Altcoin (132)

Are we heading into Altcoin season? Keep up with the top industry updates as we present bi-weekly market insights that are important to traders in the institutional space. In this week's edition, Kelvin Lam, CFA, Head of Institutional Research for OKX, looks at various market indicators and the overall market environment to assess the likelihood of an altcoin season on the horizon. Additionally, we explore key considerations that can guide participation in this potential altcoin rally.

The Solana network has become a popular destination for a wide variety of projects that require a fast and permissionless layer-1 blockchain. Many have sought to innovate on top of Solana's existing infrastructure in various ways. The network's goal of supporting the emergence of decentralized scalable applications through faster transactions and lower fees saw Solana rise in popularity, along with its native token, .

Following in the footsteps of Lido and the the bonus liquidity it provides, crypto users might be pleased to read that liquid staking has made its way on Solana in the form of Jito. As a liquid staking protocol operating on a stake pool model, Jito first caught attention when it announced a massive . Those tokens went to JitoSOL holders, Solana validators who used Jito Solana’s MEV clients, and users of Jito’s MEV services. This action seemed to breathe new life into Solana's ecosystem as total value locked (TVL) levels exponentially increased as more users got introduced to Jito.

As the crypto industry expands, new and inventive projects are constantly being introduced, creating a competitive environment where some initiatives struggle to get noticed in the bustling crypto community.

Aave , formerly ETHLend, is a decentralized non-custodial borrowing and lending protocol that lets users deposit assets into liquidity pools to earn returns and borrow assets at a variable or fixed interest rate. It was launched in 2017 by Stani Kulechov, following a $17.8 million initial coin offering (ICO). Aave also allows users to take out uncollateralized, ultra-short duration loans known as .

Blockchains are usually self-contained systems and lack the ability to communicate with other chains, creating difficulties for users when transferring money. The purpose of building what the crypto space call ‘bridges’ is to address this issue. Through , individuals can efficiently transfer their funds between different chains. Cryptocurrency bridges promote blockchain interoperability and enhance the ease of digital asset transfer. 

Newcomers to crypto may find the industry to be quite intimidating at first. One of the reasons for this is the fact that the digital assets spaces comes with a whole dictionary of new terminology to understand. Among the most common new terms that would-be crypto traders encounter is “altcoin.” The word sounds similar to Bitcoin, which is the industry’s oldest and largest crypto. However, altcoins have nothing to do with Bitcoin.

As a crypto bull run might be in play in 2024, it's a good time to explain what crypto bull markets are and how to identify them. A bull market occurs when prices of assets, such as stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrencies, are on the rise and confidence among traders is high. In a bull market, the trend is generally upward, with buying activity dominating selling activity. This results in increased demand and a general feeling of optimism in the market. Bull markets are usually accompanied by economic growth and strong market performance. This guide discusses crypto bull markets, their significance, and how beginners can understand and benefit from them.

Polygon, a well-known Ethereum-scaling and infrastructure development platform, has gained significant popularity in the blockchain community. Its primary focus is to enhance scalability on the Ethereum network and facilitate fast and secure off-chain transactions. Payment processors and off-chain smart contract users value these features greatly.

Crypto trading bots are a useful tool for those wanting more convenience and automation from their trading activities. The technology allows you to program in your trading strategy and leave the bots to take care of execution, at the prices and parameters you set. 

Optimism is a popular Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) blockchain designed to increase scalability. As a result, bridging is an essential part of using the technology. Optimism increases efficiency by processing transactions off Ethereum and periodically syncing them. This results in transaction fees and processing speed being significantly lower than Ethereum, making one of the most popular Ethereum L2 solutions. 

Fetch.ai is a decentralized platform for building, deploying, and monetizing artificial intelligence (AI)-based applications. The tool is designed to enable legacy systems to adopt AI using their existing application programming interface (API) and infrastructure. This intuitive platform allows anyone to connect and automate their tasks using AI-based user agents. 

An airdrop is a marketing and community-seeding tactic that sees a crypto company distribute free tokens from its project to selected people. An airdrop can help bootstrap ‌the project by rewarding early adopters or incentivizing specific user behavior. 

Launched in August 2020, Serum is a first-of-its-kind order book based decentralized exchange that allows buyers and sellers to instantly trade cryptocurrencies on Solana at their specified price and

PumaPay is a blockchain-based, open-source billing protocol intended to make crypto payments flexible, fast, and straightforward. The project enables merchants to accept crypto payments as easily as t

Creditcoin is a blockchain-based interoperable lending protocol. It connects investors/lenders and fundraisers/borrowers who register matching loan condition requirements. In this article, we’ll take

Siacoin is a decentralized cloud storage solution based on blockchain and cryptographic technology. Through Siacoin, anyone can store data on the blockchain without compromising their identity and dat

 While many consider Status to be a web3 social network, the reality is

Solana is a popular competitor to Ethereum, offering high performance and fast transaction speeds. Users can bridge to Solana from Ethereum and other chains to explore its ecosystem. Solana uses a combination of Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism alongside Proof of Stake (PoS), to get to a theoretical capacity of 710,000 transactions per second (TPS). Solana’s smart contracts have created a thriving ecosystem of DeFi and NFT marketplaces. 

Arbitrum is a popular Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) solution, making bridging in and out of it essential. Arbitrum uses a method called “optimistic rollup,” where smart contracts are executed off-chain and only the final output is posted to the Ethereum blockchain. It has a significantly larger transaction throughput, making it faster and cheaper than Ethereum. Arbitrum is also an Ethereum equivalent blockchain, making it easy for developers to move their applications from the Ethereum chain.

Blockchains are typically isolated systems and can't interact with other chains, making it inconvenient for users to move funds. Blockchain bridges are built to solve this. Blockchain bridging allows users to move their funds from one chain to another quickly. Cryptocurrency bridges enable blockchain interoperability and make digital asset transfer even more convenient. 

Blockchains are independent networks that cannot communicate with each other. To address this issue, developers have created blockchain bridges . These bridges enable users to seamlessly transfer their funds between different chains. By facilitating blockchain interoperability, cryptocurrency bridges make the transfer of digital assets even simpler. 

Getting familiar with cryptocurrency bridging is essential to your crypto journey. If you’re looking for a detailed guide on how to bridge to Polygon, you’ve come to the right place. Let's explore how to bridge ETH to Polygon using Polygon’s portal and OKX Swap. Additionally, we’ll walk through a centralized bridging process using OKX to bridge USDT from Ethereum to Polygon.

Bittensor is a disruptive platform that bridges the distinct powers of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. AI is quickly weaving its way deeper into more industries to help revolutionize myriad aspects of life — from driving to photography and programming. The technology can even help you to .