Appchains, zkEVMs... One Article to Understand the Narratives and Projects with Growth Potential in a Bear Market

Written by: Crypto Andrew

Translated by: TechFlow

Everyone knows that the best way to profit in crypto is to get in before everyone else.

That’s also why many people are constantly trying to find or predict the next narrative. Let’s speculate based on existing clues about which narratives might be brewing and where one could place bets for maximum returns.

Meme Chains

During the last bull run, we saw many meme coins outperform the broader market, and numerous individuals became wealthy through meme coins.

This lesson taught me that no token should ever be underestimated in crypto.

Therefore, I believe speculating on meme chains with strong faith and vibrant communities could be a solid strategy.

Take Dogechain, for example — even during this bear market, it generated significant interest, despite the FOMO being relatively short-lived. Just imagine how different things could be during a bull market?

There are rumors about ShibainuCoin's official chain launching soon, as well as KekChain. I'm not necessarily bullish on them, but they’re definitely worth watching.

Berachain

I intentionally separated it from meme chains because I believe in its vision and think it has the potential to achieve something much bigger.

Berachain is still in a very early stage, and we need to pay attention to how it evolves. I’ve always been supportive of novel designs within cryptocurrency.

It’s said to launch in Q1 2023, so we still have plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with its design and the protocols being built on top of it.

Cosmos Ecosystem

While I’m not an expert on Cosmos, my understanding of it likely runs deeper than most.

Clearly, developer adoption and recent upgrades are driving Cosmos into becoming a particularly hot narrative right now.

I’m closely monitoring $ATOM, $KUJI, $OSMO, and $SCRT.

Cosmos isn’t a new ecosystem, and there’s already abundant information available, so I won’t go into too much detail here.

New Layer 1s

Yes, the entire space is buzzing about Aptos’ token and its anticipated airdrop. Due to their high hype and valuations, I won’t be buying APT or Sui in the short term. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ignore these two ecosystems altogether.

Both projects raised massive funding, so clearly their foundations will drive ecosystem growth. We can reasonably expect talented teams and promising projects to emerge on these chains. This reminds me of early Solana and its native projects.

Of course, on the flip side, one must also watch out for potential institutional dumping. Taking all this into account, I believe that even if you don’t buy APT or Sui directly, you should keep an eye on interesting projects being built on these L1s.

ZK Rollups and ZK-EVMs

They are the highly anticipated Ethereum scaling solutions, with dozens of technically strong teams already deeply involved.

The technology isn’t fully mature yet, and the narrative hasn’t fully formed, but they’re already hyped and drawing significant attention.

Here are the key players in this space worth watching:

• Polygon

• Scroll

• Zksync

• StarkWare

• Loopring

• Aztec Network

Cross/Multi-Chain Projects

With more and more new L1s, ZK-EVMs, and meme chains emerging, a potential narrative is that the future will be cross-chain/multi-chain.

Moreover, an increasing number of projects are building on various cross/multi-chain solutions. It makes perfect sense to focus on projects enabling interoperability across different blockchains.

Key players in this space include:

• Synapse Protocol $SYN

• Stargate Finance $STG

• Router Protocol $ROUTE

• THORSwap $RUNE

App Chains

dYdX sparked a new possible narrative — an increasing number of projects are considering launching their own chain or L2.

These are mainly blue-chip and large-scale protocols, and their migration could unlock new utility for their tokens, thereby increasing their value.

NFTFi

Undoubtedly, the NFT market is huge and poised for rapid growth in the future.

However, today’s infrastructure around NFTs is extremely limited, causing most collections to lose value over time.

Of course, in blockchain, every problem invites a solution.

More and more projects are working hard to solve issues like NFT illiquidity, price discovery, sustainable floor prices, and affordable transaction costs.

Additionally, the success of Sudoswap $XMON has inspired many others.

Some notable projects:

• Abacus

• GumBall Protocol

• NFTperp

• n00dleSwap

Options AMMs and Infrastructure

Everyone knows how massive options markets are in TradFi, but in DeFi, they’re still in their infancy.

Currently, there’s a lack of user-friendly projects that make options accessible to average users — one of the main barriers to on-chain options adoption.

Therefore, protocols that can solve key challenges (such as difficult usability, lack of liquidity, and inflexibility) will attract the most TVL and attention, boosting both revenue and token prices.

Some interesting projects I’ve identified in this space:

• Premia Finance

• Lyra

• Aevo

Conclusion

As you can see, even in a bear market, we have plenty to explore — there are still many latent narratives waiting to be discovered.

Some will explode; some won’t. But either way, knowing which areas to watch is far easier than blindly searching.

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