Interesting how cryptocurrencies are evolving on a technical level, while the media still only discusses records and yields. When I look at the best cryptocurrencies in recent years, I see that truly interesting things are happening beneath the surface.

I remember how Terra and Luna were stars a few years ago. Luna supposedly grew astronomically, but the market reality is more complex — over the past year, it has decreased by 57.98%, showing how volatile this segment is. Terra aimed to solve the stablecoin problem in a decentralized way, unlike centralized Tether. An interesting idea, but the market clearly reevaluated it.

I prefer Solana more as a story. When it appeared, it promised a high-frequency blockchain for cheap and fast transactions. It addressed Ethereum’s scalability issues. Their Proof Of History was an interesting technological approach. But even Solana fell 39.64% in a year, which shows that the best cryptocurrencies are definitely not the ones that grow the fastest.

Decentraland and Metaverse projects were hype around 2021. MANA grew by dozens of hundreds of percent, but today it’s down 68.81% annually. Barbados, which opened an embassy there, probably shrugs its shoulders now. NFT segments proved to be very speculative.

Dogecoin is an interesting phenomenon — it started as a joke, became a meme, but its community keeps it afloat. Although it fell 37.30% this year, it still has its loyal supporters. Elon Musk definitely didn’t help stabilize it. A purely speculative play, where the risk is enormous.

Ethereum is a different category. While other top cryptocurrencies declined over the past year, Ethereum increased by 26.35%, and it’s now trading around $2,300 with a market cap over $277 billion. There are more reasons — 87% of all tokens were issued on Ethereum, so it has fundamental support. The shift from PoW to PoS was meant to increase efficiency. Ethereum really behaves like the global supercomputer everyone envisions.

Key lesson? The best cryptocurrencies are not those with the biggest historical gains, but those with the strongest fundamentals and practical use cases. Ethereum proves this. Other projects had interesting technologies, but without real adoption and stability, they are just speculative bets. If you want to pick cryptocurrencies, you should focus on long-term potential, not yesterday’s percentages.