Largest Gainers of Q2 2023

The largest gainers of Q2 2023 between 1 April to 30 June are Pendle Finance's PENDLE with 125% growth, Bitcoin Cash with 104%, tomi's TOMI at 100%, Kujira's KUJI at 99%, and TomoChain's TOMO with 80% growth. Other projects with significant increases in token value include Injective, Radix, Akash Network, Aragon, and Render. 

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Key Takeaways:

• The article examines the top 10 biggest crypto gainers in Q2 2023 from the top 300 cryptocurrencies by market cap. 

• Q2 of 2023 has been positive for some of the most relevant crypto assets. Bitcoin breached the $30,000 mark for the first time since May 2022. Ethereum has also seen overall growth in the second quarter.

• Making this list includes Pendle Finance, Tomochain, Bitcoin Cash, Akash Network, and Radix.

• Pendle Finance tops the list with a 125% growth in price, while Bitcoin Cash is second with 104% price growth over the last three months. 

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This article was updated in July 2023 to reflect price movements of Q2 2023.

On June 14, 2023, the total cryptocurrency market cap slumped to its lowest levels in the past three months, going below $1.1 trillion to $1.06 trillion, as reported by CoinGecko.  This comes in the wake of multiple regulatory moves affecting some of the biggest cryptocurrency institutions. However, the market recovered from the dump to grow past $1.2 trillion, about $100 billion shy of its quarterly high of $1.33 trillion. Bitcoin also hit a new annual high, while Ethereum also went close to breaching the $2,000 mark.

During this same time (April to June 2023), several altcoins have also seen a significant increase in value. We take a look at some of the biggest gainers (from the top 300 cryptocurrencies based on market cap) in the second quarter of 2023.

Do note that this list is for educational purposes and not meant to be taken as financial advice. Please see below for more information around the methodology of how we identified these coins.     

Pendle (PENDLE) – 125%

Pendle Finance lets users purchase a crypto asset at a discount and redeem the purchased token when the offered discount matures. The discount comes from unrealized yields which matures during the selected maturity period. Pendle separates the principal token (PT) and the yield token (YT) and allows users to trade both assets. The principal token represents the purchased tokens while the yield token is the projected yield at maturity. Through this, Pendle Finance tokenizes future yields and allows users to manage their yield separately from the interest-bearing token.

The Pendle Finance token (PENDLE) has seen a consistent rise in value during the second quarter of the year, opening below $0.38 on April 1 and closing well above $0.77 on June 30th, posting a quarterly gain of over 120%. According to data from CoinGecko, Pendle reached a quarterly high of over $0.96, scoring its highest price level since August 2021. Its total market cap has also seen an over 200% growth in the second quarter of the year, growing past $77 million on June 30, from just over $35 million on April 1.

Pendle’s growth in value during this time is mainly due to the expansion of its yield program and improvements in the annual returns. APY on the platform has grown as high as 35% while independent applications have also adopted Pendle’s tokenized yield assets. On June 28th, Dolomite announced that it had integrated Pendle’s Principal Token (PT) as a derivate on the platform. In line with this, it claims that Pendle users can now borrow against their PT-GLP on Dolomite's borrow page while continuing to earn its yield. Pendle pools on AMMs had also seen a good APR offer during this time.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – 104%

Bitcoin Cash has maintained a similar economic system to Bitcoin since splitting from the network in August 2017. Bitcoin Cash fashions itself as a ‘more usable’ version of Bitcoin with a larger block size and transaction speed. Bitcoin Cash boasts a speed of about 100 TPS against Bitcoin’s 7TPS. This is thanks to Bitcoin Cash’s 32MB block size, which supports up to 25,000 transactions. Despite the differences in performance, Bitcoin Cash’s economic model is similar to that of Bitcoin and has earned it a place as a non-security, a reputation held by Bitcoin as well.

There has been an increase in big players in the mainstream finance sector joining the crypto sector. These institutions are looking to offer crypto investment opportunities to their retail customers through Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs) and regulatory-compliant trading platforms. The latter would see institution-backed crypto exchange EDX markets launch in June 2023, listing Bitcoin Cash as one of the first four assets on its platform.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has doubled its value during this time. On April 1 2023, it opened at $124, and on June 30 2023, it opened at $253. The token's daily trading volume has also grown during this time, reaching over a billion on June 30, against an average of $80 million in the month of April. Bitcoin Cash had also reached its annual high during this time, beating price levels last recorded on May 2022 and also earning itself a place as the second biggest gainer in the second quarter of 2023.

tomiNet (TOMI) – 100%

Tomi offers a basket of products that it claims to be focused mainly on equipping developers to create platforms that connect Web2 and Web3 and deliver satisfactory results. These products are managed by the tomiNet community through the tomiNet DAO. Some of these products include the Tomi Privacy Layer, the tomi Domain Name System (tDNS), and the Tomi Browser. The Tomi Privacy Layer uses zero knowledge roll up architecture to provide users with privacy when interacting with Layer 1 protocols. 

Through the Tomi web browser, Tomi claims to offer internet surfers a secure, powerful, and anonymous medium to access the internet. Tomi's decentralized domain naming system (tDNS), launched on June 20 2023, allows users to create a domain managed on the blockchain through NFTs that represent ownership of the URL. According to official information, the actual addresses are encrypted, so that no entity on the network will ever be able to block an approved address.

With hype around tDNS and listing on multiple exchanges, tomiNet (TOMI) has seen a 100% increase in value, going from just above $2.10 on April 1 to over $4.20 on June 30. TOMI also hit a new ATH of $5.61 on June 7, 2023. Its market cap has also grew past $400 million in the second quarter (at ATH). Daily trading volume has also seen similar growth as market forces act in favor of the asset.

Kujira (KUJI) – 99%

Kujira is a Layer 1 ecosystem built on the Cosmos network, leveraging the interoperability of the Cosmos network to connect with other blockchains through the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, enabling developers to builddApps that can interact with other networks. Kujira practices a semi-permissionless system on the network, where developers only deploy their smart contract after it has passed the governance voting process. 

Through its staked-based network, Kujira claims to run a liquidity-efficient and rewarding system. The staked-based network allows every application on the platform to use a shared asset pool to secure the network, and allows users to earn rewards for participating in the network, regardless of which dApp they use. Kujira's ecosystem includes an orderbook-style DEX for cross-chain asset trading (FIN), a market making framework (BOW), a public marketplace for purchasing liquidated collateral (ORCA), and more. 

In the second quarter, the Kujira (KUJI) token grew from $0.42 on 1st April 2023 to $0.84 on June 30, 2023. Netting a 99% gain, this makes KUJI the fourth biggest gainer amongst the top 300 cryptocurrencies by market cap. It also hit a high of $1.04 during this time, its highest price level since October 2022. The market cap at this level sits around $119 million. However, trading volume has maintained a consistent pattern.

Tomochain (TOMO) – 80%

TomoChain is an EVM-compatible network that uses Proof of Stake Voting that has been live since 2018. It claims high-level scalability and employs a number of technologies to achieve a high transaction speed while charging a low fee for each transaction. According to official documentation, 1 TOMO is sufficient to run thousands of transactions. Currently, Tomochain claims about 2,000 TPS, and the team is looking into scalability solutions invluding sharding, EVM parallelization, and more. Tomochain continues to grow its ecosystem with projects cutting across DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, DAO, and self-custody utilities.

Tomochain sees off a green second quarter with an over 80% increase and also reaches a one-year high of $1.64, beating price levels last seen since April 2022. TOMO opened for the first day of the second quarter at $0.61 and on June 30  at $1.11. It attained a new annual high on May 29th, 2023, at $1.64. Trading volume and on-chain metrics have also seen relative growth during this time.

On May 25, TomoChain announced an investment from Coin98, which includes strategic integration into the wallet and other perks.

Multiple wallets have also integrated the network in the second quarter, including EnKrypt. The Tomochain staking platform also continues to offer rewards to stakers with APR as high as 14%; this could also be one of the factors for the price growth.

Injective (INJ) – 67%

Injective brands itself as the fastest Layer 1 blockchain built for finance, running on the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. It is built with Cosmos SDK and boasts about 10,000 TPS. Injective's ecosystem consists of over 100 projects, including DeFi, NFT, and utility applications. To protect its users from front-running, Injective uses a frequent batch auction model, preventing front-runners from altering the order filling procedure or intercepting incoming orders. Injective is also compatible with multiple chains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum, and more. 

Injective (INJ)ends the second quarter of 2023 as the sixth biggest gainer amongst the top 300 cryptocurrencies with a net gain of 67%. Opening for the second quarter at $4.73, a relatively consistent positive price development has seen it close at $7.89. On April 17, it recorded a quarterly high of $9.32, closing above levels last seen in December 2021. Daily trading volume and its market cap have grown likewise during this time.

The growth in value is liely fueled by the technological milestones the project has achieved in the second quarter and also some significant marketing initiatives. The Avalon network upgrade might be the standout achievement, but breakthroughs by projects in the Injective ecosystem could also be a significant factor, such as Helix surpassing $10 billion in cumulative trading volume. Injective has also been integrated into Leap Wallet, NowNodes, and other independent applications.

Radix (XRD) – 65%

Radix is building a Layer 1 that is optimized for DeFi applications using Distributed Ledger technology (DLT). It hopes to structure this into a scalable and highly efficient platform that allows projects to build high-capacity DeFi applications without obstructing composability, enabling applications to interact with each other while enabling developers to build applications quickly. Radix supports NFT, gaming, insurance, DeFi, and other utility applications. It claims to offer a high transaction speed and supercharges its tokenomics by burning fees generated from these transactions.

Radix (XRD) reached a quarterly high of $0.14 on April 2023, recording an annual high at this level. Prices above this level were last recorded on April 8, 2022. XRD’s quarterly opening of $0.04 was trumped by its June 30th opening price of $0.067. This marks a net 65% growth in this 3-month period, enough to earn it a place in the top 10 gainers amongst the top 300 cryptocurrencies of Q2.

Akash Network (AKT) – 64%

Akash is an open-source decentralized cloud computing platform built with Cosmos SDK. It offers decentralized cloud services and lets users trade computing resources effectively on the Akash Marketplace, where users can lease computing resources from Cloud providers, after which they can deploy a container where users can run any Cloud-Native application. With its decentralized cloud computing facility, Akash hopes to compete for a share of the cloud computing market with centralized alternatives like AWS and Google by offering lower costs to host an application. 

Akash continued its incentivized GPU testnet in the second quarter of the year, commencing in the early days of June and running throughout the month. Its AI-powered code generation application and its support for AI applications have also been well-received by the community.

These developments could be the main catalysts for its growth in the second quarter of the year. AKT has seen a net 64% price growth from April to June 2023, opening at just above $0.31 on April 1st and trading around $0.51 on the last day of June 2023. It reached a quarterly peak of $0.69 on 18 June as the GPU testnet event picked pace, and the total market cap and trading volume also grew during this time. With this price move, Akash joins the top gainers of Q2 at the 8th position.

Aragon (ANT) – 54%

Aragon (ANT) joins the top 10 second-quarter gainers’ list at position 9 with a net 54% gain in the three months window. Aragon’s opening price of $2.56 on April 1 grew to a quarterly peak of $4.51 on June 22, 2023; it last traded above this value on April 2022. Aragon closed the second quarter of the year above $4, trading at $3.93 on June 30. Its total market cap also grew to over $181 million at the peak price while daily trading volume remained at regular levels.

The price development is likely steered by a seemingly busy month for the project. The project’s social media shows several adoptions and integrations across different blockchain networks for its DAO-development facility. Aragon also teased a new event or product launch, this surprise lasted throughout the closing weeks of June, and the suspense is likely a catalyst for the price growth witnessed during the month.

Aragon enables decentralized communities and lets projects easily develop their governance applications using the Aragon App. The Aragon App features SDKs with pre-packaged algorithms and protocols, letting anyone create decentralized community management facilities such as minting tokens, authorizing wallets for voting, and setting governance parameters without no coding required. Aragon hopes to simplify the adoption of the DAO governance approach through cost-efficient, effective, and truly decentralized applications powered by its Software Development Kit (SDK). 

Render (RNDR) – 45%

Render Network is used to rent out excess GPU power to creators in need of additional GPU. Artists or other content creators can rent GPUs from miners who have excess and idle GPUs. Artists on the GPU network can trade Render token (RNDR) in exchange for GPU power from node operators. The Render network runs the Proof Of Render algorithm (POR). POR is a variant of the Proof of Work algorithm. Artists can confirm that payment for their art has been made before they upload their art or content.

The Render network runs on Ethereum Blockchain and uses the blockchain to create hash codes for the arts and send them to the node piecemeal for rendering. Upon confirmation, the fee paid by the artists to rent the GPU power is released to the node operators from the escrow. Render has continued to build on this application in the second quarter, releasing Request for Compute (RFC) on June 16, 2023. According to the team, RFC is designed to drive Render network usage by opening up a process to understand compute demand and serve it.

Developments in this three-month period are possible catalysts for Render’s 45% net gain. RNDR opened for the first day of the second quarter at $1.37 and for the last day at $1.98. RNDR traded at its peak quarterly price on 29th May at $2.75, and these levels were last seen in April 2022.

Bonus Mention: PEPE

As Pepe launched during the quarter, it was excluded from the main list. However, when talking about crypto in Q2 2023, Pepe deserves a special mention.

Pepe opened for the second quarter at $0.000000706 and closed at $0.00000163, recording a 230% net gain. However, it has also seen a good level of volatility within this time. On May 5, 2023, it reached its ATH of $0.0000043; it has stabilized at about half this value since this time.

Pepe is arguably the most popular crypto asset in the second quarter of 2023. It first debuted on Uniswap and after significant gains, it gained steam and recognition from the wider crypto space and the world outside it. Pepe has since been listed on top-tier exchanges and increased its original value by over 20 times in the second quarter of the year.

Pepe’s price development is mainly thanks to the short-lived meme season and the community-driven marketing that accompanied the meme coin. The Pepe community and the support from influential institutions and individuals in the space have driven the token’s value and have seen it rise through the ranks to the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Conclusion And Methodology

PENDLE, BCH, TOMI, KUJI, TOMO, INJ, XRD, AKT, ANT, and RNDR are the top 10 best-performing cryptos of Q2 2023 based on their performance between April 1 and June 30.

Bitcoin trading above $30,000 for the first time in the past year might be one of the biggest events on the charts for the second quarter of the year. The rest of the space has also responded positively to this, but these top gainers (from the top 300 coins in market size) have seen the biggest growth due to some factors which are mostly unique to each asset.

This list is derived based on the price movements of cryptocurrencies within the top 300 list on CoinGecko from April 1 to June 30 2023. Some tokens may be excluded due to it being a wrapped version of another token in the list.