Altcoins to watch out for in the coming weeks

Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile. The price of a token can fluctuate widely in a matter of days, hours and even minutes. This makes it difficult to predict the market and time your investments/trades. However, every once in a while, a crypto project will undergo an upgrade, hard fork or some other major event that results in a near-certain price rally. Here’s a roundup of such altcoins that have noteworthy developments coming up and warrant a closer look in the foreseeable future.

The Ethereum killer is one of the most promising cryptocurrencies in general. However, the blockchain is set to get faster, cheaper and more scalable thanks to its newly introduced Vasil upgrade which went live just today (September 23). The update has already reflected positively on the network’s native cryptocurrency, ADA, which has rallied more than 5.50 percent in the last 24 hours, trading at $0.4693 at the time of writing.

However, while the upgrade has been taken live, its features will only be seen after the next epoch. Considering that an epoch generally lasts five days on Cardano, we should expect to see the full extent of the upgrade come into effect on September 27. This could cause a further spike in the price of ADA.

In addition, Cardano is also working on its layer-2 scaling solution, Hydra, which is expected to further augment transaction times and network fees for decentralised applications. Considering all these improvements, Cardano is one to watch out for in the coming weeks.

Solana runs on a unique combination of the proof-of-stake and proof-of-history consensus mechanisms. This helps the network process transactions quickly, with an estimated speed of 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), compared to Ethereum’s sluggish 15.

With its blistering pace, Solana is seen as a viable base protocol for decentralised applications, DeFi protocols and even NFT projects. One of the most recent and significant projects to consider a move to Solana is Helium.

Helium is a network of hotspot devices that aim to provide decentralised access to the internet. It is currently adding 5G capabilities, and its hotspots can reach 200 times further than an ordinary router. As such, it is one of the most promising networks in the crypto market today.

Helium devs considered several blockchains for the migration before finalising Solana for its quick transaction times and low fees. The move to Solana was added to Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP) 70 earlier this month and was put to the vote.

This was enough to send SOL on a 7 percent price rally 24 hours after HIP 70 was announced. Since then, the vote has concluded with 80 percent of users in favour of the move to Solana. Therefore, the eventual merge of the two blockchains should cause a favourable price movement for SOL, which is already up 4.6 percent over the last 24 hours, trading at $32.85 at the time of writing.

Cosmos made headlines in August when investment manager VanEck said it was bullish about ATOM in the long term. While the hype from that statement may have subsided, Cosmos is still a coin to watch out for, considering its Rho upgrade was planned to go live in the second half of 2022. The upgrade will bring improved governance, performance and other features.

Further, Cosmos also teamed up with Solana to build a gateway between the two blockchains called Nitro. It will power the future of DeFi for Cosmos and Solana by addressing the interoperability and composability of the two blockchains.

Cosmos is one of the few coins that have bucked the bearish trend that has gripped the market of late, with a 10.29 percent spike over the last 24 hours. It is also one of the only projects flashing green in the previous seven days, with ATOM trading at $15.07 at the time of writing. And with the Rho update on the cards, Cosmos is one to watch.

While all the aforementioned coins show promising signs, it is essential to remember that anything can happen in the crypto market or any investment for that matter. Therefore, it is extremely important to do your own research and invest only as much as you are comfortable losing completely.