Which were the best new crypto launches in the summer of 2024?

Despite the slower market growth, the summer of 2024 saw several high-profile crypto launches. Some of the projects in the past three months managed to achieve listings and even bring net gains. 

The summer of 2024 featured several long-awaited airdrops. Token farming and airdrop projects were one of the sources for new token generation events, for those not interested in the meme token market. The current season of airdrops is for much smaller projects, after the earlier launch of L2 platforms like Arbitrum and Optimism.

Airdrop farming became harder in 2024, with more involved tasks and unpredictable token allocations. Despite this, LayerZero (ZRO) became one of the high-profile launches, moving in a price range between $3 and $4 with daily volumes of at least $50M.

ZK was the other big token launch, starting off to a controversy with what was considered unfair airdrops. The ZKSync platform and the native token even crashed at one point, as the community protested that most new tokens were awarded to Sybill attackers. ZK corrected since its launch at $0.27, though it retained a $2.3B market cap. ZK is also fully diluted, currently trading at $0.11.

LayerZero and ZKSync were among the most ambitious projects. LayerZero worked on the problem of interoperable chains, while ZKSync aimed to build real zero-knowledge rollups to scale Ethereum. 

Newly listed tokens bring back AI, Web3 narratives

Aethir (ATH) is the third-largest token, bringing a new decentralized computing service for gaming and AI. ATH trades at $0.57, after peaking around $0.87 in July. The other AI-themed token in the mix is IO, aiming to launch another decentralized computation resource. IO traded for the past two months, stabilizing around $1.90 .

The next biggest token, Taiko (TAIKO) brings a new model of Ethereum scaling. The new L2 has bridged around $100M in value from Ethereum. The Taiko project appeared first in the summer of 2024 and has already built a small Layer 2 economy. Taiko has also grown into an ecosystem of DEX and liquidity pools, though still carrying limited locked value . 

The tokens launched in the summer of 2024 achieved significant diluted valuations. Overall, the airdrops and launches created eight new “crypto unicorns” with a valuation above $1B. Another seven tokens went below the cutoff range, but contained high-profile memes and Web3 features. 

The remaining tokens with valuations under $1B contained three relatively recent meme assets. DOGS, Sundog, and Simon’s Cat (CAT) only arrived in August, but still found a place among top 15 launches for the summer.

MOCA, or the Mocaverse token, was also a long-awaited addition, aiming to revive the Web3 narrative. The MOCA token is tied to a project of virtual identity, gaming, and NFT. MOCA launched as an Ethereum token in July. 

Avail (AVAIL) is yet another Web3 layer offering scalability to third-party projects. The AVAIL token sank to lows of $0.09, but has since recovered to $0.13. AVAIL is also a fully diluted token, currently building up to $5M in daily trading volumes. 

Token launches mostly driven by memes

Token launches in 2024 faced the competition of meme trading, obscuring some of the more prominent utility projects. Overall, the meme token frenzy led to the creation of more than 5,000 tokens per day on average. 

The early bull market also saw attempts to continue launching new utility projects and platforms. VC funding continued to incubate crypto startups, though some have delayed their token generation event. Large-scale protocols like Base and the Polymarket prediction market are for now tokenless. 

As of April, the market had seen the launch of 2.5M tokens, of which more than 99% would fail. Statistics show more than 10K active digital assets as of August 2024. The millions of meme tokens are meant to fail, but there are still projects aiming for representation on centralized exchanges. 

Data by Statista reveals that in 2024, the total number of tokens is the highest for the past two years, and is comparable to the market peak in early 2022. 

Overall, Coinmarketcap listed an additional 500 tokens out of all new launches. More than 90% are meme tokens that managed to accrue liquidity, with some attempts to launch utility platforms.