BNB Earns #1 Spot as It Hits All-Time High Against Bitcoin—Top 3 Coins to Watch for Nov 7—Nov 13

As November gets underway, the altcoin markets are gaining momentum and a number of crypto and blockchain projects are making important announcements. Let’s take a look at 3 coins that will be especially interesting to follow in the next few days.

3. Fantom (FTM)

Fantom is a layer 1 blockchain contender that started gaining momentum in 2021 as an alternative to Ethereum. The network is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which makes it simple to deploy apps and smart contracts that have already been built for Ethereum to Fantom.

The platform offers cheap and efficient transactions thanks to its aBFT consensus mechanism, which different blockchains deployed on top of Fantom get their security from. In Fantom’s architecture, every decentralized app deployed on the network has its own customizable blockchain, while still being able to interoperate with others chains deployed on Fantom because they’re all connected to the same Lachesis consensus layer.

Why Fantom? Andre Cronje teases a return to Fantom

There’s been renewed excitement surrounding Fantom after prominent developer Andre Cronje teased that he is returning to the project. Cronje rose to prominence in 2020 after creating Yearn.Finance, as well as an assortment of other decentralized protocols. He also worked with the Fantom team as a technical advisor and chaired the Fantom Foundation’s technology council, which gave the project a lot of sway with decentralized finance fans.

In March this year, Cronje said he was exiting DeFi. The once-vocal developer significantly scaled down his presence on the web and left many crypto enthusiasts wondering what he was up to.

Now, Cronje appears to be teasing a return to the Fantom project. Cronje updated his Twitter profile picture to feature an image of himself holding the FTM logo, changed his handle to “iamdefinitelyandre.ftm”, and posted a meme implying that he is returning. In addition, he also changed his title on LinkedIn to “Memes at Fantom Foundation”.

The markets for Fantom’s native asset FTM responded quickly to the speculation that Cronje is making a return to the project. At the time of writing, FTM is posting a 7-day change of +28.6% against the US dollar. If there’s more news related to Andre Cronje this week, the FTM markets will certainly be worth watching closely.

2. Arweave (AR)

Arweave is a platform that allows users to store data permanently utilizing storage provided by Arweave network participants. In order to store data on Arweave, users are required to pay a one-time fee paid in the AR token. AR is also necessary for accessing decentralized applications built on Arweave, and storage providers are required to hold AR tokens as well.

Arweave enables the Permaweb, which are protocols built on top of the Arweave data storage layer. The Permaweb functions very similarly to the web as we know it today, in the sense that it consists of documents and applications that are interlinked with each other. However, the data on the Permaweb is permanent, and the files submitted to the Permaweb cannot be altered.

Arweave’s architecture is called a “blockweave”. A blockweave consists of blocks containing data, and each block is linked to multiple previous blocks. This allows Arweave to implement a Proof-of-Access consensus mechanism in which miners have to prove that they can provide access to previous data.

Why Arweave? Instagram to utilize Arweave for NFT storage

Major social media platform Instagram is furthering its push into NFTs. Recently, the platform announced that Instagram users will be able to mint NFTs on the Polygon blockchain and offer them to their fans. In addition, Instagram now also allows users to showcase their Solana-based NFTs, in addition to NFTs issued on Ethereum, Polygon and Flow.

Arweave has also benefited from Instagram’s NFT push. The platform has integrated Arweave to provide permanent storage for NFTs created through Instagram. The news was shared by Arweave founder Sam Williams, and the Arweave integration was also confirmed by Stephane Kasriel, the lead of commerce, fintech and web3 at Meta.

? Major announcement: @Meta is now using Arweave to permanently store digital collectables from @Instagram.

Instagram users are now able to issue digital collectables for their posts, stored on Arweave.

Some thoughts ? pic.twitter.com/Y0xjhDwHid

— ?? sam.arweave.dev (@samecwilliams) November 2, 2022

The news sparked a rally in the markets for the AR token. It surged from around $10 to a local peak of $17.50 in the space of a day, before a correction brought the price back towards the $15 level. This week, it will be interesting to see if AR can retain its gains or if a more significant price correction is in play.

1. BNB (BNB)

BNB is a token that was launched by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange in 2017. BNB serves two primary functions. Holders of the token get access to special benefits when using Binance – this includes lower trading fees, access the exchange’s Launchpad and Launchpool programs, cashback on Binance Visa card purchases, and more.

The token is also used as the native asset of the BNB Chain blockchain. BNB Chain is a variant of Ethereum that offers significantly lower transaction fees to users, and it allows developers to easily deploy EVM-compatible decentralized applications. Previously known as Binance Coin, BNB has now gone through an extensive rebranding.

Why BNB?

BNB is showing a lot of relative strength, as the coin has set new all-time highs against Bitcoin. On November 4, the BNB price denominated in Bitcoin hit as high as 0.0172 BTC. BNB has also been performing well against the dollar as of late, rallying from just under $300 on October 29 to above $350 on November 4.

Some of the catalysts that could have helped boost the performance of BNB are Hashflow’s launch on Binance Launchpool, and the announcement of the Binance Oracle system.

When Binance Launchpool has an active program, one of the staking options for earning the featured project’s token is almost always BNB, which can help drive demand. In the example of the Binance Launchpool program for Hashflow, users can earn HFT tokens by staking BNB or the BUSD stablecoin.

Binance Oracle, on the other hand, is an oracle service announced by Binance. As with other blockchain oracle services, Binance Oracle gives blockchain smart contracts the ability to access off-chain data. According to Binance, 10 BNB Chain projects have already been onboarded to the Binance Oracle service.