Top 2 Niche Altcoins with STUPENDOUS Upside

And wouldn’t you love it if your 40% leader is in a fast-growing sector? Our top 2 altcoins in this sector are 50% of the market. The leader has more than 40% of the market. What sector am I talking about? decentralized storage. Let’s see who is dominating this important, fast-growing part of the crypto-economy.

Background on Decentralized Storage

One of the first non-currency apps built out on blockchain was decentralized file storage. So, P2P file storage was already popular with many OG Bitcoiners. So it was a natural extension of the idea of decentralizing everything.

There are altcoins that go back as far as 2014 and 2015 like . IPFS secures NFTs in most markets. Others have come along like SIA and most recently, Arweave.

#crypto projects I am watching very closely??

Did you know that over 95% of web3 companies are still using centralized web2 storage/hosting solutions like AWS or Azure?

It's only a matter of time until some of this shifts to decentralized solutions like #Filecoin#arweave

— tayler88.crypto (@TaylerTBM) February 27, 2023

Each has its own unique way it operates, uses blockchain, and maintains utility for its coin. There are lots of competitors. But recently decentralized storage has become a 2 horse race for the lead. So, would be a contender but they don’t have a token. So that means there’s no way we can benefit from its growth. Too bad since it does a nice job.

But, the 2 who are definitely a cut above the others to lead this sector are Filecoin and Arweave. Do you have a favorite storage project? Let us know in the comments below.

Filecoin & FVM

Filecoin is one of crypto’s oldest projects. It lets you store data inexpensively. And it uses IPFS by the way. You can also provide extra storage space and get paid for it. You earn fees, all in the native coin. And you can build your own dApps and store them and run them on Filecoin. But Filecoin isn’t without its controversies.

Extra, extra, read all about it! ??

Filecoin News 62 is here, check it out:

?? last chance to apply for #ScalingEthereum@ETHGlobal

?? Filecoin Network Base in Austin, TX with @FilFoundation

?? the official countdown to launch is on!

& more ??https://t.co/SnjOdJYUzR

— Filecoin (@Filecoin) March 9, 2023

First, you should know your data is not permanent. If you fail to pay for your storage they will erase it. So it’s not permanent like Arweave is. It’s more like Dropbox but instead of Dropbox controlling the servers, Filecoin can just shut you off.

Secondly, there’s China. Many of Filecoin’s miners (suppliers of data storage space) are from China. This is a major concern to businesses in The West. They fear their sensitive information will end up in Chinese hands. In fact, this article speculates the ban on Bitcoin mining is the cause. Many chose to use their computing power for Filecoin instead. It’s definitely a problem unless Filecoin can show that the miner can’t access the data on their machines.

Yet, this same article shows demand is increasing rapidly for Filecoin storage space. Especially so among scientific and research-intensive projects and projects like the Internet Archive. So it’s hardly all bad for Filecoin. They are growing and doing well in a tough environment. But can they break through and get Western customers? Only if they can meet the security concerns.

Now the big recent news. Filecoin’s Virtual Machine or FVM. This means that Ethereum smart contract functionality is coming to Filecoin. March 14th.

As you may know, the deployment of the Filecoin Virtual Machine () to Filecoin mainnet is upcoming on ??day, March 14!

?? incoming – here is all you need to know about the FVM ??

— Filecoin (@Filecoin) March 9, 2023

In the footage you are watching now, Filecoin calls the Storage Layer 0. The addition of smart contracts or other computations to the Filecoin blockchain Layer 1. But the big thing here is that now Layer 2 possibilities open up. Look at what Ethereum is doing with its Layer 2s. There are:

• Privacy-based L2s.
• Rollups of different types for scaling and speed.
• Lower fees for everyone.

All that is available on Filecoin now too. This programmability is a big deal. Before this apps could deploy on Filecoin. But only certain types. Smart contracts could not. Apps, where code changes happen (like when you add funds to your favorite yield farm or when you buy that NFT), could not use Filecoin either. Until now. So, the FVM also enables:

• Liquid Staking.
• DataDAOs to form and operate around specific sets of data.
• Permanent Storage that it did not have before (but Arweave does).

So this is a big, big deal. Along with this big FVM news, we see that many fundamentals like Revenue, Fees, and Developer activity are all on the increase too. The sum of all that is a healthy, growing protocol that could see explosive growth from this new functionality coming online.

We’ve talked about before. It is a permanent web storage solution. Storage for the Web3 world. In fact, it’s on our list of projected top performers for 2023. We went through the basics there of their huge ecosystem growth. And how they are enabling no-code decentralized Web3 websites to launch and operate.

Last month: Another all time high for Arweave transaction counts (+20% MoM).

Tomorrow: Arweave 2.6 activates bringing greener and more accessible mining, as well as self-optimizing storage markets.

The permaweb is humming. pic.twitter.com/BmYszqfux0

— ???? sam.arweave.dev (@samecwilliams) March 5, 2023

And they just keep on getting better. They did 20% more transactions month over month in February than in January. And January was a month of record transactions too. More than 70 million transactions in February alone. Along with our favorite Polygon, Arweave is providing storage for Meta so it can bring NFTs to Instagram. This was a huge piece of news for Polygon and it’s huge for Arweave as well.

And its , the Dropbox for Web3, now lets you save files of 100kb or less for free. So that really is more like Dropbox or Google Drive with a free and paid level. Pretty cool. That news came out last week. Plus, as I said before, they have a growing ecosystem. For example:

• Warp Contracts for ‘data driven’ smart contracts on Arweave.
• everVision for Web3 infrastructure tools.
• HollowDB for privacy using zero-knowledge proofs.
• Bundlr as a data layer for builders, and more.

Now, all that may be a little technical for many of us. The point is Arweave is not only Arweave. There’s a whole ecosystem of projects supporting it. They give developers and users like us the tools we need for a censorship-free web. Here’s a cool example. Forward Research does R&D for Arweave. They came up with a way to make any phone or offline device into a secure hardware wallet for Arweave.

What is the most cypherpunk cold storage hardware wallet you can imagine? ??

It wouldn’t require any kind of KYC, would be verifiably secure, and obtainable via untraceable means.

Here’s how to turn any phone into a secure hardware wallet for Arweave: ????

— Forward Research (@fwdresearch) February 20, 2023

Even LEDGER had a data leak once. These types of practical applications help show you that Arweave is way more than just a decentralized Dropbox. They are hoping the next generation of Uniswap will host there or that you use their tools to create the next, better Ledger wallet.