Ethereum holders were hoping for a big rally after this week's "merge" on ETH's primary test network, Ropsten, but so far the markets have been responsive.
Coins that offer staking rewards, however, did fairly well this week as a whole - the two winners being Tezos (XTZ) and Chainlink (LINK) which saw big gains today and over the course of this week as a whole.
Tezos:
- Fork-less upgrades and on-chain governance models on XTZ provide tangible solutions to a lot of the issues the crypto industry is going through right now, especially in DAOs.
- Recession talks are getting more people into a savings mindset - and Tezos' accessible and competitive rates (4.6%) makes it very appealing for crypto holders to convert to.
- The interest in NFTs from artists and art collectors are starting to migrate over to chains like XTZ ever since gas-fees started to get out of control on the ETH ecosystems - time will tell if the Consensys "Merge" in August will have developers and artists return but for now, Tezos and other layer 2s are taking advantage of the lull and pulling ahead.
Chainlink:
- Working on many background infrastructure projects at high levels.
- Has an interesting history (which involves the 4chan crowd, oddly enough) that gave it a cult-like status a few years ago that seems to be paying off today.
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While the crypto market as a whole has remained fairly flat-lined this week, the projects with the biggest gains seem to have a few things in common: the offer of staking rewards; and a visible community backing the project during its downturns, thus "buying the dip". If you're a long-term trader, these trends are positive signs that the asset has real resilience behind them.