The 5 Crypto Projects I’m Most Excited About After the May 2021 Pullback

It’s been a fun week in cryptocurrencies. It started with the market-crashing tweets from Elon, where he noted that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin as payment. This was followed up by news that the world’s biggest exchange, Binance, was being investigated for money laundering, and China was introducing new bans on cryptocurrency usage.

Others are saying none of that actually caused the pullback, and it’s been all about leverage. Whatever the cause, it’s been a ride.

But just like that — snap! — it looks like the bloodbath is over. Most assets in my portfolio are still down 20–30% over the past 7d, but everything across the board is up more than 20% in the past 24h.

I reflected on my biggest gainers over the past day and week, and I noticed a few things. The biggest past-day gainers were Polygon (MATIC) and Harmony (ONE), up 68% and 75%, respectively.

What do these two projects have in common? They’re both fast, cheap proof-of-stake networks. In fact, I recall the first time I used Harmony. I remember thinking, “Wow — this is how cryptocurrency is meant to work.”

Funnily enough, I also remember my first experience with Polygon, where I thought to myself, “This is great! It’s kinda like Harmony, but on Ethereum.”

So, these are both projects that I was already excited about because of my own hands-on experiences with them. It was great to see them not just survive the pullback but to come out the other end unscathed.

Polygon and Harmony are great because they build on top of Ethereum and address its biggest problems relating to fees and scalability. And that’s why Ethereum is the third project on my list despite still being down for the week (with most of the rest of the market).

Ethereum 2.0 is coming. People love to scoff and say the timeline is 18+ months away, but I think it’s a lot closer than that — possibly as soon as this year.

Since 2015, Ethereum has had a “difficulty bomb” baked in to incentivize the project’s move to proof-of-stake. The bomb has been delayed several times already and was set to go into effect this summer. A recent Decrypt article reports that developers believe they’ve found a way to delay it again until December, and there’s a quote indicating that Ethereum could be entirely done with mining by that point.

Ethereum was setting new all-time highs every few days ahead of the big pullback, and Harmony & Polygon are flying high because of EVM compatibility. This tells us there’s massive demand and support for Ethereum. It wears the crown, so to speak, and it will explode when the project makes its move to proof-of-stake.

Given that the top 3 projects on my list are different networks, it’s clear that cross-chain solutions will become increasingly valuable and important, and that’s why I love SushiSwap.

I’ve known about SushiSwap for a long time, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because I wrote it off as “just another Uniswap clone.” It first caught my eye simply by launching on Harmony, and I finally used it when it launched on Polygon.

By being live on Harmony and Polygon, it became accessible. Free from the shackles of fees and slowness, I could experiment with a small amount of money, and I was super excited with what I found.

First, Sushi’s UX is top-notch. Everything is simple, clean, & elegant, and I really dig the aesthetic. They’re bringing innovation to the defi space with their BentoBox and, most recently, their MISO launchpad.

So, there’s a lot to like, but it’s the cross-chain aspect that has me most excited. They make it super easy to switch between networks and access the necessary bridges to move funds between them. I think this represents a wonderful opportunity for them, too. The landscape is ripe for innovation in making cross-chain experiences more seamless, and Sushi seems to have a beat on it. Step one: be in all the places (check). Step two: make it easy to switch between ’em (check). Step three: ????. Step four: profit.

The fifth and final project on my list is Cardano. Unlike the other projects on my list, Cardano is a more speculative play. It doesn’t have many live projects yet, but the list of promises and expectations is huge — and there’s a lot to be excited about.

Cardano is being steered by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. He claims that Cardano addresses the deepest problems of Ethereum — things that can only be addressed by a rewrite.

It checks all the same boxes as Harmony, Polygon, and Ethereum 2.0 and adds attention to developer-friendliness (aside from Ethereum’s Solidity language) and identity.

Cardano has seen great growth leading into the recent pullback and managed to hold its ground. It’s on the cusp of leapfrogging projects like XRP and BNB in terms of market cap and claiming its position as the #3 cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that’s happening just ahead of the introduction of smart contracts, which is anticipated in the next couple of months.

Due to the upcoming arrival of smart contracts, Cardano feels like the strongest short-term play on my list. That could turn out to be just the beginning, though. I love

’s take on it in his article How to Become a Cardano Millionaire: if Cardano doesn’t hit a $3 trillion market cap, Ethereum will.

There you have it, my top 5 projects as I look back on a tumultuous week in the cryptocurrency kingdom. Harmony and Polygon solve Ethereum’s problems wonderfully, and Ethereum remains the clear leader despite its known and anticipated shortcomings.

Sushi — currently live on all three of the aforementioned networks — is bringing innovation to the defi space with specific attention to cross-chain presence, usability, and user experience.

And, finally, Cardano rounds out the list with its promises of what the future could be, both in terms of usability and its global ambitions.

I’ve got a few honorable mentions for the list, too. Polkadot wants to be the cross-chain blockchain, and Litentry (on Polkadot) wants to solve some of the same identity problems that Cardano has its eye on. I love PancakeSwap for the fun and innovation it brings to defi and Reef for its cross-chain defi aspirations. The truth is, there’s a lot to like about a lot of projects, and there will be many winners and losers.

It’s a fun time to be in cryptocurrency.