Bankless analysis team recently made predictions on the future price movements of 16 tokens over the next three months, including mainstream and popular tokens in the L1 track, L2 track, LSD track, and other tracks. This article will summarize the predictions and reasoning of the Bankless analysis team for readers' reference.
L1 Sector
Solana (SOL)
View: Bearish
Reason: Poor performance of meme market, increased selling pressure
Prediction Period: June 21, 2024, to September 21, 2024
Predicted Price: $132.79
Performance to Date: Up 5.88%
The Bankless analysis team expects that with the further decline of the meme coin craze, SOL's performance will not be as good as ETH's in the future.
Although SOL performed remarkably from October 2023 to March 2024, reaching a peak price of $200, the novelty of its ecosystem seems to have peaked, with key on-chain metrics (including daily active addresses and DEX trading volume) stagnating throughout June.
Solana seized the meme coin issuance trend in this cycle with its low fees and unified global state, but in recent weeks, meme coins have not performed well.
Top native meme coins on Solana, WIF and BONK, have dropped by over 50% from their highs in May, while other meme coins have fared even worse. Previously popular celebrity meme coins have mostly approached zero, and as Solana users realize the limited profits from on-chain meme coins, they may consider cashing out, leading to a deterioration of Solana's fundamentals and increased selling pressure on SOL.
Polkadot (DOT)
View: Bearish
Reason: Excessive improper spending compounded by token inflation
Prediction Period: July 3, 2024, to October 3, 2024
Predicted Price: $2.38
Performance to Date: Down 7.98%
The Bankless analysis team believes that its foundation may go bankrupt earlier than expected, as future spending and DOT inflation will further depress the token price.
On June 28, the Polkadot Web3 Foundation released its largest financial report to date as part of its OpenGov initiative, which was implemented a year ago to better inform and control the chain's governance process.
In the first half of 2024, Polkadot's fiscal year net loss was approximately 17 million DOT (108 million USD), assuming that the price of DOT (which accounts for 96% of the fiscal value) remains unchanged. At the current consumption rate, the funds can only sustain the project's operation for another two years.
The largest expenditure category is "promotion," totaling 37 million USD, including some outrageous projects, such as: 10 million USD for sports team sponsorship, 7.9 million USD for conference events, 478,000 USD for animated logos on the Coinmarketcap homepage, and 180,000 USD for private jet livery.
Although the Polkadot ecosystem spent a large amount of money in 2024 to gain attention, its token has depreciated by over 50% against Ethereum in the first six months of this year.
Toncoin (TON)
View: Neutral
Reason: Potential for future growth, but over-reliance on Telegram
Prediction Period: June 17, 2024, to September 17, 2024
Predicted Price: $7.88
Performance to Date: Down 4.42%
The Bankless analysis team acknowledges the network's potential for future growth but is concerned that at a fully diluted valuation of $40 billion, the investment value of the company's proprietary blockchain is not yet clear.
Although the TON network has struggled to gain effective applications in the past, its growth has accelerated exponentially as its creator, Telegram, has brought more utility to the network.
In September of last year, Telegram launched a self-hosted encrypted wallet, allowing users easy access to the TON network. In February of this year, Telegram doubled down on cryptocurrency adoption, announcing that it would allow advertising clients to use TON to purchase channel promotions and share 50% of the fees with channel operators. Subsequently, in April, Telegram partnered with Tether, allowing its wallet users to send USDT for free.
In 2024, TON network's TVL surged by 4200% to reach $610 million, while the number of daily active addresses also increased significantly.
The TON network seems to be in the early stages of building a unique and viable on-chain ecosystem; its native Notcoin meme coin reached a valuation of $2 billion, and over 150 million addresses participated in the Hamster Combat click-to-earn game, which promised to airdrop tokens to participants.
Although the TON network has indeed successfully achieved significant growth so far, its future prospects remain somewhat uncertain. If Telegram's revenue model through a proprietary blockchain proves to be successful, other companies may eventually launch their own networks to compete with the TON network. However, it is undeniable that introducing new users now would have a strong first-mover advantage, making the TON network a general blockchain solution for other companies looking to experiment on-chain.
Avalanche (AVAX)
View: Bullish
Reason: Prospects for AVAX futures listing, less resistance for spot AVAX ETF approval
Prediction Period: June 28, 2024, to September 28, 2024
Predicted Price: $27.99
Performance to Date: Down 8.41%
The Bankless analysis team expects the token to perform well in the coming months as the market begins to digest the unexpected ETF approval narrative.
On June 28, Coinbase Derivatives, as a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-registered designated contract market (DCM), submitted certification documents to its regulatory agency for listing SHIB, LINK, AVAX, XLM, and DOT futures.
Although the recent submission of the SOL spot ETF has sparked hopes for Solana to become the next crypto asset offered to traditional finance, the SEC continues to insist that SOL is a security in multiple lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges, coupled with the lack of a regulated futures market, making its approval unlikely.
Compared to SOL, AVAX has not been designated as a security by the SEC; the approval of CME futures paves the way for the approval of spot AVAX ETF, just like BTC and ETH.
Near (NEAR)
View: Bearish
Reason: Short-term speculation leveraging AI, lacks competitive advantage in the long term
Prediction Period: June 25, 2024, to September 25, 2024
Predicted Price: $5.5
Performance to Date: Down 5.48%
Although Near is trying to position itself as a project in the AI track leveraging the speculation around Nvidia's (unconfirmed) AI x Crypto from the March developer conference, the network currently has almost no noteworthy developments in AI development.
Although Near founder Illia Polosukhin previously served as an AI researcher, the reality is that any blockchain that can provide fast consensus can serve as the foundation for AI development, and his project has no competitive advantage among other L1 projects with larger user bases and more TVL.
Despite NEAR's strong short-term performance, the token is likely to underperform ETH and SOL in the near future if it lacks unique ecosystem applications that attract users and capital.
L2 Sector
Arbitrum (ARB)
View: Bearish
Reason: Saturated L2 sector, token unlocking brings selling pressure
Prediction Period: June 27, 2024, to September 27, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.82
Performance to Date: Down 5.26%
The Bankless analysis team expects ARB's performance in the coming months to potentially be better than other L2s, but overall industry dilution and ARB unlocking are likely to cause the token price to underperform ETH.
The Arbitrum DAO proposal aims to allocate 50% of the remaining sequencer fees to ARB delegators on its Tally governance center, paying stakers in ETH at an annualized rate of approximately 7%. Staking rewards are expected to be activated in September, and support for ARB liquidity staking tokens will also be introduced, allowing delegators to earn additional yield in DeFi.
While adding non-inflationary actual yield in ARB creates additional economic value for holders, it does not guarantee that ARB token performance will be superior to ETH. The launch of each new L2 token and the unlocking of existing tokens bring selling pressure to investors, and as L2 technology becomes increasingly commoditized and decentralized, the valuations of all L2s will be diluted.
Arbitrum alone unlocks 100 million tokens to its team and investors every month, while the Arbitrum DAO holds 3.5 billion ARB, which may be distributed to the market and has allocated 225 million ARB for a controversial gaming incentive program in the next three years.
Blast (BLAST)
View: Bearish
Reason: Unideal valuation, significant selling pressure after airdrop
Prediction Period: June 26, 2024, to September 26, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.02
Performance to Date: Down 25.08%
The Bankless analysis team expects that future incentives will fail to spark user interest as in the past, leading more and more holders to realize the network's potential unsustainability.
Shortly after its launch on June 26, BLAST had a fully diluted valuation of approximately $20 billion, ranking eighth in Ethereum L2, far behind top low-circulating L2s and even lagging behind L2s with lower adoption but higher circulation, such as Mantle and Immutable.
Throughout June, many assets in the Blast native ecosystem were heavily sold. Despite attempts for a rebound after BLAST's listing, it was not successful, indicating that users are cashing out to seek other opportunities. The primary motivation for users to deposit Blast was to receive airdrops, and the unexpectedly low valuation of BLAST reduces the attractiveness of future incentives. In the coming months, with deteriorating on-chain fundamentals, BLAST will face significant selling pressure.
StarkNet (STRK)
View: Bearish
Reason: Intensified competition, lack of booming ecosystem applications to support development
Prediction Period: June 18, 2024, to September 18, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.75
Performance to Date: Down 0.07%
The Bankless analysis team expects that without a sudden outbreak of booming Starknet ecosystem applications, the token's performance will continue to lag behind ETH.
Although STRK briefly saw on-chain activity from the airdrop in late February, the ecosystem's glorious days seem to be long gone. Several key metrics of Starknet, including daily trading volume and active addresses, peaked in September 2023 and have not reached those highs again, even with airdrop incentives.
Competitor zero-knowledge rollup ZKsync announced the opening of ZK token claims on June 17, causing STRK's price to plummet by nearly 30% shortly after its release.
While Starknet has implemented the Cairo virtual machine, allowing developers to bypass technical limitations present in the EVM chain, this approach has made interaction with the ecosystem difficult for users and developers. Although some believe this is beneficial for the development of areas such as full-chain games, no breakthrough applications that can sustain long-term on-chain usage have been seen in the Starknet ecosystem.
The launch of ZK provides investors with a liquidity token for purchasing zero-knowledge proof technology narratives, weakening STRK's technology-centric narrative. Additionally, the introduction of a large number of new L2 tokens and the expected unlocking of industry tokens represent future supply that must be absorbed, which will dilute the valuations of all Ethereum rollups.
Optimism (OP)
View: Bearish
Reason: Low user perception of new feature launch, affected by the overall environment
Prediction Period: June 11, 2024, to September 11, 2024
Predicted Price: $2.14
Performance to Date: Down 16.84%
Although the launch of the dispute resolution feature is an important step in achieving "super chains" on Optimism, allowing anyone to challenge incorrect information published by the sequencer and withdraw ETH/ERC 20 without permission, it has not had a positive impact on the OP token price. Ironically, since announcing this major upgrade, the OP token has actually slightly underperformed its competitors MATIC and ARB.
Cryptocurrency users have historically paid little attention to the security status of the L2s they transact on, with a large TVL migrating to insecure "Stage 0" rollups (just glorified multisigs). While Optimism now enjoys a similar "Stage 1" classification to Arbitrum One, this achievement is only the minimum requirement. Vitalik stated in March that by the end of 2024, only networks with "Stage 1+" will be allowed to be called "rollups".
Instead, in the environment of new L2 token issuance and token unlocking, the future performance of the OP token will be lower than ETH.
LSD Sector
ether.fi (ETHFI)
View: Bearish
Reason: Intensified competition, stagnant TVL
Prediction Period: July 2, 2024, to October 2, 2024
Predicted Price: $6.5
Performance to Date: Down 7.54%
The Bankless analysis team expects that a significant portion of its funds will soon be rotated from Mellow Finance to Symbiotic Retaking, weakening growth due to overvaluation and causing the token price to further decline.
The leading liquidity re-staking project ether.fi saw its TVL essentially stagnate in June, with a monthly growth rate of only 7%, the lowest since October 2023. Although ETHFI's staking volume is less than 80%, its fully diluted valuation is still 40% higher than LDO. This mispricing is prevalent among all LRT issuers, driven by the low circulation of their tokens and investors' optimism about the industry's growth potential.
Although ether.fi is trying to expand its business beyond the re-staking protocol by creating a "Liquid" strategy treasury and proprietary credit card, the protocol's EigenLayer-based re-staking model faces fierce competition from other re-staking models.
Pendle Finance (PENDLE)
View: Bullish
Reason: Strong fundamentals, potential airdrops
Prediction Period: June 24, 2024, to September 24, 2024
Predicted Price: $5.58
Performance to Date: Down 1.81%
The Bankless analysis team expects the token to continue to perform well as the protocol can generate high yields and potentially receive airdrops.
In the first half of 2024, PENDLE was undoubtedly one of the best-performing fundamental (i.e., not meme coins) liquidity crypto assets, with over 500% year-to-date gains at its peak in April and May.
Although the arrival of airdrops from Ethena and EigenLayer may have a negative impact on Pendle, the protocol's TVL increased by over 50% from its low point in May and broke through $7 billion multiple times in June.
Lido (LDO)
View: Bullish
Reason: Development of staking and re-staking together, huge future potential
Prediction Period: June 12, 2024, to September 12, 2024
Predicted Price: $1.88
Performance to Date: Down 7.98%
The Bankless analysis team believes the market has underestimated the strong role stETH plays in re-staking.
In 2024, re-staking has been an important narrative in the crypto industry, increasing yields with minimal additional risk by re-staking assets. The operation of Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRT) is similar to Lido's stETH but adds re-staking yields and airdrop incentives (from EigenLayer and LRT issuers).
To compete, Lido has partnered with Mellow Finance to implement re-staking for its LST, which uses Symbiotic, a competitor of EigenLayer supported by core Lido staff and investors.
A significant portion of users depositing into the EigenLayer ecosystem is for airdrops, making it easy for depositors to switch to Symbiotic.
As Lido has invested in Symbiotic, they have an incentive to drive the development of the Symbiotic ecosystem, meaning these whales can deposit a large amount of stETH into Mellow's treasury to establish the most liquid stETH re-staking protocol.
Lido has positioned itself as the ideal staking solution by offering both regular Ethereum staking products and a slightly riskier liquidity re-staking protocol, serving market participants with different risk preferences.
Other Sectors
Worldcoin (WLD)
View: Bearish
Reason: Massive unlocking, lack of focused ecosystem progress
Prediction Period: July 1, 2024, to October 1, 2024
Predicted Price: $2.34
Performance to Date: Down 7.26%
The Bankless analysis team expects the unlocking of WLD tokens to further depress prices, and with a lack of focused ecosystem progress, this selling pressure will be more pronounced.
NVIDIA's significant stock price growth in the first three months of 2024 has sparked enthusiasm for AI. Although WLD, as a cryptocurrency related to AI, did not start performing until early February, its price also rose by 440% in just one month.
Worldcoin can be said to be one of the most notorious low-circulating, overvalued tokens of this cycle, making it easier to manipulate prices and attract investor interest. However, the internal unlocking starting on July 25 will increase selling pressure.
Although Worldcoin plans to create real-world utility for WLD and its identity verification model in the future, the project has made almost no significant progress in actual adoption, and its core verification process faces significant scrutiny due to the existence of a black market for user identity transactions.
Velodrome (VELO)
View: Bullish
Reason: Strong intellectual property guarantees, long-term returns for holders
Prediction Period: June 20, 2024, to September 20, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.11
Performance to Date: Down 9.21%
Velodrome's Business Software License (BSL) restricts exchanges from imitation and forking, allowing only licensed participants to operate. This feature prompted the Base-native Aerodrome fork to distribute 40% of the initial AERO supply to veVELO lockers as a reward for obtaining DAO approval.
Coinbase listed VELO and AERO in February, and since then, both tokens have seen an increase. AERO's performance has been far superior to its predecessor, backed by the Base ecosystem fund through Coinbase's investment.
While AERO's recent strong performance has attracted many, VELO holders will enjoy the benefits of BSL through locking and may receive long-term returns from deploying fork projects using its codebase in the future.
Ethena (ENA)
View: Bearish
Reason: Insufficient revenue generation and security guarantees
Prediction Period: June 14, 2024, to September 14, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.72
Performance to Date: Down 37.22%
The Bankless analysis team believes Ethena's future revenue generation and security guarantees are insufficient.
In recent weeks, Ethena decided to reduce the income extraction rate from its insurance fund from 50% to 20%, increasing returns for staked USDe holders and leading to an increase in Ethena's deposits.
While spot BTC ETFs have seen significant institutional adoption, mainly from hedge funds, they may be adopting the same revenue generation strategy as Ethena—increasing the competitiveness of these once lucrative trades.
With spot ETH ETFs expected to start trading this summer, hedge funds will have a second crypto asset for arbitrage, and Ethena's basis generated through its risk-free arbitrage strategy may continue to compress.
In June, the revenue generated from Ethena's perpetual futures shorts significantly decreased, and despite increasing the percentage of income paid to stakers, the yield for sUSDe was only half of what it was before these changes were implemented.
Ethena's liabilities may have expanded to their highest level ever, but the insurance fund to cover losses in the event of negative interest rates or user asset loss only accounts for 1% of the deposit base, making ENA's situation precarious.
Curve Finance (CRV)
View: Bearish
Reason: Unsustainable current token model
Prediction Period: June 13, 2024, to September 13, 2024
Predicted Price: $0.28
Performance to Date: Down 3.24%
The Bankless analysis team states that while the founder's forced liquidation triggered the decline, Curve's high inflation token model may also be unsustainable.
Founder Michael Egorov previously had nearly $100 million in outstanding stablecoin loans, using 350 million CRV as collateral, spread across five different lending protocols. Subsequently, depositors of these protocols began withdrawing liquidity from the CRV market, causing both the utilization rate and borrowing rate of CRV collateral to soar, further squeezing Egorov.
Although Egorov's liquidation has now been largely completed and the CRV oversupply issue has been resolved, this does not guarantee that the token price will only rise from now on. The project's inflation token model has put immense pressure on CRV since its existence, keeping it relatively weak compared to Ether.
Curve incentivizes users to lock CRV for the long term to earn more token issuance and platform fees. The protocol's TVL saw nearly $300 million in outflows in June. As the CRV price declines, reducing the value of rewards, it has a negative impact on the token's fundamentals and may trigger a death spiral of TVL.
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