Quant, Arweave and Avalanche soar while Bitcoin searches for support

The cryptocurrency market once again entered a period of uncertainty on Aug. 18 as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to find momentum below $46,000 and large-cap altcoins pulled back slightly.
Several projects did manage to buck the trend and post double-digit gains thanks to cross-chain integrations and protocol upgrades that excited their respective communities and provided traders with lower-fee Ethereum network alternatives.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Quant (QNT), Arweave (AR) and Avalanche (AVAX).
AR continues its hot streak
Arweave’s AR token has been one of the top-performing coins over the past week, with activity on the decentralized storage network continuing to set new record-highs in daily transactions.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AR on Aug. 14, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for Arweave was elevated into the green zone earlier in the week and reached a high of 71 on Aug. 14, around 19 hours before the price of AR increased 106% over the next four days.
QNT rallies 33%
The enterprise-focused Quant protocol specializes in facilitating interoperability across separate blockchain networks, and on Aug. 18, the QNT token posted its second-largest gain, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro.
Data from TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $149.61 on Aug. 17, the price of QNT rallied 33% to an intraday high at $200.18 on Aug. 18 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 436% to $179 million.
Momentum for the project has been on the uptrend since the formation of the Quant Developer program designed to help attract new developers to the project’s ecosystem.
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Avalanche integrates with Aave and Curve
Avalance is a layer-one blockchain protocol that claims to be the “fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry, as measured by time-to-finality.” The project also boasts having “the most validators securing its activity of any proof-of-stake protocol.”
Data from TradingView shows that after falling to a low of $21.44 early on Aug. 18, the price of AVAX surged 33% to an intraday high at $28.47 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 50% to $1 billion.
The project received a boost on Aug. 18 following the announcement that Avalanche had partnered with Aave and Curve to create a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program called “Avalanche Rush.”
According to the announcement, the goal of the program is to “bring blue-chip DeFi applications to Avalanche, starting with two popular protocols, Aave and Curve.”
The overall cryptocurrency market capitalization now stands at $1.961 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43.9%.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and you should conduct your own research when making a decision.