Established projects defy market trends! Average monthly increase of 62%, what are the stories behind this "new growth"?

Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the crypto market has weakened overall, with most assets erasing their year-to-date gains in a short period. Surprisingly, a group of familiar faces that have weathered multiple cycles have bucked the trend and risen despite tightening liquidity. These narratives have long been demystified by the market, raising concerns about a "doomsday scenario" rally.

This article, compiled by PANews, summarizes 11 established projects that have recently seen significant gains. As of November 11th, these projects have averaged a 55.3% increase over the past 30 days. ZEC and ICP, among others, have performed particularly well, recovering the sharp declines of October 11th. However, compared to their historical peaks, they are still generally down by about 90%. Behind these "old trees sprouting new buds" are not only market hype, but also multiple factors supporting their counter-trend performance, including technological upgrades, ecosystem development, and token empowerment.

Zcash (ZEC)

Zcash is a major driving force behind this privacy boom. CoinGecko data shows that ZEC has risen 151.2% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since January 2018, but is still down about 79.1% from its all-time peak.

The increased market attention stems in part from public endorsements by figures such as Silicon Valley angel investor Naval and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes. Simultaneously, Zcash's product and ecosystem developments have accompanied the price increase. In October, Grayscale announced that the Zcash Trust Fund was open for private placement to accredited investors; in November, Zcash developer ECC released its Q4 roadmap, focusing on reducing technical debt, improving Zashi user privacy and usability, and ensuring smooth management of the development fund; subsequently, the Zcash Foundation launched a new official website, strengthening its privacy-focused financial infrastructure.

In addition, Zcash completed its second halving in November 2024, which reduced block rewards and decreased new supply in the market, thus providing some support for prices.

Dash (DASH)

According to CoinGecko data, DASH has risen approximately 104.5% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since December 2021, but is still down 94.6% from its all-time high. In response, DASH stated that its recent strong price performance is not a sudden phenomenon, but rather stems from long-term fundamental development. Five major achievements in recent years include: the launch of DashSpend, in-depth research into bill payment issues, comprehensive improvements to confidential payment functionality, DEX support (added to the Maya Protocol), and the launch of the decentralized application platform Evolution.

Monero (XMR)

As privacy narratives become a hot topic in the market, Monero's popularity has risen significantly. According to CoinGecko data, the price of XMR has increased by 43.6% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high since May 2021, but it is still 22.7% lower than its all-time high.

In October of this year, Monero released a major upgrade to Fluorine Fermi, significantly enhancing users' ability to protect against "spy nodes." Since then, it has released software and wallet updates, held several upcoming technical, research, and community-related conferences, and continued to advance its Community Proposal System (CCS).

NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

According to CoinGecko data, NEAR has risen 20.6% in the past month, but is still 85.5% below its all-time high.

Last month, NEAR Protocol announced the official launch of its House of Stake mainnet, allowing users to lock NEAR tokens to gain governance rights and receive corresponding rewards. Meanwhile, NEAR Protocol's transaction execution framework, Near Intents (supporting cross-chain native transactions, ultra-fast settlement, and AI-friendly features), is also a key engine for its ecosystem recovery, with cumulative transaction volume reaching $4.5 billion, including $1.1 billion in the last 7 days and cumulative fees of $8.2 million.

Regarding tokens, a recent proposal to halve NEAR's annual inflation rate to 2.5% failed to meet the voting threshold and was therefore not passed. However, the core team still plans to incorporate the halving into the upcoming protocol upgrade. Furthermore, Nasdaq-listed shipping company OceanPal announced in October the completion of a $120 million PIPE to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, SovereignAI, in partnership with the NEAR Foundation to build a crypto treasury and secure AI cloud platform based on NEAR.

Internet Computer (ICP)

Driven by AI products, Internet Computer (ICP) has once again attracted market attention. CoinGecko data shows that ICP has risen 111.1% in the past 30 days, briefly hitting a new high for the year, but is still 99% below its all-time high.

The DFINITY Foundation recently released an update to its Caffeine DeAI platform, which runs on the ICP and is now open to everyone. This product allows users to quickly generate, deploy, and iterate complete Web3 applications via natural language chat, without requiring any programming skills.

Uniswap

On November 11th, the price of UNI surged following Uniswap's proposal to implement protocol fees and a UNI burning mechanism. CoinGecko data shows that UNI has risen 43.6% in the past 30 days. Compared to its all-time high, UNI is still down 80.4%.

On November 11, Uniswap Labs and Uniswap Foundation jointly launched a governance proposal called "UNInitiation Proposal," which aims to unify the incentive mechanism of the entire Uniswap ecosystem by activating the protocol fee mechanism, implementing UNI token burning, and establishing a Uniswap growth budget, thereby making the Uniswap protocol the default DEX for tokenized value.

Filecoin (FIL)

According to CoinGecko data, FIL has risen by about 51.5% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high in nearly 8 months, but is still down about 98.9% from its all-time peak.

Filecoin is accelerating its transformation from decentralized storage to on-chain cloud services by combining AI and DePIN narratives. Over the past month, Filecoin has continued to invest heavily in infrastructure and ecosystem development, focusing on data storage, cross-chain interoperability, and fee optimization. For example, in October, Filecoin Pin was officially launched, supporting one-click anchoring of IPFS content to the Filecoin chain for encrypted and verifiable persistent storage, and integrating CLI and GitHub Actions, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for developers. The v26 network upgrade resulted in a halving of gas fees, driving growth in the daily number of new storage contracts and active contracts. The ecosystem fund injected 500,000 FIL (worth millions of dollars) into over 200 ecosystem projects through the RetroPGF-3 program. Recently, Filecoin hinted at a transformation from a storage network to an on-chain cloud service, supporting on-chain data retrieval and computing services; the official page is now online, and whitelist applications are open. Filecoin also recently partnered with Akave Cloud to launch a decentralized object storage service compatible with the S3 interface, assisting enterprises and DePIN users in migrating to blockchain storage.

Arweave (AR)

With the rapid expansion of AI applications and the accelerated construction of global data center infrastructure, the demand for high-performance memory chips continues to rise, driving a comprehensive boom in the storage-related ecosystem. Decentralized storage projects such as Arweave have also attracted investment. CoinGecko data shows that AR has risen by about 31.7% in the past 30 days, reaching a new high in nearly three months, but it is still down about 93.8% from its all-time high.

Starknet (STRK)

Recently, with the rise of zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology and the privacy sector, Starknet has attracted market attention. Notably, both Starknet and Zcash are co-founders of Eli Ben-Sasson, which has undoubtedly contributed to its increased popularity. According to CoinGecko data, STRK has risen approximately 50.3% in the past 30 days, but is still down about 96.1% from its all-time high.

On the technology and ecosystem front, Starknet has been making frequent moves recently. For example, Starknet recently launched its Bitcoin yield product, Starknet Earn, and started its beta test; Circle's native USDC and CCTP V2 were announced to be available on Starknet; Starkware released a new version, Starknet v0.14.1; and recently, StarkWare announced that it has deployed its next-generation open-source S-two proof on the Starknet mainnet, which the company claims is currently the fastest and most privacy-preserving proof system in a production environment.

ZKsync (ZK)

ZKsync has recently garnered significant attention due to endorsements from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and its ZK technology. According to CoinGecko data, ZK has risen approximately 39.8% in the past 30 days, but is still down about 82.8% from its all-time high.

On the technology front, ZKsync recently launched an upgraded version of ZK Stack's Atlas, introducing a high-performance sorter to achieve sub-second transaction confirmation and faster cross-chain settlement. This provides enterprises and institutions with a faster and more flexible infrastructure to migrate their businesses to the blockchain.

Regarding tokens, ZKsync founder Alex recently proposed a major update to the token economic model. In the future, ZK tokens will no longer be used solely for governance; the core mechanism will be that all revenue generated by the network will be used to buy back and burn ZK tokens, thereby driving ZKsync to form a self-reinforcing sustainable economic system.

Neo (NEO)

According to CoinGecko data, NEO has risen 16.1% in the past 30 days, but has fallen 97.3% from its all-time high. Over the past month, Neo has made progress on multiple fronts, both technically and in the market. For example, Neo deployed the NEO X mainnet v0.4.2 upgrade, introducing safeguards against Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) exploitation at the consensus level; Neo officially shut down the Legacy mainnet; the Neo X core codebase was officially opened to the community; and recently, Neo and SpoonOS jointly launched the Scoop AI Hackathon.