Established projects showcase a counter-trend market! With an average monthly increase of 62%, what are the narratives of "new sprouts" behind it?

Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the overall cryptocurrency market has weakened, with most assets erasing their annual gains in a short period. Surprisingly, a group of "old faces" that have gone through multiple cycles have risen against the trend as liquidity tightens. These narratives have long been demystified by the market, raising concerns about a "doomsday vehicle" market.

This article by PANews compiles 11 well-established projects that have seen significant gains recently. As of November 11, they have averaged an increase of about 55.3% over the past 30 days, with ZEC and ICP performing particularly well, both recovering from the sharp declines on October 11. However, compared to historical peaks, the declines are still generally around 90%. Behind these "old trees sprouting new buds," there are not only market calls but also multiple factors such as technological upgrades, ecological construction, and token empowerment supporting their counter-trend performance.

Zcash (ZEC)

Zcash is a major driving force behind the current privacy trend. According to CoinGecko, ZEC has risen 151.2% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since January 2018, but is still down about 79.1% from its historical peak.

The increase in market attention partly comes from public endorsements by Silicon Valley angel investor Naval and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, among others. Meanwhile, Zcash's product and ecological progress has also coincided with the price increase. In October, Grayscale announced that the Zcash Trust Fund was open for private placement to qualified investors; in November, Zcash developer ECC released its roadmap for the fourth quarter, focusing on reducing technical debt, improving Zashi user privacy and usability, and ensuring smooth management of the development fund; subsequently, the Zcash Foundation launched a new official website to strengthen the construction of privacy financial infrastructure.

Additionally, Zcash's second halving in November 2024, which reduced block rewards and decreased new market supply, has also provided some support for the price.

Dash (DASH)

According to CoinGecko, DASH has increased by about 104.5% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since December 2021, but is still down as much as 94.6% from its historical peak. In response, Dash stated that its recent price performance is not a sudden occurrence but stems from long-term fundamental development. The five major achievements over the past few years include the release of DashSpend, in-depth research on bill payment issues, comprehensive improvements to confidential payment features, DEX support (added to Maya Protocol), and the launch of the decentralized application platform Evolution.

Monero (XMR)

As the privacy narrative becomes a market focus, Monero's attention has significantly increased. According to CoinGecko, XMR's price has risen 43.6% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since May 2021, but is still down 22.7% from its historical peak.

In October, Monero released the Fluorine Fermi major upgrade, significantly enhancing user protection against "spy nodes." It has since released software and wallet updates and held several technical, research, and community-related meetings, while continuing to advance the community proposal system (CCS).

NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

According to CoinGecko, NEAR has risen 20.6% in the past month, but is still down 85.5% from its historical peak.

Last month, NEAR Protocol announced that House of Stake has officially launched on the mainnet, allowing users to lock NEAR, gaining governance rights and corresponding rewards. Additionally, NEAR Protocol's transaction execution framework, Near Intents (which supports cross-chain native transactions, rapid settlement, and AI-friendly features), is also an important engine for its ecological recovery, with a cumulative transaction volume reaching $4.5 billion, including nearly $1.1 billion in the past week and cumulative fees of $8.2 million.

Regarding tokens, a recent proposal to halve NEAR's annual inflation rate to 2.5% did not meet the voting threshold and was therefore not passed, but the core team still plans to incorporate related inflation halving content into the upcoming protocol upgrade. Furthermore, Nasdaq-listed shipping company OceanPal announced in October the completion of a $120 million PIPE to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, SovereignAI, in collaboration with the NEAR Foundation to create a NEAR-based crypto treasury and confidential AI cloud platform.

Internet Computer (ICP)

Driven by AI products, Internet Computer has once again attracted market attention. According to CoinGecko, ICP has risen 111.1% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high this year, but is still down 99% from its historical peak.

Recently, the DFINITY Foundation released product updates for the DeAI platform Caffeine running on ICP, which is now open to everyone. This product allows users to quickly generate, deploy, and iterate complete Web3 applications through natural language chat, without the need for programming skills.

Uniswap

On November 11, with the proposal to launch protocol fees and the UNI burn mechanism, the price of UNI surged. According to CoinGecko, UNI has risen 43.6% in the past 30 days. Compared to historical highs, UNI is still down 80.4%.

On November 11, Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation jointly initiated a governance proposal called the "UNIfication Proposal," aimed at activating the protocol fee mechanism, implementing UNI token burns, and establishing a Uniswap growth budget to unify the incentive mechanisms across the entire Uniswap ecosystem, thereby making the Uniswap protocol the default DEX for tokenized value.

Filecoin (FIL)

According to CoinGecko, FIL has risen about 51.5% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high in nearly 8 months, but is still down about 98.9% from its historical peak.

Filecoin is accelerating its transformation from decentralized storage to on-chain cloud services by combining AI and DePIN narratives. Over the past month, Filecoin has continued to focus on infrastructure and ecological construction, emphasizing data storage, cross-chain interoperability, and fee optimization. For example, in October, Filecoin Pin was officially released, supporting one-click anchoring of IPFS content to the Filecoin chain, achieving cryptographically verifiable persistent storage, and integrating CLI and GitHub Actions, significantly lowering the barrier for developers to go on-chain; the v26 network upgrade halved gas fees, driving growth in daily new storage contracts and active contracts; the ecological fund injected 500,000 FIL (worth millions of dollars) into over 200 ecosystem projects through the RetroPGF-3 program; recently, Filecoin hinted at transitioning from a storage network to on-chain cloud services, supporting on-chain data retrieval and computing services, with an official page launched and whitelist applications open; Filecoin also recently partnered with Akave Cloud to launch a decentralized object storage service compatible with S3 interfaces, assisting enterprises and DePIN in migrating to blockchain storage.

Arweave (AR)

With the rapid expansion of AI applications and the accelerated construction of global data center infrastructure, the demand for high-performance storage chips continues to rise, driving a comprehensive warming of the storage-related ecosystem. Decentralized storage projects like Arweave have also gained funding attention. According to CoinGecko, AR has risen about 31.7% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high in nearly 3 months, but is still down about 93.8% from its historical peak.

Starknet (STRK)

Recently, with the rise of zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology and the privacy sector, Starknet has gained market attention. Notably, Starknet shares a co-founder with Zcash, Eli Ben-Sasson, which has also contributed to its increased visibility. According to CoinGecko, STRK has risen about 50.3% in the past 30 days, but is still down about 96.1% from its historical peak.

In terms of technology and ecology, Starknet has been active recently. For instance, Starknet recently launched the Bitcoin yield product Starknet Earn and started beta testing; Circle's native USDC and CCTP V2 were announced to be live on Starknet; Starkware released a new version, Starknet v0.14.1; recently, StarkWare announced that it has deployed its next-generation open-source S-two prover on the Starknet mainnet, which the company claims is currently the fastest and most privacy-protecting proof system in production environments.

ZKsync (ZK)

Recently, ZKsync has gained attention due to the endorsement of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and its ZK technology. According to CoinGecko, ZK has risen about 39.8% in the past 30 days, but is still down about 82.8% from its historical peak.

In terms of technology, ZKsync recently launched the Atlas upgrade of the ZK Stack, introducing high-performance sorters to achieve sub-second transaction confirmations and faster cross-chain settlements. This provides a faster and more flexible infrastructure for enterprises and institutions to migrate their business to the blockchain.

Regarding tokens, ZKsync founder Alex recently proposed a significant update to the token economic model. In the future, ZK tokens will no longer be used solely for governance; their core mechanism will be that all revenue generated by the network will be used to repurchase and burn ZK tokens, thereby promoting the formation of a self-reinforcing sustainable economic system for ZKsync.

Neo (NEO)

According to CoinGecko, NEO has risen 16.1% in the past 30 days, with a decline of 97.3% from its historical peak. Over the past month, Neo has made multiple advancements in technology and the market. For example, Neo deployed the NEO X mainnet v0.4.2 upgrade, introducing protective measures against maximum extractable value (MEV) exploitation at the consensus level; Neo officially shut down the Legacy mainnet; the core codebase of Neo X was officially opened to the community; recently, Neo and SpoonOS jointly launched the Scoop AI hackathon.

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