Yassine Maroufi and David Wagner

In 2021, the cryptocurrency market was volatile and unpredictable. This year has seen an increase in cryptos being used as investments by individuals and institutions.

undeniably remains the most important cryptocurrency, with its capitalization representing more than 40% of the market. Although Bitcoin is still the most important cryptocurrency, it was not the top-performing one. In fact, altcoins outperformed the Queen of Cryptos for 2021 performance, even though they are sometimes much more recent than BTC.

We’ll be highlighting 5 other cryptocurrencies to watch out for over the coming year. The article has been omitted from crypto memes or coins that are less serious. Instead, it will focus on established projects with proven value and still have room to grow in 2022.

Ethereum: Ethereum 2.0 Launch Could Change Everything

While it has been criticized for slow transaction times, prohibitive fees and network congestion, its popularity is not hard to forget. This cryptocurrency is second only to Bitcoin. However, Ethereum is still the most preferred network for many cryptocurrency projects. ETH is the most preferred network for NFTs and DeFi transactions. ETH hosts more than 90% percent of all NFT transactions.

A major update of Ethereum is expected to be released in 2022, and it will address the most pressing problem that Ethereum faces, which is the speed at which transactions are processed. ETH 2.0 will boost the network’s capacity by approximately 30% to 100,000 transactions per second. This is mainly due to switching to “proof-of–stake” validation, which removes tedious calculations and requires complex validation. The network’s energy consumption is also greatly reduced, which is important as many investors are concerned about their investment’s environmental impacts.

Decentraland: A great crypto for betting on the metaverse

Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook (NASDAQ):) launched a strategy that focuses on creating a metaverse. The concept was quickly put into action by Mark Zuckerberg, who also highlighted several other cryptocurrencies. The most prominent of them all is undoubtedly. This is a functional metaverse where you can purchase properties and engage in games.

After Facebook’s announcements on Facebook, MANA, which is the Decentraland-specific cryptocurrency, saw a rapid rise and lost much of its gains during the following cryptocurrency correction. The interest in Decentraland will likely continue and be strengthened once the dust settles.

Solana, Ethereum’s greatest competitor

The shortcomings of the Ethereum network we discussed above have given rise to a specific class of cryptocurrencies that display a similar value proposition to Ethereum, while correcting several of ETH’s major flaws. It is frequently referred to as being the most powerful and serious competitor to Ethereum.

Solana emphasizes its massive transaction processing capacity. Ethereum currently processes only a few transactions per second. ETH2.0 will soon fix that problem. However, Solana offers an immediate solution. It is capable to process 50,000 transactions per minute.

Solana is an interesting candidate in the NFT market. She is also proving to have a powerful opponent for Ethereum. In just minutes, 10,000 tokens were purchased for the August launch of NFT Solana Degenerate Apes Academy. Solana gained a reputation through this sale. It also enabled Solana take a small market share from Ethereum.

IOTA: A crypto company that specializes in IoT, and is a partner with Dell

It has not been featured as often in the trade press, like the three other cryptocurrencies discussed in this article. IOTA is a service provider for IoT (Internet of Things), devices. This refers to electronic objects, like smart speakers and surveillance cameras, that are connected to the Internet. The potential for growth in this field will be enormous, particularly with 5G mobile network speeds, expected to fully deploy in 2022.

IOTA was supported by Dell Technologies (NYSET:) in the beginning of this year when the tech giant joined forces with the cryptocurrency project. Project Alvarium will be the name of this partnership. It will examine how data trust is measured before being used in applications. The fact that Dell, a large international company, is working with IOTA is an excellent reason to be serious about cryptocurrency and keep your eyes peeled for developments in 2022.

Polkadot: Allowing Blockchains to Communicate with Each Other

There are increasing numbers of cryptocurrencies, tokens and blockchains that rely on them. Even though all the blockchains have similar basic principles, it is still difficult for them to communicate with one another. This solution was proposed by one of Ethereum’s co-founders.

Polkadot consists of a central network, the relay chain. Parachains work in parallel and act as bridges to connect with other blockchains. Blockchain technology is being widely used in many sectors (for instance, supply chain management) and should be called upon to generalize across multiple industries. The need for communication between private or public blockchains will explode as blockchain technology becomes more mainstream. Although Polkadot should be largely benefited from this, there are many other cryptocurrency that can also fulfill the same need.

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