Bitcoin

Ethereum

Maker

TRON

Lido DAO

<p>Last week, after a stellar start to 2023, the cryptocurrency markets saw the largest dip in market capitalization this year. However, the drop wasn’t all that substantial, as the total crypto market cap decreased from roughly $1.10 trillion to $1.05 trillion. The relatively small down move mirrored a dip in traditional markets, as both S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq 100 also trended down in the same period.</p><p>This decline could indicate that the sentiment of investors is turning neutral or even slightly bearish again. The SEC’s lawsuit against the BUSD stablecoin coin issuer Paxos and fear of new regulatory measures coming Binance’s way could have played a role in Bitcoin and other crypto assets losing value in the past couple of days. However, that could also be just a momentary drop, with investors biding their time on the sidelines to see how the issue gets resolved.</p><h2 id="header-0">Best crypto to buy right now</h2><p>Setting the general market conditions aside, several projects are worth putting a spotlight on thanks to a slew of important developments and a clear potential for positive price activity in the near to medium term.</p><h3 id="1-maker">1. Maker</h3><p><a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/maker/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Maker (MKR)</a> is a governance token of the Maker Protocol, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that allows users to lock supported assets into Maker’s smart contracts in order to issue the USD-pegged <a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/dai/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Dai</a> stablecoin.</p><p>MKR allows holders to participate in the governance of MakerDAO, which is a decentralized autonomous organization that maintains and develops the Maker Protocol.</p><h3 id="strong-why-maker-strong"><strong>Why Maker?</strong></h3><p>Last week, Sam MacPherson, a protocol engineer at MakerDAO, announced that the company would be launching Spark Protocol, an Aave v3-based DeFi protocol that will give users an opportunity to tap into DeFi services such as lending (called Spark Lend). According to the announcement, Spark Protocol will be developed by Phoenix Labs, but all the products created by them will be owned by MakerDAO.</p><p>Spark Protocol is slated to launch in April. MacPherson had this to say about the upcoming Spark Lend product, which will be the first product available in the Spark Protocol ecosystem:</p><blockquote> “Maker does not need to pay liquidity providers, so users will be able to borrow any amount of Dai at the Dai Savings Rate (currently 1%). This is by far the best rate in DeFi.”
</blockquote><h3 id="2-lido-dao">2. Lido DAO</h3><p><a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/lido-dao/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Lido DAO (LDO)</a> is a decentralized autonomous organization that oversees the Lido Finance platform. Lido is one of the most popular staking solutions in the industry, allowing users to earn staking rewards on supported digital assets, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, and Kusama.</p><p>The major benefits of Lido are that it features lower staking requirements than staking as an individual and that the customers can use liquidity during the staking period, while also receiving rewards (for example, <a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/lido-staked-ether/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Lido Staked ETH</a> is issued at 1:1 ratio for every ETH staked).</p><h3 id="why-lido-dao">Why Lido DAO?</h3><p>On February 7, the Lido team announced that the protocol would be receiving a major overhaul as a part of the Lido V2 release. The upgrade will be addressing two main areas, the validator ecosystem and ETH withdrawals.</p><img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/srd-optimized-uploads/5838709e58e344ec8302f03a8706fced.jpg"><p><em>One of the major features of Lido V2 is Staking Router, which aims to enhance the validator process on the platform. <a href="https://blog.lido.fi/introducing-lido-v2/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Source</a></em></p><p>Sparing technical details, a new Staking Router controller contract will be implemented, which is expected to benefit stakers, node operators, and developers thanks to a trio of new modules (Community, DVT, and Off Chain Module).</p><p>In addition, a revamp of Lido’s withdrawal system will allow users to unstake their stETH and receive ETH at a 1:1 ratio, likely in preparation of Ethereum’s Shanghai update, which will unlock ETH deposited in the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract. Mainnet implementation of Lido V2 is expected to take place in March/April.</p><h3 id="3-tron">3. TRON</h3><p><a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/tron/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">TRON (TRX)</a> is an open-source blockchain platform that went live in June 2018. Prior to the mainnet launch, the platform’s native asset TRX existed as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.</p><p>The TRON blockchain is designed to host smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps). Similar to Ethereum, TRON supports issuing of custom tokens, which must adhere to the project’s own technical standards, such as TRC-10 and TRC-20.</p><h3 id="why-tron">Why TRON?</h3><p>TRON founder Justin Sun has announced the establishment of the $100 million AI development fund, which aims to “encourage the integration of AI and blockchain tech in the TRON ecosystem.”</p><p>According to Sun, the TRON platform will provide In“an AI-oriented decentralized payment framework for AI systems ChatGPT and OpenAI.” &nbsp;addition, the plan is to provide a decentralized storage option powered by TRON’s own BitTorrent File System (BTFS).</p><p>Recently, AI-focused crypto projects have become all the rage, with the likes of AGIX and FET gaining hundreds of percent since the public rollout of ChatGTP, the most advanced AI chatbot yet. Perhaps a similar outcome awaits TRX.</p><h3 id="4-bitcoin">4. Bitcoin</h3><p><a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/bitcoin/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Bitcoin (BTC)</a> is the original cryptocurrency that introduced the concept of a decentralized, trustless payment system for the internet era. It was first described in a white paper written by the anonymous individual Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 and launched the following year.</p><p>Bitcoin relies on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm to reach a consensus about the state of its distributed ledger. The network is secured by miners, which receive a BTC reward for adding new blocks to the blockchain. Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million, which gives the currency artificial scarcity.</p><h3 id="why-bitcoin">Why Bitcoin?</h3><p>After a tough outing in 2022, during which Bitcoin lost more than 64% of its value, the world’s oldest crypto is off to a promising start this year. It gained over 31% year-to-date and is currently near its peak in terms of the number of long-term holders. In addition, a renewed wave of interest following Bitcoin’s return above $20,000 in mid-January saw more than 600,000 new small addresses (those holding <a href="https://coincodex.com/convert/bitcoin/usd/0.1/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">0.1 BTC</a> or less) join the network, per Santiment.</p><img src="https://academy-public.coinmarketcap.com/srd-optimized-uploads/884b15fd279543619055719265673722.jpg"><p><em>Bitcoin is <a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/bitcoin/price-prediction/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">predicted</a> to reclaim the $60,000 level in early 2024.</em></p><p>On a longer time horizon, the next Bitcoin halving is taking place next year. This will be the fourth halving in Bitcoin’s history. So far, every halving cycle fatured a bull run that saw the currency reach new price peaks ($457 in 2014, $20,089 in 2017, $68,789 in 2021).</p><p>According to the CoinCodex price prediction, Bitcoin could gain an additional 5.3% in the next month, with 16 technical indicators signaling bullish activity and 17 signaling bearish activity. It is worth noting that the algorithm also predicts a move to $61,800 in the next 12 months.</p><h3 id="5-ethereum">5. Ethereum</h3><p><a href="https://coincodex.com/crypto/ethereum/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ethereum (ETH)</a> is an open-source, decentralized blockchain platform that enables developers to create and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. It is by far the most popular smart contract and DeFi platform in the world, with a TVL of $27.9 billion (over 5 times the second-placed TRON with roughly $5 billion).</p><p>Ethereum has its own cryptocurrency called Ether (ETH), and its network is secured through a consensus algorithm called Proof of Stake (PoS). The platform was created by Vitalik Buterin and launched in 2015.</p><h3 id="why-ethereum">Why Ethereum?</h3><p>Ethereum is quickly approaching the next major upgrade in its development roadmap, called “Shapella”. The update is expected to bring the long-awaited functionality of ETH withdrawals from the Ethereum 2.0 smart contract.</p><p>If everything goes as planned, the mainnet upgrade could go live as soon as in late March or early April, according to Ethereum dev Tim Beiko. However, the rollout date is not set in stone. "If we find a bug, we will always delay and fix things to be safe," Beiko noted.</p><p>The rollout of the next major Ethereum upgrade will allow validators to start withdrawing their ETH. At the moment, there is <a href="https://coincodex.com/convert/ethereum/usd/16550000/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">$25.1 billion worth of ETH</a> locked in the Beacon Deposit Contract.</p><p>Want to learn more about other top cryptos to invest in right now? <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Read the full article on CoinCodex</a>.</p>

10+ Best Crypto to Buy Right Now: Maker, Lido, Tron & more!

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