As we move closer to the end of the first quarter of the year, this week’s choices are set to benefit from continued development and significant announcements and upgrades that will help each project to continue to progress. These developments should help the projects to strengthen their market positions, and bring increased amounts of attention to their respective currencies.

Monero (XMR)

Monero is a leading anonymous digital currency, and its security, privacy and untraceability are its main features. Monero is the most popular privacy-focused currency and the largest by market cap. Monero makes use of Confidential Transactions (CT) and ring signatures, and mixes multiple transactions together, making it hard for anyone viewing the blockchain to follow the digital money trail.

Why Monero?

The network is set for a protocol upgrade after it was discovered that ASICs are mining on the Monero network. The team behind the project laid out their arguments against ASIC miners in this blog post, and some of the main points concerning the hard fork include:

Intended fork height of 1788000 (approximately March 9)

PoW tweak will be CryptoNightR + a random change

Users and pool operators should upgrade to the upcoming 0.14 release (CLI & GUI)

Miners should upgrade their mining software to a version that supports the new PoW algorithm

Mobile wallet users (e.g. Cake Wallet, Monerujo, X wallet, MyMonero, Edge) ought to upgrade to a version that supports the consensus changes

XMR holders do not have to move or transfer their coins before the scheduled protocol upgrade in order to remain up to date.

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Horizen (ZEN)

Horizen is a privacy platform that enables encrypted messaging, and incorporates supernodes and Zk-snarks technology. The project was previously known as ZenCash and based on Zcash and uses a decentralized governance model.

Why Horizen?

The project has a number of events lined up over the next few weeks, and these include a monthly live stream which occurs on the first Wednesday of each month at 18.00 (GMT) and is scheduled for March 6. This coincides with the first of a series of international meet ups with the meet up in Monterrey, Mexico running from 4 PM - 6:30 PM on March 6. Further meet ups are scheduled in Ife, Nigeria on March 8 and Sydney, Australia on March 12. These developments should help Horizen to continue to build a global community of users.

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Hydro (HYDRO)

Hydro enables developers to seamlessly deploy blockchain in their existing applications, without the need to create expensive infrastructure. If you are building a fintech app in investing, savings, or insurance, Hydrogen is already leveraging the Hydro blockchain technology. Through the Hydrogen API, you can build a blockchain application without being a blockchain developer.

Why Hydro?

Hydro is aiming to simplify the process of building Fintech applications and the team are close to launching a new website. The rebranding is set for March 4 and the people close to the project are also expecting some significant announcements to accompany to the launch. With significant news expected to be released this week, Hydro is one to keep an eye on.

How did last week's coins perform?

Despite conducting the scheduled Constantinople upgrade, ETH fell by around 7% over the week, and is currently trading at around $133. SRN proved to be more resilient and grew by 3.5%, and is currently trading at $0.03. META had a strong week and climbed by around 34%, and is currently trading at $0.01. Over the course of the week, the market moved from a total cap of around $128B on Monday to around $129.5B on Sunday.