the end of March, to support the issuance and trading of NFTs and FTs. In addition, CKB will launch the CKB Layer 2 Lightning Network by the end of this year and integrate RGB++.
Theta Network (THETA) – From decentralized streaming to DePIN+AI
Theta Network was founded in 2017 as the earliest decentralized video streaming platform on the chain. Theta Network received US$20 million in financing led by Danhua Capital in 2017, and received investments from Samsung Next and Blockchain.com in 2019.
There won’t be much news or action after the second half of 2022 until the end of 2023. In December 2023, DWF Labs committed $1 million to the Theta Labs ecosystem to focus on advancing its latest innovation, Theta Edgecloud, according to official Theta Network news.
On January 28 this year, Theta Network announced its 2024 roadmap, and stated on February 26 that it would launch the first phase of the cloud computing platform EdgeCloud on May 1, 2024. The fully decentralized Theta EdgeCloud will be launched in 2025. Officially released.
According to reports, EdgeCloud is a hybrid cloud computing platform based on a distributed edge architecture and is operated by Theta Labs' cloud hosting nodes. These nodes will run AI video, image generation artificial intelligence models and other AI modeling related tasks for its The operations of partners and Theta community provide a range of AI technology application values.
Theta Network’s native token THETA has risen sharply from around US$1.2 at the end of February to around US$3 currently, an increase of 150%.
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Judging from the above-mentioned veteran projects that have changed narratives, most of the projects are based on the original business and add popular narrative use cases to achieve the purpose of switching narratives. There is a fit between the past business of these projects and the new narrative.
In addition, there are many other established projects that are gaining attention by launching new projects around new narratives. For example, mining companies Marathon and Layer1 blockchain Conflux have announced the launch of Bitcoin Layer2. Conflux’s currency price also rose by 10% in a short time after announcing the launch of Bitcoin Layer 2.
As the narrative sector rotates in the bull market, it is expected that a large number of established projects will gain a sense of presence by following new narratives, so you can pay close attention to them.