The Top 5 Low Cap Token Launches To Watch

The following is a contributed article from a content partner of Benzinga

What a start to Q3. Despite an incredible market rally throughout August, investor confidence has changed at the drop of a hat. Greed quickly turned into fear - and double-digit losses on many cryptocurrencies soon became a miserable reality. 

All is not lost though. Bucking the day-to-day trend of the wider cryptocurrency market, DeFi low cap tokens are still launching innovative solutions at a record pace. Despite stormy conditions, select projects have posted significant short-term gains, paving the way for long-term project maturation and returns.

It’s clear that they all share a common denominator - quality fundamental technicals. Yes, YFIIIII might offer a terrifying opportunity for those brave enough to risk their hard-earned yields, but living one rug-pull away from destitution isn’t sustainable. If you want the inside on 5 low cap gems, backed by quality teams and fundamentals, read on.

1. Gather 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Gather. Promising to save you and me from the living nightmare of internet ads. Combining decentralized technology stacks, Gather has created an ecosystem to fairly incentivize all internet users. Utilizing a hybrid PoS/PoW consensus algorithm, the technology stack enables publishers to monetize their content, businesses to access lower cost processing power, and enterprises to launch cryptocurrency networks on-chain.

Gather secures the application and protocol layer by elegantly harvesting processor power through the hardware layer. Stakeholders are incentivized to provide processing power for the hardware and application layers through the distribution of their native coin - $GTH. This incentivization extends to all users of the ecosystem, even feeding back to the website visitor. 

Gather’s potential hasn’t gone unnoticed. With their private sale oversubscribed by 25x and notable investors including Bitscale Capital, TRG Capital, Master Ventures, and LD Capital, the team is moving straight to a public market launch. At an only $592k initial market cap, and a leading exchange listing secured, Gather is one of the most attractive non-DeFi projects currently. 

2. Polkastarter

Polkastarter, as the name suggests, is a new Polkadot project building a permissionless DEX for cross-chain token pools. This will enable projects to raise and exchange capital on a decentralized and interoperable environment ‒ all based on Polkadot’s robust features. This solution will alleviate the high gas prices currently seen on leading DEXs, with users having a cost-efficient, secure, and compliant environment to use assets that go way beyond the current ERC20 standard.

Built by an experienced team of ecommerce and tech veterans, Polkastarter has remained under the radar while gaining the attention of some of the biggest VC funds and influencers in blockchain. With an initial market cap under $900k and a very low, fully diluted market cap of just $5 million, Polkastarter has been praised as one of the most promising upcoming token sales.

Beyond raising funds, the platform can also have other applications including closed OTC deals with password protection, discounted sales with whitelisted addresses, and even be used for crowdfunding in the future. Compared to market leader Uniswap, Polkastarter will offer additional functionality such as a governance model, cross-chain pools, and more. 

3. KIRA

Yield farming is great, opportunity cost isn’t. Thankfully, we have projects such as KIRA working day and night to bring you liquid staking and market access for any of your tokens without compromising security.

KIRA is secured through a custom ‘Multi-Bonded Proof of Stake’ consensus, capable of generating revenues for staking any digital asset type - cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and even NFT’s. Importantly, network security (value of assets at stake) can be infinitely scaled with each token deposited and staked, which prevents the creation of honeypots that are unavoidable in the case of almost every other PoS network.

KIRA natively supports staking derivatives, meaning all the tokens you lock in order to generate revenues remain fully liquid, transferable, and tradable. KIRA’s native token (KEX) is the most efficient method for claiming revenue from network operations and acts as a reserve currency in terms of which all other staked tokens are valued. Holding KEX is also essential to being a part of the governance and validator set. 

KIRA’s fundamentals have proven popular with investors during the seed and private rounds. With their public listing slated to drop soon, KIRA recently announced that it is cutting back its public round by 70% to just $400,000, creating an even lower cap opportunity to explore for investors looking for a strong team, tech, and potential upside upon listing.  

4. RAMP DEFI

Another liquid staking solution, RAMP DEFI has already hit headlines for being one of the most sought-after projects in Asia. Backed by major funds (Alameda Research, ParaFi Capital, XRP Capital and more), the potential of RAMP’s ecosystem speaks volumes. Offering holders the opportunity to free up their staked capital, RAMP DEFI has constructed a ‘liquidity bridge’ to fuel a world of cross-chain possibilities. 

As a result of the cross-chain bridge and potential of liquid staking, IOST and Elrond have already offered their network’s nodes to facilitate swaps. Yield farmers will also be kept happy. Multiple revenue streams, as well as the option to farm the native RAMP token, will all be possible for stakers holding native crypto-assets. 

With a whole ecosystem DeFi ecosystem lined up for launch, RAMP DEFI represents an exciting opportunity to gain key exposure to the next wave of cryptocurrency staking and yield farming solutions.

5. UTU Protocol

UTU is on a mission to add more trust in the DeFi ecosystem by reducing collateralization requirements and adding a trusted recommendation mechanism and creditworthiness methods on top of “trustless” platforms. Beyond DeFi, UTU wants to replace the trust infrastructure of the entire internet. This means all of those anonymous reviews, ratings, and scores we all dislike will now be replaced by a truly trusted solution. 

UTU’s native token, UTU Coin, will be accepted as a form of payment within the UTU ecosystem of applications, by third party platforms and DAPPS. The token is designed to be slightly deflationary and will be freely tradeable on the open market. Like other projects on this list, UTU’s private sale saw significant interest from investors like Moonrock Capital. Their public sale and launch are planned at the end of September with a market cap of approximately $1 million. 

Disclaimer: Please consult your financial advisor before investing in any cryptocurrencies as they are volatile and pose risks for the average investor. This post is informational in nature and does not constitute financial advice. The writer may have or may hold positions in some of the companies mentioned, either through a personal relationship, as in investor, or user.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay