As we move deeper into the first quarter of the year, this week’s choices are set to benefit from ongoing developments and significant announcements that will help to push each project forward. With investors still not having fully returned to an overall positive market sentiment, these developments should help the projects to strengthen their market positions, and bring some much needed attention to their respective projects.

Neo (NEO)

NEO is one of the more established projects on the market, and is often described as the Ethereum of China as NEO allows smart contracts to be delivered via its blockchain. The NEO platform has played host to a number of ICOs and NEO holders are also rewarded with regular payments of the GAS currency.

Why Neo?

Despite being a popular project with a large passionate community, Neo has been overlooked recently and the emergence of the Ontology project has seen a dilution in the message and direction of some of Neo’s leading team members. This may all be set right as the Neo DevCon runs from February 16 to 17, in Seattle, USA. Core team members such as founders Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang are scheduled to outline their future plans for the project, and any significant announcements should have a positive result on the performance of NEO in the short to medium term.

Komodo (KMD)

Komodo is a cryptocurrency and platform designed for maximum security and privacy. The Komodo platform provides smart contracts and supports the BarterDEX decentralized exchange which allows traders via atomic swaps. Komodo is linked to Bitcoin, and uses a consensus mechanism that is backed by the Bitcoin hashrate, and anonymous transactions can be sent via Komodo using zk-snarks technology.

Why Komodo?

The Komodo team remain hard at work and have announced that Z-Transactions will be disabled with any KMD funds held in private Z-address must be moved to transparent address to support the move to the dPoW algorithm and KMD 2.0. They also state that their wallet encryption feature will be available to everyone once all funds are moved to transparent addresses. The movement of funds must take place by February 15, with the team giving out full instructions on how to safely complete the process.

Waves (WAVES)

Waves is a cryptocurrency platform that aims to facilitate the trading of digital assets of all kinds as well as real-world commodities. The project was created by Russian physicist, Sasha Ivanov, and allows anyone to create their own custom token and trade it on the Waves platform. The project has also hosted a number of ICOs and been a reliable choice for teams looking to raise funds via an Initial Coin Offering.

Why Waves?

Waves is a platform that continues to develop and the currency is set to benefit from a Bitpanda listing on February 14. The popular project won the recent poll held by the Bitpanda team and Waves also has a number of developments to complete over the coming weeks including the distribution of the first Waveslabs grants, the platform’s smart assets functionality becoming fully operational, the launch of additional games, and the announcement of a significant partnership. This all bodes well for the future performance of the WAVES token.

How did the coins perform last week?

Surprisingly, TRX struggled to maintain any momentum related to the airdrop of BTT tokens and slipped by around 2% over the week. TRX is currently trading at around $0.02 and ETH was a stronger performer as it grew by 8%, and is currently trading at $116. Despite ETH’s rally, REP fell by 7%, and is currently trading at $13.22. Over the course of the week, the market climbed by $5B from a total cap of around $114B on Monday to around $119B on Sunday.