Top 5 Cryptocurrencies You Should Be Keeping An Eye On

5 min readJan 9, 2022

For a lot of people, it is the tech that drove them to cryptocurrencies; whether it’s cryptography, consensus mechanisms or use-cases, the fascinating field of crypto attracts curious minds from various educational backgrounds and hobbies. However, there is a larger crowd that isn’t necessarily drawn by the newfound knowledge, but rather by the opportunities for monetary gain.

It isn’t to say that those are bad or invalid reasons to be involved in the crypto space; after all, the entire movement was started to achieve financial independence from centralized systems of currency. One project inspired another and today we find ourselves in a marketplace worth around $2 trillion, and with no signs of stopping.

But how does one keep track of all that’s going on? How, among 2,000+ projects, can one spot the ones with the most promise? In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at 5 very promising projects and tokens worth keeping an eye on.

Do note that while we love speculating and discussing such topics, we highly encourage independent research and urge you not to take this post as financial advice.

So without further delay and in no particular order, here are 5 cryptocurrencies that are worthy of your attention in 2022:

1- Bitcoin

To some, it may be a given, and to others, it may come as a total surprise; but Bitcoin, despite being one of the most valuable digital assets with the highest market cap in the crypto market, is one of the most precious assets worth having in any portfolio.

It’s not simply because Bitcoin kicked it all off, but rather, because Bitcoin’s circumstances make it a unique asset, and that uniqueness is reflected in its price today. Bitcoin inarguably had the fairest start of them all; it had no private round, no involvement of any financial institutions and no pre-mined tokens.

Today, Bitcoin is one of the most decentralized and secure assets one can own; this is partly thanks to its Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, and partly due to the lack of any central authority. Pair that with a relatively small 21,000,000 max supply — over a million of which are deemed “lost” — and it is no wonder why when countries, financial institutions and investment firms talk about cryptocurrencies, they talk about BTC.

2- Ethereum

Ethereum is to smart-contract and Dapp blockchains what Bitcoin is to digital currencies. Its first-mover advantage has not only secured its number 2 spot in the market rankings, but also the largest number of developers building on its blockchain.

The high gas fees and relatively long transaction times — while a pain point for small investors — are a testament to how much this network is used and trusted; so much so in fact that there are entire side-chains dedicated to providing scaling solutions to this one blockchain network.

2021 saw the rise of many “ETH-Killers”, in other words, blockchains that can provide the same functionality as Ethereum but faster and cheaper. While it’s not untrue that such blockchains exist, they most likely lack in a key area that Ethereum excels at — be it in decentralization or in security. For the foreseeable future, these blockchains will continue to build ETH bridges and develop interoperability with the Ethereum network because of its dominance in the market — which doesn’t seem to have a clear end in sight.

3- Polygon

Speaking of Ethereum, one cannot discuss it without its consistently high transaction fees that tend to exceed $30 for simple ERC-20 token transfers. While it is a powerful display of the thriving state of the network, it without a doubt alienates small investors, and sometimes even harms them during periods of volatility.

Polygon is a Layer-2 scaling solution for the Ethereum network that utilizes a technology called Rollups. By performing and executing transactions on the second layer, and submitting that data on the first, it inherits several properties from the base layer such as security and decentralization, but also maintains a higher speed and lower transaction costs.

Polygon’s success is somewhat tied with that of Ethereum’s, but the fact that Ethereum will have to rely on scaling solutions make it such that the two enable each other, and build each other up. Even Vitalik Buterin himself recognizes Layer-2 solutions such as Polygon as the answer to Ethereum’s scaling issues, and with more and more projects incorporating its technology, it’s only a matter of time until the two blockchains are used almost interchangeably.

4- Algorand

Algorand is a Pure Proof-of-Stake (PPoS) blockchain that is designed for the future of finance, and aims to accelerate the convergence between decentralized and traditional finance by enabling the creation of next-generation financial products, protocols and exchange of value.

It was founded by Turing Award winner and MIT professor Silvio Micali in the year 2017, who himself is a prominent figure in the world of cryptography. His works include but are not limited to: Probabilistic Encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Verifiable Random Functions and many other protocols that make up the foundations of modern cryptography.

Its rather unique and impressive protocol, paired with a talented team and led by one of the brightest minds in the cryptography space, explains why over 500 global organizations leverage its technology today. In essence, it has all the makings of a solid, user-friendly and future-proof blockchain that will without a doubt serve well to position it in the mainstream in the future.

5- Harmony ONE

Harmony ONE, also referred to as Harmony, is a fast, open and EVM-compatible blockchain whose mainnet can run Ethereum applications with a 2-second transaction finality, and with fees that cost a fraction of a cent.

It utilizes a technology called Sharding to achieve the speeds it is known for, with 250 nodes per shard amounting to a total of 1,000 validators on the network. This, in combination with cryptographically random re-sharding, secures the network and prevents single-shard attacks.

In addition to its impressive technology, Harmony also possesses an ambitious roadmap that includes but is not limited to: 1-second finality, cross-chain API, cross-shard transactions, as well as bridges for Bitcoin, Polygon and Cosmos, and a trustless bridge for Ethereum. Combining that with a recently-launched massive $300M ecosystem fund, it should go without saying that Harmony is building one impressive unit of a blockchain fit for almost any application scenario with no issue.

The Takeaway

Some readers may have noticed that all of the projects above are blockchain projects, as in, they’re the native tokens of their respective blockchains. This isn’t to imply that only blockchain projects are worthy of people’s attention, but rather to highlight the broad and flexible nature of blockchains that allow them to persist and continuously welcome new projects to be built upon them.

Doesn’t Precog Finance Have A Token?

Precog Finance’s token — PCOG — is in its final stages of development, and until its unveiling will undergo a process of careful examination; from its use-cases to tokenomics, every inch must be sound and thorough to be fit for the Precog Finance protocol.