Venture capitalist Arthur Cheong says that one surging decentralized finance (DeFi) altcoin is continuing to fly under the radar despite astronomic price gains in 2023.
The DeFiance Capital founder and CEO is calling attention to the cloud-focused DeFi protocol Akash Network (AKT).
“An extremely promising project with good fundamentals and industry tailwind. 2x over a week while almost [no one] on [crypto Twitter] talks about it.
A good validation that you don’t have to chase every short-term narrative to make outsized gains as this tailwind has [been active] since January.”
Akash Network, which also focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), is trading at $1.19 at time of writing. The 136th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up nearly 3% in the past 24 hours, over 100% in the past week and more than 543% since the start of 2023.
Last week, the project rolled out the testnet of its Stable Payments feature, which will allow traders to settle payments using Circle’s stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC).
Cheong also says that he thinks layer-2 (L2) projects are “very commoditized” at the moment.
“Think in three to six months simply announcing a pivot to L2 with token won’t get you a massive pump anymore.
[The] L2 that makes it in [the] long run will be the one that nailed their distribution, not just the tech.
Base’s success is a perfect demonstration of this.
Bullish on L2 team that are heads-down building the right infrastructure to onboard tens of millions users.”
Base is Coinbase’s new layer-2 scaling solution.