Solana, Avalanche, and Helium led the rise in crypto assets this year—what should you watch next year?
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Solana, Avalanche, and Helium led the rise in crypto assets this year—what should you watch next year?
Christmas brings another rally—after SOL's surge, which themes could become key areas to watch next year?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Lyllah Ledesma, CoinDesk
Translation: Felix, PANews
In 2023, Solana (SOL) led the gains, followed closely by Avalanche (AVAX), Stacks (STX), and Helium (HNT). Additionally, Bitcoin had a strong year, with growing market optimism that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved early next year.
Solana began its sharp rise in mid-October and has surged over 700% since the beginning of the year. In June, despite the U.S. SEC naming SOL and other tokens as "unregistered securities" in its complaint against Coinbase, the market continued upward unaffected by the allegations.
Although Solana is closely associated with the now-bankrupt exchange FTX and its founder SBF, SOL's market performance remained resilient. SBF was a prominent supporter of Solana and acquired over $1 billion worth of SOL through his firms Alameda Research and FTX.
Much of SOL’s gains occurred after SBF’s trial concluded. Since then, monthly active addresses on the Solana network have increased, and multiple memecoins have launched—including BONK, which recently debuted on Coinbase.
Brian Rudick, senior strategist at GSR, said: "After FTX collapsed, there were doubts about Solana in the market, but as on-chain activity grew, awareness of its innovative technology increased, and several high-profile airdrops took place, Solana ended up thriving."
HNT
Helium’s native token HNT also delivered substantial returns in 2023, rising 500% for the year—much of it realized in December. In April, Helium migrated from its own blockchain to Solana. Helium is a blockchain-based Internet of Things (IoT) network that uses nodes as hotspots to connect wireless devices to the internet.
According to Christopher Martin, research director at Amberdata, 2023 was a pivotal year for Helium as it expanded into mobile services. Martin said: "The Helium network appears to have significant plans in mobile and IoT, allowing users to earn MOBILE tokens by supporting the network and use those tokens to pay monthly bills—a flywheel effect for the ecosystem."
Martin also noted: "The recent BONK craze caused Solana Saga phones to sell out (since the phone included a BONK airdrop), and the Saga phone also offers a 30-day free subscription to Helium Mobile. In short, due to the symbiotic relationship between user growth and network effects, the market is increasingly optimistic about both MOBILE and HNT as the mobile network expands."
AVAX
For Avalanche, partnerships with major institutions helped drive up the token price. AVAX is up 300% year-to-date. In January, Avalanche announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and in November, it announced a partnership with JPMorgan (specifically, JPMorgan’s digital asset platform Onyx partnered with alternative asset manager Apollo, leveraging the cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero to connect Onyx with the permissioned Avalanche Evergreen subnet, enabling fund subscriptions and redemptions via Wisdom Tree Prime’s tokenized asset offerings).
Chris Newhouse, founder of DeFi advisory firm Infiniti Labs, said Avalanche’s rally this year was primarily news-driven. In an interview, Newhouse stated: "Avalanche made significant progress in institutional partnerships, teaming up with Apollo and JPMorgan, as well as AWS earlier in the year, positioning itself as one of the top blockchains favorable for institutional activity."
In terms of price movement, Bitcoin also performed strongly this year, largely driven by enthusiasm around potential spot Bitcoin ETF approvals. So far this year, the cryptocurrency has risen 164%. Brian Rudick, senior strategist at GSR, said in an interview that ETF speculation was the main catalyst, with favorable macroeconomic conditions also contributing positively.
STX
Stacks (STX), the native token of the Stacks Network, rose 623% this year. In March, STX rebounded alongside the rise of Bitcoin Ordinals and growing total value locked (TVL) on the protocol.
STX was the first token offering recognized as qualified by the U.S. SEC in 2019. Stacks is a Bitcoin Layer 2 protocol for smart contracts, aiming to expand Bitcoin’s functionality from a mere alternative payment system into a more versatile, programmable platform.
According to DeFiLlama data, the TVL on Stacks Network surged dramatically this year, climbing from $6 million in January to $50 million.
Recently, STX jumped 27% on December 20 following a series of positive comments from veteran investor Tim Draper.
Outlook for 2024
GSR senior strategist Brian Rudick expects Bitcoin and Ethereum to continue rising in the new year, partly due to the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. Rudick also pointed out that 2024 may see a new wave of blockchain users from China, the European Union, Brazil, and other countries that have signaled interest in or announced plans regarding Bitcoin.
Martin added that beyond the ETF focus at the start of the year, RWA (real-world assets) will also emerge as a rapidly growing area. "We’ve already seen some foundations established this year, but mainstream adoption hasn’t caught up yet." Looking ahead, the "decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN)" narrative will remain a hot topic, with tokens like RNDR and HNT recently outperforming the broader market. DePIN uses crypto tokens to incentivize the development of real-world infrastructure.
Newhouse added: "Traditional fund managers have also shown particular interest in HNT, with Bill Ackman supporting the token back in 2022."
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