Reference source Bankless
The Bankless analysis team recently made predictions on the future trends of 16 tokens for the next three months, including mainstream tokens and popular tokens in the L1 track, L2 track, LSD track, and other tracks. This article will summarize the predictions and reasons of the Bankless analyst team for readers' reference.
L1 Sector
Solana (SOL)
View: Bearish
Reason: Poor performance of meme market, increased selling pressure
Prediction period: June 21, 2024, to September 21, 2024
Predicted price: $132.79
Performance to date: Up 5.88%
The Bankless analysis team expects that with the further decline of the meme coin craze, SOL's future performance will not be as good as ETH.
Although SOL performed remarkably from October 2023 to March 2024, reaching a high price of $200, the novelty of the ecosystem seems to have peaked, with key on-chain metrics (including daily active addresses and DEX trading volume) stagnating throughout June.
Solana seized the meme coin issuance trend in this cycle with its low fees and unified global state, but in recent weeks, meme coins have performed poorly.
Top native meme coins on Solana, WIF and BONK, have dropped by over 50% from their highs in May, while other meme coins have fared even worse. Previously popular celebrity meme coins have mostly approached zero, despite the view that the fading meme craze indicates Solana's healthy move towards mass adoption. However, as Solana users increasingly realize the limited profits from on-chain meme coins, they may consider cashing out, leading to a deterioration of Solana's fundamentals and increased selling pressure on SOL.
Polkadot (DOT)
View: Bearish
Reason: Massive improper spending compounded by token inflation
Prediction period: July 3, 2024, to October 3, 2024
Predicted price: $2.38
Performance to date: Down 7.98%
The Bankless analysis team believes that its foundation may go bankrupt earlier than expected, as future spending and DOT inflation 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, implemented a year ago to better inform and control the chain's governance process.
In the first half of 2024, Polkadot's fiscal year net loss was approximately 17 million DOT (108 million USD), assuming the price of DOT (96% of the fiscal value) remains unchanged. At the current consumption rate, the funds can only sustain the project's operation for another two years.
The largest expenditure category is "promotion," totaling 37 million USD, including some outrageous projects, such as: 10 million USD for sports team sponsorship, 7.9 million USD for conference events, 478,000 USD for animated logos on the Coinmarketcap homepage, and 180,000 USD for private jet promotional paint.
Although the Polkadot ecosystem spent a large amount of money in 2024 to gain attention, its token has depreciated by over 50% against Ethereum in the first six months of this year.
Toncoin (TON)
View: Neutral
Reason: Potential for future growth, but over-reliance on Telegram
Prediction period: June 17, 2024, to September 17, 2024
Predicted price: $7.88
Performance to date: Down 4.42%
The Bankless analysis team acknowledges that the network has the potential for future growth, but is concerned that at a fully diluted valuation of 40 billion USD, the investment value of the company's proprietary blockchain is not yet clear.
Although the TON network has struggled to gain effective applications in the past, its growth has accelerated exponentially as its creator, Telegram, has brought increasing utility to the network.
In September last year, Telegram launched a self-hosted encrypted wallet, allowing users easy access to the TON network. In February this year, Telegram doubled down on promoting cryptocurrency, announcing that it would allow advertising clients to use TON to purchase channel promotions and share 50% of the fees with channel operators. Then in April, Telegram partnered with Tether, allowing its wallet users to send USDT for free.
In 2024, TON network's TVL surged by 4200% to reach 610 million USD, while the number of daily active addresses also increased significantly.
The TON network seems to be in the early stages of establishing a unique and viable on-chain ecosystem; its native Notcoin meme coin reached a valuation of 2 billion USD, with over 150 million addresses participating in the Hamster Combat click-to-earn game, which promises to airdrop tokens to participants.
Although the TON network has indeed successfully achieved significant growth so far, its future prospects are still somewhat uncertain. If Telegram's model of creating revenue through a proprietary blockchain proves successful, other companies may eventually launch their own networks to compete with the TON network. However, it is undeniable that introducing new users now would have a strong first-mover advantage, making the TON network a general blockchain solution for other companies wishing to experiment on-chain.
Avalanche (AVAX)
View: Bullish
Reason: Prospects for AVAX futures listing, less resistance for spot AVAX ETF approval
Prediction period: June 28, 2024, to September 28, 2024
Predicted price: $27.99
Performance to date: Down 8.41%
The Bankless analysis team expects the token to perform well in the coming months as the market begins to digest the unexpected ETF approval narrative.
On June 28, Coinbase Derivatives, as a designated contract market (DCM) registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), submitted certification documents for listing SHIB, LINK, AVAX, XLM, and DOT futures to its regulatory agency.
Although the recent submission of the spot SOL ETF has sparked hopes that Solana will become the next crypto asset offered to traditional finance, the SEC continues to insist that SOL is a security in multiple lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges, coupled with the lack of a regulated futures market, making its approval unlikely.
Compared to SOL, AVAX has not been designated as a security by the SEC; the approval of CME futures paves the way for the approval of spot AVAX ETF, just like BTC and ETH.
Near (NEAR)
View: Bearish
Reason: Leveraging short-term AI speculation, lacks competitive advantage in the long term
Prediction period: June 25, 2024, to September 25, 2024
Predicted price: $5.5
Performance to date: Down 5.48%
Although Near is trying to position itself as a project in the AI track leveraging the (unconfirmed) AI x Crypto speculation from Nvidia's March developer conference, the network currently has almost no notable developments in AI.
Although Near co-founder Illia Polosukhin previously served as an AI researcher, the reality is that any blockchain that can provide fast consensus can serve as the foundation for AI development, and his project has no competitive advantage in terms of user base and TVL compared to other L1 projects.
Despite NEAR's strong short-term performance, without unique ecosystem applications that attract users and capital, the token is likely to lag behind major competitors such as ETH and SOL in the near future.
L2 Sector
Arbitrum (ARB)
View: Bearish
Reason: Saturated L2 sector, token unlocking brings selling pressure
Prediction period: June 27, 2024, to September 27, 2024
Predicted price: $0.82
Performance to date: Down 5.26%
The Bankless analysis team expects ARB to perform better than other L2s in the coming months, but overall industry dilution and ARB unlocking are likely to result in the token's price underperforming compared to ETH.
The Arbitrum DAO proposal aims to allocate 50% of the remaining sequencer fees to ARB delegators on its Tally governance center, paying stakers in ETH at an annualized yield of about 7%. Staking rewards are expected to be activated in September, and support for ARB liquidity staking tokens will also be introduced, allowing delegators to earn additional yield in DeFi.
While adding non-inflationary actual yield in ARB creates additional economic value for holders, it does not guarantee that the ARB token will outperform ETH. The launch of each new L2 token and the unlocking of existing tokens bring selling pressure for investors, and as L2 technology becomes increasingly commoditized and decentralized, the valuations of all L2s will be diluted.
Arbitrum alone unlocks 100 million tokens to its team and investors every month, while the Arbitrum DAO holds 3.5 billion ARB, which may be distributed to the market, and has allocated 225 million ARB for a controversial game incentive plan in the next three years.
Blast (BLAST)
View: Bearish
Reason: Unideal valuation, significant selling pressure after airdrop
Prediction period: June 26, 2024, to September 26, 2024
Predicted price: $0.02
Performance to date: Down 25.08%
The Bankless analysis team expects that future incentives will fail to spark user interest as in the past, leading more and more holders to realize the network's potential unsustainability.
Shortly after its launch on June 26, BLAST had a fully diluted valuation of about 20 billion USD, ranking eighth in Ethereum L2, far below the top low-circulating L2s, and even lagging behind L2s with lower adoption rates but higher circulation, such as Mantle and Immutable.
Throughout June, many assets in the Blast native ecosystem were heavily sold off. Despite attempts for a rebound after BLAST's listing, it was not successful, indicating that users are cashing out to seek other opportunities. The primary motivation for users to deposit Blast was to receive airdrops, and the unexpectedly low valuation of BLAST reduced the attractiveness of future incentives. With deteriorating on-chain fundamentals in the coming months, BLAST will face significant selling pressure.
StarkNet (STRK)
View: Bearish
Reason: Intensifying competition, lack of booming ecosystem applications to support development
Prediction period: June 18, 2024, to September 18, 2024
Predicted price: $0.75
Performance to date: Down 0.07%
The Bankless analysis team expects that without a sudden surge of booming Starknet ecosystem applications, the token's performance will continue to lag behind ETH.
Although STRK briefly saw on-chain activity from the airdrop in late February, the ecosystem's heyday seems to have passed. Several key metrics of Starknet (including daily trading volume and active addresses) peaked in September 2023 and have not reached those highs again, even with airdrop incentives.
Competitor zero-knowledge rollup ZKsync announced the opening of ZK token claims on June 17, causing STRK's price to plummet by nearly 30% in the hours following its release.
While Starknet has implemented the Cairo virtual machine, allowing developers to bypass technical limitations present in EVM chains, this approach has made interaction with the ecosystem difficult for users and developers. Although some views suggest that this is beneficial for the development of certain areas such as full-chain games, no breakthrough applications that can sustain long-term on-chain usage have been seen in the Starknet ecosystem.
The launch of ZK provides investors with a liquid token for purchasing zero-knowledge proof technology, weakening STRK's technology-centric narrative. Additionally, the introduction of a large number of new L2 tokens and the expected unlocking of industry tokens represent future supply that must be absorbed, which will dilute the valuations of all Ethereum rollups.
Optimism (OP)
View: Bearish
Reason:Low user perception of new features, dragged down by the overall environment
Prediction period: June 11, 2024, to September 11, 2024
Predicted price: $2.14
Performance to date: Down 16.84%
Although the release of the dispute resolution feature is an important step in achieving a "superchain" on Optimism, allowing anyone to challenge incorrect information published by the sequencer and withdraw ETH/ERC20 without permission, it has not had a positive impact on the price of OP tokens. Ironically, since announcing this major upgrade, the OP token has actually slightly underperformed its competitors MATIC and ARB.
Cryptocurrency users have historically paid little attention to the security status of the L2s they transact on, with a large TVL migrating to insecure "Stage 0" rollups (just glorified multisigs). While Optimism now enjoys a similar "Stage 1" classification to Arbitrum One, this achievement is only the minimum requirement. Vitalik stated in March that by the end of 2024, only networks with Stage 1+ will be allowed to be called "rollups".
Instead, in the environment of new L2 token issuance and token unlocking, the future performance of OP tokens will be lower than ETH.
LSD Sector
ether.fi (ETHFI)
View: Bearish
Reason: Intensifying competition, stagnant TVL
Prediction period: July 2, 2024, to October 2, 2024
Predicted price: $6.5
Performance to date: Down 7.54%
The Bankless analysis team expects that a significant portion of its funds will soon be rotated from Mellow Finance to Symbiotic Retaking, weakening growth due to overvaluation and causing further price declines for the token.
The leading liquidity restaking project ether.fi saw its TVL stagnate in June, with a monthly growth rate of only 7%, the lowest since October 2023. Although ETHFI's staking volume is less than 80%, its fully diluted valuation is still 40% higher than LDO. This mispricing is prevalent among all LRT issuers, driven by the low circulation of their tokens and investor optimism about the industry's growth potential.
While ether.fi attempts to expand its restaking protocol beyond business by creating a "Liquid" strategy treasury and proprietary credit card, the protocol's EigenLayer-based restaking model faces fierce competition from other restaking models.
Pendle Finance (PENDLE)
View: Bullish
Reason: Strong fundamentals, potential airdrops
Prediction period: June 24, 2024, to September 24, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $5.58
Performance to date: Down 1.81%
The Bankless analysis team expects the token to continue to perform well as the protocol can generate high yields and potentially receive airdrops.
In the first half of 2024, PENDLE was undoubtedly one of the best-performing fundamental (i.e., not meme coins) liquidity crypto assets, with over 500% year-to-date gains at its peak in April and May.
Although the arrival of Ethena and EigenLayer airdrops may have a negative impact on Pendle, the protocol's TVL increased by over 50% from its low point in May and broke through $7 billion multiple times in June.
Lido (LDO)
View: Bullish
Reason: Development of staking and restaking, huge future potential
Prediction period: June 12, 2024, to September 12, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $1.88
Performance to date: Down 7.98%
The Bankless analysis team expects the market to undervalue the strong role stETH plays in restaking.
In 2024, restaking has been an important narrative in the crypto industry, increasing yields by restaking assets with minimal additional risk. The working principle of LRT (Liquid Restaking Tokens) is similar to Lido's stETH, but it adds restaking yields and airdrop incentives (from EigenLayer and LRT issuers).
To compete, Lido has partnered with Mellow Finance to implement restaking for its LST. Mellow Finance is a platform using Symbiotic's LRT, and Symbiotic is a competitor of EigenLayer supported by Lido's core staff and investors.
A significant portion of users depositing into the EigenLayer ecosystem is for airdrops, making it easy for depositors to switch to investing in Symbiotic. Because Lido has invested in Symbiotic, they have an incentive to drive the development of the Symbiotic ecosystem, meaning these whales can deposit a large amount of stETH into Mellow's treasury to establish the most liquid stETH restaking protocol.
Lido has made itself the ideal staking solution by offering regular Ethereum staking products and a slightly riskier liquidity restaking protocol, serving market participants with different risk preferences.
Other Sectors
Worldcoin (WLD)
View: Bearish
Reason: Massive unlocking, lack of focused ecosystem progress
Prediction period: July 1, 2024, to October 1, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $2.34
Performance to date: Down 7.26%
The Bankless analysis team expects the unlocking of WLD tokens to further depress the price, and with a lack of focused ecosystem progress, this selling pressure will be more pronounced.
NVIDIA achieved a significant increase in stock price in the first three months of 2024, sparking enthusiasm for AI. While WLD, as a cryptocurrency related to AI, did not start performing until early February, its price also rose by 440% in just one month.
Velodrome (VELO)
View: Bullish
Reason: Strong intellectual property protection, long-term returns for holders
Prediction period: June 20, 2024, to September 20, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $0.11
Performance to date: Down 9.21%
Velodrome's Business Software License (BSL) restricts exchanges from being copied and forked, allowing only licensed participants to operate. This feature prompted the native Aerodrome fork of Base to distribute 40% of the initial AERO supply to veVELO lockers as a reward for obtaining DAO approval.
Coinbase listed VELO and AERO in February, and while both tokens have been on the rise since then, AERO's performance has been far superior to its predecessor, backed by the Base Season hype and direct endorsement from Coinbase through its Base ecosystem fund.
Although AERO's recent strong performance has attracted many, VELO holders will enjoy the benefits of BSL through locking, and may receive long-term returns from deploying fork projects using its codebase in the future.
Ethena (ENA)
View: Bearish
Reason: Insufficient revenue generation capability and security protection
Prediction period: June 14, 2024, to September 14, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $0.72
Performance to date: Down 37.22%
The Bankless analysis team believes that Ethena lacks sufficient revenue generation capability and security protection for the future.
In recent weeks, Ethena's decision to reduce the income extraction rate from its insurance fund from 50% to 20% has increased returns for staked USDe holders, leading to an increase in Ethena's deposits.
Curve Finance (CRV)
View: Bearish
Reason: Unsustainable current token model
Prediction period: June 13, 2024, to September 13, 2024
Predicted price at the time: $0.28
Performance to date: Down 3.24%
The Bankless analysis team stated that while the founder's forced liquidation triggered the decline, Curve's high inflation token model may also be unsustainable.
Founder Michael Egorov previously had nearly $100 million in outstanding stablecoin loans, using 350 million CRV as collateral, spread across five different lending protocols. Subsequently, depositors of these protocols began withdrawing liquidity from the CRV market, causing both the utilization rate and borrowing rate of CRV collateral to soar, further squeezing Egorov.
Although Egorov's liquidation has been largely completed and the CRV oversupply issue has been resolved, this does not guarantee that the token price will only rise from now on. The project's inflation token model has put immense pressure on CRV since its existence, keeping it relatively weak compared to Ether.
Curve incentivizes users to lock CRV for the long term to earn more token issuance and platform fees. The protocol's TVL saw nearly $300 million in outflows in June. As the CRV price declines, reducing the value of rewards, it has a negative impact on the token's fundamentals, potentially triggering a death spiral of TVL.
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