When picking cryptocurrencies, their Use Case, Problem Solving Utilities and a Smaller Market Cap are 3 things to look out for. We’ve seen many meme coins, short-term mania, and other joke-style cryptocurrencies flood the market in recent times, but I believe the market will return to fundamentals. Projects that have been built on key principles will capture speculative gains.

Safemoon, Shiba Inu and a few others all have similar tokenomics, and I believe we will see more of this. I am also confident that a real NFT mania is coming and will take place over the summer. As a result, I am exploring a lot of NFT projects.

These are my top 5 hot picks for the month, and my opinion piece on Ethereum, NFTs, Potential Side Chains and Layer 2s.

1. Robonomics

IoT Service for industry 4.0 built on Polkadot and Ethereum with a heavy focus on Robotics networks.

Market Cap:  49 Million

Circulation: 1,713,749 XRT

Looking at their Github alone will give you an idea of how serious this team is and the scope of the project’s goals and potential. https://github.com/airalab/robonomics/releases

An early bird project building on Polkadot since the very early days of the substrate, Robonomics is also fully Ethereum compatible and the first project to build a para chain on the Kusama Network – Polkadots crazy cousin and canary network.

Given the success of Polkadot and Kusama and the future of the 4.0 industry, I’m very confident that this project will see market capitalization in the billions. The sister token, RWS (Robonomics Web Services), will also lend massive attention to the XRT token as the network develops. Corporations and even countries bid for access control of the RWS Network via the minimal RWS token. There are only 100 RWS tokens in existence, and only 50 have been made available to the public.

2. Items ETH

It is a platform that fuses ERC20s, ERC721, ERC1155s into a single standard. Unleashing the power of NFTs for Dapps, Defi, Art and Games.

Market Cap: 4.45 Million

Circulation: 375,353 ARTE

Again, looking at their Github alone should make any serious blockchain researcher excited! This one also connects to several other smaller projects built on top of the Items platform. https://github.com/EthereansOS/ITEMS-Interface

Items ETH is a multi-use tool for expanding the power of NFTs. ITEMS merges the DeFi and NFT ecosystems into one. Swap, farm and arbitrage NFTs on DEXes. Trade ERC20s on NFT stores, Create your own ITEM collections. Set hosts (wallets and contracts able to mint ITEMs) for each. Program extensions for every individual ITEM, Wrap any ERC20, ERC721 or ERC1155 into an ITEM, empowering it with the capabilities of all. Save gas batch-swapping ERC20s. Farm ERC1155s in DeFi dApps. Swap ERC721s on DExes. Farm and set up farming contracts for your ITEMs, with full DeFi integration ready to go. Items ETH is truly a powerful and rather unnoticed project in the crypto space at the moment. Considering the market cap as well, it is a true gem.

3. Hermez

Layer 2 payments/transfers on Ethereum using ZK Rollups focusing on scaling 

Market Cap: 61.8 Million

Circulation: 10,497,225 HEZ

Looking at their Github, you get an idea of their potential and how well built this project is. https://github.com/hermeznetwork

There are already a few “so-called” Layer 2s out there – the problem is, most are not entirely Ethereum or even Ethereum 2 Compatible. With Hermez, their focus is on Payments and Token transfers, making them very attractive in the coming Layer 2 craze. This Layer project will be far ahead of other projects by never leaving Ethereum. They basically batch transactions and token transfers using Zk Rollups. To me, this project solves a huge gas issue for payments and transfers while staying connected to Ethereum.

4. Darwinia KTON

Market Cap: 3.5 Million

Circulation: 41,028 KTON

Its Github is like the others – it’s active, and the developments are exciting. https://github.com/darwinia-network

Proof of Commitment NFT Token for the Darwinia Token Bridge on The C Ring Network running on Polkadot. The KTON Token is acquired after staking ten thousand RING into the Network for 1 year to gain 1 KTON token. The KTON token is used to secure the token bridge and award the holder fees for doing so. The reason I’m bullish on this project (and have been for more than a year, really) is the development and its close ties to Polkadot. Darwinia was the first to launch its mainnet on Polkadot and is very well connected. It is also a micro-cap as the documentation is extensive. I don’t think many people have realized that you can’t actually use the Darwinia Token Bridge without the KTON token! This one went way under the radar, and I think it is heavily undervalued.

5. ChainX

Market Cap: 74,812,826 Million 

Circulation: 7,724,150 PCX

ChainX has no Github, but all their development documentation can be found on their medium. https://chainx-org.medium.com/

It is a 2nd layer Defi on Bitcoin built on Substrate. ChainX is a very early adopter of Substrate and has been working directly with Polkadot China to develop their Layer 2 for BTC and other main chains like Litecoin. To my knowledge, there is only one other serious Layer 2 for Bitcoin and that is Ren. I, however, do not see ChainX as a competitor because it does not use the same consensus methods as Ren Darknodes. Both are already building on Polkadot with complementary roles. ChainX is a Relay and a Token Bridge for Cross-Chain Defi asset exchange mainly Focused on BTC, ETH, EOS, LTC and other Legacy chains. These perks and other aspects separate it from the Ren protocol, and I feel it will overtake Ren’s market cap and settle in the billions.

The Final Verdict

I can’t say which of these 5 are my favourite, but Items ETH and KTON are more attractive because their market caps are small and heavily focused on NFTs. If I were to pick the most interesting, it would certainly be Robonomics and the RWS Network they are building. Their goal is asteroid mining and other types of space-bearing robotics technology.