As we move further into the final quarter of the year, this week’s choices are set to benefit from significant developments and announcements that should strengthen their market positions and benefit their communities. The news should also result in increased amounts of attention to each respective currency over the coming weeks.

Top 3 cryptocurrencies to watch

The three cryptocurrencies featured in this week's edition of Coins to Watch are designed to facilitate a variety of use cases, blockchain interoperability, private transactions and IoT.

1. Ark (ARK)

Ark is a blockchain technology based upon the concept that chains can be linked; enabling anyone to create their own blockchain whilst benefiting from the security and scalability of the Ark main chain it’s connected to. SmartBridge technology is central to the project and Ark uses delegated proof of stake coupled with Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance to keep the network secure.

Buy/Sell Ark (ARK)

How to buy Ark (ARK) on Binance?

Why Ark?

The team have announced that ARK Core v2.6 is set to launch on Devnet on October 15. The update brings a number of new features including multi-payments, hashed time lock contracts, Schnorr’s signature schema and Nonces for transactions. Migration of the Core v2.6 on Devnet will start on Tuesday, 15th of October 2019 at 16:00 UTC (4 pm UTC) and anyone can earn ARK coins by taking place in the Beta testing phase and the team outline the process in their official blog post.

2. Horizen (ZEN)

Horizen is a privacy platform that enables encrypted messaging, and incorporates supernodes and Zk-snarks technology alongside its ZEN currency. The project was previously known as ZenCash and based on Zcash and uses a decentralized governance model whilst enabling users to make use of private transactions.

Buy/Sell Horizen (ZEN)

Why Horizen?

October promises to be a busy month for the team behind the platform and a number of events and developments are lined up. These include the Alpha version release of their decentralized and unfederated sidechains scheduled for October 21, and the upgrade to Zen 2.0.19 which will take place at block #610000, which is expected to occur around October 26. This will act as a mandatory update for all exchanges, mining pools, node operators, and full node wallet users and the team explain the upgrade here.

3. IoTeX (IOTX)

IoTeX aims to create the next generation Internet of Things blockchain (IoT) platform. The unique blockchain-in-blockchain architecture will upgrade scalability, privacy, and developability issues relating to the IoT DApps and ecosystem growth and allow all physical and virtual "things" to securely exchange information and value at global scale.

Buy/Sell IoTex (IOTX)

Why IoTeX?

The project’s mainnet Beta is set to launch on October 16 and includes features such as an EVM upgrade (Solidity 0.5.x), reduced block times, the separation of indexing/API from full node, and cross-chain transfers of data and value. The Beta release should lead into the full mainnet release scheduled to take place during Q1 2020 and highlights that the team behind IoTeX are continuing to develop their platform and they outline their development roadmap here.

How did the coins perform last week?

The seven day period led to positive results across the market, and last week's coins to watch saw moderate gains. WAVES made a small move of around 1% in value and is currently trading at around $0.89. QTUM grew by around 7% in value, and is currently trading at $1.81 and DGD grew by 5% in value and is currently trading at $13.15. Over the course of the week, the market moved from $214B to $225B.

News from the previous week

Stay updated on the latest cryptocurrency news, developments and trends with the CoinCodex weekly news recap.