Review of the 14 traditional cryptocurrencies with the highest price increase in 2020

In 2020, the cryptocurrency market experienced a rollercoaster ride, especially with the Bitcoin bull market at the end of the year that set the entire market ablaze. At the same time, many established coins (launched between 2014-2018) also saw continuous price explosions, achieving several times the increase from the beginning to the end of the year. Chain Catcher, based on data from websites like Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko, selected 14 of the highest-gaining established cryptocurrencies from the top 150 by market capitalization in 2020 and provided a brief introduction to their project information and reasons for their price increases.

1. AAVE
AAVE was issued in December 2017, and its price increased by 5368.70% in 2020.
Aave is a decentralized lending protocol that provides deposit and lending services to users. Lenders earn interest by depositing digital assets into specially created liquidity pools, while borrowers can obtain loans using their cryptocurrencies as collateral within minutes.
In 2020, the DeFi craze popularized liquidity mining, with many users utilizing Aave's lending services to lend stablecoins, while the market adoption of its flash loans also significantly increased. In July, the project announced the launch of liquidity mining and released its V2 version in December, greatly stimulating AAVE's market performance.
Read “Aave's Explosive Growth: The DeFi Dark Horse That Made the Most People 'Slap Their Thighs'” for more information about this project.
2. THETA
THETA was issued in December 2017, and its price increased by 1752% in 2020.
Theta is a decentralized video streaming platform, a project under the well-known esports live streaming platform SLIVER.tv, aiming to incentivize individual users to share excess computing power and bandwidth resources as cache or relay nodes for video streams, providing high-definition video content and reducing video distribution costs.
In May 2020, Theta announced the launch of its mainnet 2.0, and Google Cloud became its fifth external validator node. In December, Theta further announced the upcoming mainnet 3.0, which will introduce TFUEL staking features and a burning mechanism. This year, Theta also announced content collaborations with traditional internet companies like Ludena Protocol and Samsung Daily, and launched NFTs by the end of the year.
Read “Theta's Market Cap Enters the Top 30: Why Is the Decentralized Streaming Platform Optimistic?” for more information about this project.
3. ZIL
ZIL was issued in January 2018, and its price increased by 1544% in 2020.
Zilliqa is a public blockchain project focused on high throughput, built on a sharded network, providing a scalable and secure platform for developers and enterprises looking to build decentralized applications. Its mainnet went live in January 2019.
In the second half of 2020, Zilliqa launched DeFi ecosystem projects like Zyro and ZSwap, introduced a new non-custodial staking mechanism, and introduced the governance token gZIL, allowing users to earn both ZIL and gZIL by staking ZIL. Additionally, Zilliqa made significant efforts in overseas market promotion, gaining high popularity on overseas social media like Twitter, although ZIL is also considered by many industry insiders to be a highly controlled coin.
4. MLN
MLN was issued in February 2017, and its price increased by 874% in 2020.
Enzyme Finance is a decentralized digital asset management protocol that offers customizable management strategies, enabling users to easily and efficiently manage and invest in crypto assets through the Ethereum network, helping ordinary investors effectively find better investment managers and eliminating the role of third parties like law firms to bridge the gap between portfolio managers and investors.
In 2020, many DeFi tokens on the Ethereum network surged, and the asset management sector represented by Enzyme Finance attracted significant attention from investors.
Read “DeFi Asset Management Sector in High Demand: What Are the Potential and Constraints of Melon?” for more information about this project.
5. REN
REN was issued in February 2018, and its price increased by 865.1% in 2020.
Republic Protocol is a decentralized protocol aimed at facilitating value transfer across different blockchains, managing private keys across multiple blockchains to enable cross-chain token transfers without trust, while providing RenVM to help DeFi applications integrate their functionalities into smart contracts. Currently, Republic Protocol supports cross-chain custody for assets including BTC, BCH, and ZEC, helping users participate in DeFi applications using these assets.
Benefiting from the explosive DeFi craze this year, a large amount of cross-chain assets like BTC have been transferred to the Ethereum network for DeFi locking, resulting in a significant increase in users for Republic Protocol, with the total locked amount of renBTC nearing 13,000 BTC.
Read “A Brief Overview of the Evolution of DeFi Project Ren: From Dark Pools to Blockchain Interoperability” for more information about this project.
6. DNT
DNT was issued in August 2017, and its price increased by 788.5% in 2020.
district0x is a decentralized marketplace and community built on Ethereum, Aragon, and IPFS technologies, aiming to realize many of the most popular applications and services on the internet while eliminating rent-seeking and relinquishing decision-making and personal data to third parties. Users can use their DNT tokens to purchase community applications, participate in community decision-making, and earn rewards.
In November 2020, Coinbase Pro announced the listing of DNT, directly driving the price of the token up several times.
7. LRC
LRC was issued in August 2017, and its price increased by 711% in 2020.
Loopring aims to be the best order-matching decentralized trading protocol on Ethereum, allowing anyone to build scalable and high-performance decentralized trading platforms on top of Loopring, enhancing the trading experience for crypto asset holders.
As an established DeFi project, Loopring launched its 3.0 version based on zkRollup technology in 2020, significantly improving trading performance, and became the first Chinese community project to be listed on Coinbase Pro.
Read “Founder Wang Dong Discusses Why Loopring Became the First Chinese Project Listed on Coinbase” for more information about this project.
8. ANT
ANT was issued in May 2017, and its price increased by 655.5% in 2020.
Aragon is a decentralized autonomous organization that allows users to create and manage their own decentralized organizations on the blockchain, creating an ecosystem that enables any organization, entrepreneur, and investor to collaborate efficiently and securely without technical vulnerabilities or malicious participants, while stakeholders can use tokens to vote on the future development and direction of the project.
In 2020, community governance became one of the most important topics in the blockchain industry, and Aragon, as a major autonomous solution, was adopted by many DeFi projects, with its liquidity mining activities attracting many users; by September, over 1,500 DAO organizations had been established.
Read “Placeholder Partner: A Brief Overview of the Token Economics of the Decentralized Governance Platform Aragon” for more information about this project.
9. XEM
XEM was issued in April 2015, and its price increased by 583.2% in 2020.
XEM is a public blockchain project led by a Japanese community, aiming to create and maintain a strong and viable ecosystem that connects individuals, developers, enterprises, and society for mutual benefit.
In 2020, the most important news for the project was the announcement in September of the launch of a new public blockchain called Symbol, where all XEM holders would receive an equivalent airdrop of the new blockchain token XYM, while the current version of the NEM chain would continue to operate.
10. GNO
GNO was issued in April 2017, and its price increased by 574.90% in 2020.
Gnosis is a decentralized prediction market protocol that utilizes the characteristics of oracles and smart contracts to automatically execute predictions on the outcomes of any event, providing an open platform for people to predict results. Prediction markets are considered a spontaneous and efficient form of information aggregation through speculative behavior in the market, thus realizing the influence of "the wisdom of the crowd" on actual events.
Since August 2020, the U.S. presidential election has become a hot topic of public discussion, with many users participating in predicting the election results on Gnosis, significantly increasing its usage frequency. Additionally, Gnosis developed new projects last year, including the centralized autonomous organization GnosisDAO, the decentralized exchange Gnosis Protocol, and the custom market maker CMM.
11. WAVES
WAVES was issued in May 2016, and its price increased by 564% in 2020.
Waves is a hybrid blockchain platform led by a Russian community, aimed at building digital infrastructure, supporting developers in creating their own on-chain applications by enhancing the security, reliability, and speed of IT systems, promoting the large-scale implementation of the blockchain industry, and becoming an open blockchain protocol and developer toolkit for Web3.0 applications and distributed solutions.
Since the beginning of 2020, Waves has primarily focused on promoting its cross-chain oracle protocol Gravity and the DeFi application Neutrino (similar to MakerDAO), aligning with industry development trends, while also conducting large-scale market promotion activities in the Chinese market.
Read “Waves Li Shigeng: The Evolution Path of a Technology-Oriented Public Chain” for more information about this project.
12. LINK
LINK was issued in September 2017, and its price increased by 525.5% in 2020.
ChainLink is a decentralized oracle solution that connects on-chain resources (such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc.) to off-chain resources (such as market data, bank payments, retail payments, event data, etc.) via APIs, enabling interaction between off-chain data and on-chain smart contracts, thus facilitating data exchange between the blockchain world and the real world.
In 2020, the market demand for LINK significantly increased due to the growing adoption of ChainLink's oracle solutions by more public chains and projects.
Read “ChainLink, Oracles, and the Connection Between Two Worlds” for more information about this project.
13. SNX
SNX was issued in March 2018, and its price increased by 483.7% in 2020.
Synthetix is a synthetic asset issuance protocol based on Ethereum, allowing anyone to generate and trade synthetic assets through the protocol, such as crypto assets, stocks, currencies, precious metals, and other types of assets, but these synthetic assets only replicate the price of the assets without including other attributes of the assets.
In the DeFi boom of 2020, synthetic assets were widely regarded as an important bridge between the real world and the crypto world, with Synthetix being the market leader in this sector receiving significant attention.
Read “Understanding the Synthetic Asset Protocol Synthetix in One Article” for more information about this project.
14. ETH
ETH was issued in July 2014, and its price increased by 460% in 2020.
Ethereum is a decentralized public blockchain platform that first combined smart contracts with blockchain technology, currently being the most active public chain for developers and applications.
In 2020, driven by the DeFi craze, the demand for ETH significantly increased, and by the end of the year, Ethereum announced the launch of the 2.0 network, with over a million ETH participating in staking.
Read “In-Depth Analysis of Ethereum 2.0: The First Step of the Vast Journey, Serenity Phase” for more information about this project.