How to identify altcoins with high potential: approaches and tools

During the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies, many altcoins surged hundreds or even thousands of times, reaching market capitalizations in the billions of dollars. Such projects, capable of multiplying investments, may be discovered at an early stage.

Investments and partnerships

The success of altcoins largely depends on investments, which are necessary both for the development of the project and its promotion.

Statistics indicate that approximately 30% of Web3 projects fail due to insufficient funding. Early-stage investments are essential not only for developing and launching the project successfully but also for covering operational costs until the team begins to generate a profit.

Data about investments and the funds backing early-stage projects can be seen using services like CoinRank. For example, the Sui project attracted over $385 million through several funding rounds from major investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, and Circle.

However, significant investments and top-tier funds do not always guarantee future success, as other factors also influence the project's prospects.

For example, the Starknet project raised over $280 million from renowned funds and private investors, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. However, the project still failed due to low community involvement, intense competition between Layer-2 networks, and the poor launch of its native token STRK. Since its listing, the STRK token's price has plummeted by nearly 95%, from $1.95 to $0.12.

Reviewing blogs and media

Even before being listed on exchanges, promising assets often appear in the media environment, regularly mentioned by bloggers, media outlets, and influencers.

However, it's essential to ensure that these mentions come from various sources.

If a blogger regularly posts news about a particular project, it doesn't necessarily mean that the project is valuable. The asset could be a scam token that the blogger is promoting for a fee.

If a project is genuinely worthwhile, it will likely be featured in major media outlets. Additionally, monitoring the project's community on social media is crucial, as an active community is one of the main drivers of digital asset growth.

For example, meme tokens like Bonk (BONK) and Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) have no inherent value, but that didn't prevent them from becoming top crypto projects. Strong community support played a crucial role in their development, as users actively promoted the projects on social media platforms like Twitter and Telegram, attracting more investors and driving the rapid rise of these meme coins.

Such projects, which can "go viral" and generate investor interest, can be identified through Twitter hashtags (now X) or by using Google Trends. It's also possible to evaluate the project's activity on social networks through services like Twitter Score.

Searching for low-capitalized assets

Some projects that made it to the top of the cryptocurrency market were "low-cap" when they first launched. Examples of well-known crypto projects, such as Render (RNDR) and Arweave (AR), illustrate this.

For instance, in the months following its listing, the market capitalization of Render's token was only around $12 million. However, as interest in the DePIN and AI sectors grew, so did the market cap of its native token, RNDR.

At its peak in March 2024, when the Render cryptocurrency reached its all-time high (ATH) of $13.6, the project's market capitalization surpassed $4.5 billion. In other words, since its listing on exchanges, the market cap has grown by more than 350 times.

If investors had put $1,000 into RNDR immediately after the listing, by the time the ATH was reached, their investment would have increased to about $270,000.

However, caution is necessary when investing in assets with a market capitalization of less than $1 million, as these tokens are often either worthless or created with the intention of scamming.

Finding promising low-cap tokens is a challenging and, in some ways, creative task. It's essential to study the project, understand which sector it belongs to, and assess whether the project is being discussed. If the segment it belongs to is gaining traction, the token has a chance to "explode."

Trend analysis

It's also crucial to monitor trends in the cryptocurrency market. For example, in 2021, there was a boom in decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs. Many tokens in these categories experienced price surges of tens or even hundreds of times.

For example, after listing on exchanges in September 2020, the native token of the decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, UNI, increased in value more than tenfold in just three quarters, from $3.48 to $44.90 at its peak (ATH). Many other tokens from the DeFi sector also achieved tremendous success:

• Aave (AAVE),
• Cosmos (ATOM),
• 1inch Network (1INCH),
• PancakeSwap (CAKE),
• Yield Finance (YFI), and many others.

To identify current trends, you don't need to be a professional analyst — just follow social media. Additionally, trending cryptocurrency categories are listed on monitoring services like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko on their main pages. For each category, you can see a list of relevant assets.

For example, as of June 2025, the most trending categories according to CoinMarketCap are:

• Tokens from the BNB Chain and Solana ecosystems;
• Meme coins;
• Tokens from AI (Artificial Intelligence) related projects;
• Tokens from the real-world assets (RWA) sector;
• Gaming tokens and assets from GameFi projects;
• Tokens from decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).

Moreover, if a particular segment becomes trendy, there's a high likelihood that new promising projects will soon emerge in it. Therefore, it's essential to monitor these categories to identify potentially profitable projects before they experience explosive growth.

However, please note that investments carry risks and don't guarantee future profits. Market trends are volatile, and competition among cryptocurrency projects is intensifying.

Only a small percentage of projects achieve long-term success, so it is essential to diversify your portfolio, spreading your capital across different assets.