With no major moves in the valuations of largest cryptocurrencies last week the total cryptocurrency market capitalization still lingers below $1 trillion. The only notable exception was Ripple (XRP), which gained almost 20% last week as investors still await the resolution of the SEC legal battle. Nevertheless, this was not enough to cause a noteworthy increase the total market capitalization, which stood at $962 billion at the beginning of this week. In hopes that we will soon see more green numbers and a market cap higher than $1 trillion, we place our bets on the following three projects this week.
3. Tamadoge (TAMA)
Tamadoge (TAMA) is a relatively new memecoin that serves as the native currency of the project’s metaverse dubbed Tamaverse. The main protagonists in this metaverse game that follows Play-to-Earn (P2E) mechanics are Tamadoge pets, which are essentially non-fungible token-powered animated creatures. The Tamadoge developers are also preparing a designated Tamadoge augmented reality (AR) app that will further enhance the metaverse experience. The launch of the app is scheduled for Q4 2023 while the Tamadoge NFT Petstore is set to roll out in Q1 2023.
Tamadoge rallied on the tailwind of its first CEX listing
Tamadoge saw extreme bullish activity in the days following the beginning of the TAMA trading. The project saw its centralized exchange (CEX) debut on September 27, when it was listed on the OKX crypto exchange. On the same day, TAMA trading pairs were added to the MEXC and LBank trading platforms as well.
Since then, TAMA was listed on several other exchanges, including BKEX and Coinsbit. The avalanche of listings itself produced a notable TAMA rally, but the bulls gained true momentum only after the Tamadoge team revealed that they have applied for a Binance listing. In speculative expectations of a Binance listing, TAMA price surged up to almost $0.193 per token. Early stage investors, who bought the token during the first round of the pre-sale in July when the price was only $0.01 per TAMA token, could have pocketed hefty returns if they sold at that price on October 4. While the price of TAMA has since retraced back to around $0.04 per token, the token has not been listed on Binance yet, which could indicate that the Binance team is still reviewing the application. Should Binance list TAMA a new rally is almost certain. Could TAMA surge above $0.50 this time? Leaving speculations about a potential Binance listing aside, Tamadoge could also be a good fit for a longer-term investment if you believe in the long-term success of the project’s metaverse game.
2. NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
NEAR is a highly scalable and developer-friendly Layer 1 blockchain competing with Ethereum, Solana and similar networks. Utilizing delegated Proof-of-Stake combined with Nightshade sharding mechanism allows the network to perform up to 100,000 transactions per second. In addition, the developers of NEAR Protocol claim that you can create simple decentralized apps (dApps) on NEAR in just five minutes using Pagoda’s library of pre-audited templates and auto-generated contract user interfaces. However, there are currently not many decentralized applications deployed on its ecosystem. According to DeFi Llama, the total vale locked (TVL) in 11 protocols running on NEAR is only $265 million. This is likely going to change soon as there are reportedly more than 800 projects building on the protocol.
NEAR Protocol partners with Google Cloud
Last week NEAR Foundation announced a new partnership between Google Cloud and NEAR Protocol. Google Cloud has set up the infrastructure for NEAR’s Remote Procedure Call (RPC) node provider NEAR’s Web3 start-up platform called Pagoda. In addition, Google Cloud will also provide technical support for NEAR grant recipients as part of the newly established partnership. The Google subsidiary’s team will help NEAR dApp developers scale their Web3 projects and dApps to the point where they are able to withstand mainstream adoption.
NEAR Foundation hopes that the partnership will help them supercharge innovation within NEAR ecosystem. Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, stated that the partnership represents an important milestone in the blockchain’s development:
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with those who pioneered the Internet as we know it. This partnership marks a new chapter for us as we continue to offer the best support possible for the next generation of visionaries choosing to build on the NEAR protocol.”
Furthermore, NEAR Protocol is one of the networks that will start natively supporting USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin by the end of 2022. The ability to integrate stablecoin payments flows directly into JavaScript and Rust-based decentralized application could attract new projects to build on the secure and highly scalable NEAR network.
1. Chainlink (LINK)
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that provides data and price oracles, which act as a reliable feed of off-chain information for some smart contracts. The project launched in 2017, when it also raised $32 million of funding through an ICO. Chainlink’s cryptocurrency price and real-world data oracles have seen numerous implementations and their popularity is still increasing. Their oracle service is one of the most reliable and trustworthy services available and the connection with smart contracts is end-to-end secured, leaving very little space for the manipulation of the execution of smart contracts. Another Chainlink feature is Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which proved to be very useful as providing a source of verifiable randomness in blockchain gaming and when minting NFTs.
While LINK staking is scheduled for full deployment in December, the BUILD and SCALE programs are already accepting applicants
Chainlink developers have made several important announcements on the project’s SmartCon 2022 conference recently held in New York. While attendees were most thrilled to get to know more details regarding the LINK staking roadmap, several other programs that could prove to be beneficial for the project’s future performance were also revealed. According to Sergey Nazarov, the project’s co-founder, the long-awaited staking service will be rolled-out gradually with the initial beta version of Chainlink staking (v0.1) set to hit the Ethereum mainnet in December 2022. Initially the amount of LINK in the staking pool will be capped at 25 million tokens, but there are already plans to increase the limit to 75 million tokens if there is sufficient demand. At first, only the community members that meet the specific “Holder”, “Builder” or “Educator” criteria will be allowed to participate in staking. Chainlink team has set-up a special application, where you can check whether you are eligible for Early Access.
The data oracle project also announced two significant programs as a part of the transition to Chainlink Economics 2.0. The two programs called BUILD and SCALE are aimed at ensuring the long-term economic and technical sustainability of the Chainlink ecosystem respectively. SCALE, which stands for Sustainable Chainlink Access for Layer 1 and 2 Enablement is a Chainlink’s initiative, in which blockchain projects utilizing Chainlink’s oracles are encouraged to offset operating costs of those oracle networks by channelling a part of their financial flow to Chainlink. Besides providing financial stability of Chainlink’s services, this practice could in turn accelerate the growth, security and innovation of the ecosystem, allowing data oracle users to benefit from it in the long run. Several projects, including but not limited to Avalanche, Metis, Moonbeam, and Moonriver have already supported the initiative. BUILD, on the other hand, is a program, whose goal is to accelerate the growth of projects within the Chainlink ecosystem. This is done by giving the teams of developers enhanced access to Chainlink services and providing them technical support. The projects opting in for participation in BUILD will have to dedicate a portion of their token supply or fees to Chainlink. In addition to these initiatives, the Chainlink team will also be hosting the Chainlink hackathon between October 14 and November 18. With up to $300,000 in prizes, the Fall 2022 hackathon has the potential to sprout some new Chainlink use-cases.
