SoftQuant

Main chains gaining activity this cycle are #1 SOL#2 base #3 SUI#4 HYPEthese chains and applications on them should get a massive boost if/when OTHERS breaks out TRX style

The crypto market is maturing to the point of clear winners and losers within the application space. The chain level has proven in 2024 not to be decided with the consistent growth of SOL Within the different chains though we have still seen winners seperately themselves from the losers. The winning applications? Usually theyve been in three fields. Validating. Swapping. Lending. Now there are emerging winners appearing in the fields of RWA. Yield. Whatever Ethena is. These fields are distancing themselves from the losers. The zombie fields. The seed investment fields. The metaverses. The gaming. The NFTs. The losing fields might have volatile token performance and they could definitely see strength start in 2025.. but those applications were big losers in 2024. Surprise, surprise... their token performance wasnt great. It may have something to do with the fact no one uses the application. 2025 I believe we will see those that were leading applications and leading token performers in 2024 continue to be the leaders of 2025. EDIT - I forgot to mention in the video my favourite growth chain of SUI. SUI has been a relative leader both technically and fundamentally.

Tron has been a major overperformer with catching a niche in the growing stablecoin market. While BNB has been losing market share both in its chain and with its exchange.. BNB does still look strong. It does still share an ongoing fractal with TRX. It does look like relative to its weaker performance itll grow. I suspect TRX will pull BNB into a breakout of highs. Whether itll lead to gains as great as TRX Im not sure. Im not sure if BNB is the best risk reward but I do think BNB could follow TRX soon with not much relative to market risk.

Solana space obviously leading this altcoin market and has been for a while now. The Tron breakout of all time highs does undermine SOL somewhat but not really the Solana space. With Solana space breaking out like it did so aggressively at the end of 2023 was the first rotation of BTC gains. I think its quite possible that Solana space gets first rotation of these new BTC gains.

Weve had plenty of scepticism come out over inclusion of altcoins in the strategic reserves. News reports on it undermining the reserve. We have also had Trumps cost cutting and tariffs pushing bearish pressure on the market. While ADA+XRP+SOL are sitting on previous all time highs. Even more troublesome is the unwinding of USDT.This may pull away one of the largest liquidity providers to the crypto space. This can be extremely bearish. I am myself however still bullish. I see rising fundamentals and a lot of room for upside in L1s and applications token price.

Uniswap is already one of if not the leading application within defi. That is just as a dex. I believe that dexs have the most flexibility when it comes to crypto as it has the holy trinity of high users, volume and liquidity. Helpful for financial market application. If Unichain is a successful launch then Uni could become the centralising app within decentralised finance. This would be great for crypto and defi as provides deep liquidity and ease of use. Not to say theres no competition. This is an emerging field and who knows wholl be the yahoo or big blue let alone the google. Have to keep up to date the changing metrics but at this stage uni is still looking a leader.

Defi is dominated by four sectors. Chains. Staking. Dexs. Lending. Those four sectors cover majority of crypto space today. Together they create a liquid financial market. Tomorrow they may help spawn an emerging sector like ai, gaming, metaverse, nft, depin, etc into a dominate industry. Unfortunately for many those emerging sectors have yet to become dominate day to day within crypto or outside of crypto. For now we have chains, staking, swapping and lending. We have four chains that are widely available on centralised exchanges. Ethereum, Solana, Sui and Avalanche. The four assets listed here cover all four widely available high performing chains in all four high performing sub sectors. BenQI is the high performing lending protocol on AVAX.Uniswap is the high performing dex on Ethereum (and defi space as a whole).Sui is the high performing growth layer 1 chain leading after the big3 (eth, sol and bsc). Jito is the high performing staking protocol on Solana.

The Sui chain is trying to enter BIG4 categorySince October last year its been clear that the BIG3 are Eth, Sol and BSC. BSC has been losing market share since 2021 but is still dominant to second tier chains. Out of the second tier chains Sui has been growing. Now competitive with only Avax.. Sui is trying to make its way into becoming apart of the BIG4 if not replace BSC in the BIG3. Sui has seen a price surge off the back of thisAs Sui grows and expands into things like USDC integration.. the price will likely align. We are enter a stage of value investing within crypto which shows the development within the space. Sui is proving itself as one to keep an eye on in that regard.

As the overall market and Ethereum falls we have seen price enter recovery phaseRecovery phase forming a 'pressure cooker' can be extremely powerful sign of stable recoveryThe lending space has continued to boom with AAVE deposits at all time highs. Deposits keep increasing as Ethereum Foundation adds more ETH into AAVEKeep an eye on how lending space moves within this forming pressure cooker

Aave has moved into newly appeared weekly 200maThis beautiful structure we refer to as an apex setup. While first test may need a bit of support.. the technical setup looks great for aave to eventually breakout above this apex and run very nicely. Aave fundamentally is obviously performing incredibly well relative to the space. As eth experience influx of money from larger entities like blackrock.. theres a good chance Aaves presence and protocol will become much more well known and respected. Perhaps mitigate with other chain competitorsIf other chains like solana surge again which seems quite likely.. then lending platforms there can offer quite a bit of competition esp for retail users. May be best to look for good entries into competitors there like Kamino.