The way new members of the crypto community research blockchain projects tend to be either perfectionist or too relaxed, and neither is ideal: the former leads to burnout, the latter leads to subpar performance. With so many cryptocurrencies, if you want to catch disruptive projects before they get huge, you’ll need to be sharp. Furthermore, being ready to act when the right moment to get in comes is the most important thing you can do. Fortunately, we have a few pointers for you if you want to understand how to study blockchain projects without spending hours reading documents and code.

History can teach us a thing or two

It’s been a while since the 2017 ICO boom. While Bitcoin was gradually approaching $20,000, lots of startups were using crypto crowdfunding to raise capital – lots of capital, in fact. Many were simply fraudulent or worthless, and a substantial crash ensued.

Yet, the ICO trend has some analogues in more recent times: we’re seeing the DeFi market grow from $1 billion in 2019 to an impressive $100 billion now. The difference this time is that DeFi is bringing an innovation cascade and setting large trends in the crypto industry, for instance:

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs), which have grown in volume of funds transacted by more than 8,000% during 2020.
Crypto Derivatives, which are becoming more popular even if CEXs do capture a bigger share of this market for day traders.
Yield Farming, or Asset Management, a very sought-after DeFi application due to low interest rates globally. Yearn.finance, the biggest protocol in this niche, has $6 billion locked in its system.

But don't forget about the biggest trend of 2021: NFTs. There was no mechanism to digitally express art ownership prior to NFTs. Regardless of their actual utility, they are a compelling asset class for investors, and everything related to them is growing as well.

Developing a natural instinct for discovering crypto projects

We have two options for getting amazing returns in crypto: looking for projects with deep value or staying on top of trends and profiting from them. You'll be in a wonderful position to hear about these discoveries and trends before they become old news if you familiarize yourself with and join the crypto community. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways:

Following thought leaders

People like Vitalik Buterin, Andreas Antonopoulos and Balaji Srinivasan are not only great sources of information, but sway the opinions of millions of cryptocurrency users. Keeping your “follow” list small but full of heavyweight names helps to filter out the complexity, hyperactivity and avalanche of memes that are characteristic of the cryptocurrency world.

Following cryptocurrency communities

Going directly where the crypto nerds mingle is a great strategy to get information that’s not just floating on the surface of the mainstream. Cryptocurrency communities are where the deepest but richest conversations take place. The three main places to look are:

Cryptocurrency groups on Telegram

Telegram is a reliable and feature-rich messaging app with heavy encryption, so it’s naturally a favorite of crypto-minded individuals. All there lie all kinds of projects and communities, and you can find them with the search bar for public channels.

Communities on reddit

Reddit is one of the largest content aggregators on the internet. Users can create communities for any topic they like, including, of course, cryptocurrencies. There are subreddits for specific cryptocurrencies, like r/Ethereum, for discussing the subject in general such as r/CryptoCurrency, for market-related discussions (for instance, r/CryptoMarkets) or for those that are interested in high-frequency trading, namely r/CryptoCurrencyTrading. Those communities bring together millions of users every month to discuss, share opinions, articles, news and videos.

Discord crypto servers

Discord is a platform which offers video, voice and text chat. It allows users to create servers and channels to organize messages, empowering them to build real communities. You can search for public servers, but it’s better to join only the servers of projects you want to interact with or watch more closely.

Podcasts and youtube channels

Even if useful for your purposes of researching blockchain projects, crypto content can be entertaining as well. Here are some of the best podcasts and YouTube channels in 2021 that we can recommend:

CoinBureau, hosted by “Guy”, is the most popular cryptocurrency channel on Youtube. They value being informative and unbiased, offering news and commentary on all the blockchain ecosystem.
D-Core’s Blockchain People Podcast is a hidden gem in YouTube. Hosted by Carlos Cano, they bring one guest every week to interview and now and then present Asset Report Reviews, when crypto projects get together with D-Core’s staff to analyse the report D-Core produced on them.
Bankless is a Ethereum-centered newsletter that’s becoming really popular. It brings decentralized finance, Web 3.0 and other blockchain-related content to their readers. It’s worth taking a look.