One of the biggest challenges in the crypto space is to find the right projects at the right time. There are hundreds of projects launched each month and it’s very difficult to pick the right ones. Most of the projects won’t last a year and some of them are only launched to scam you out of your money fast. The only option you have to navigate through this jungle of crypto projects, is to Do Your Own Research. I’ve made a short list with tips on how to find new cryptocurrency projects and how to research them. Hopefully you learn some new tricks and pick the right project!
Where do I find new tokens?
1. Social media
Check the buzz on social media. What I usually do is going to the accounts on Twitter that have a lot of followers. Those followers take every chance to shill their investments in their replies to the ‘crypto influencer’. Click on the articles, links and cash tags (the project’s abbreviation > $ followed by a few letters) and start your research. Or take a look at sites that keep track of new or trending accounts, such as Semrush. You can also subscribe to different trading groups in which lots of new projects are shilled. Those groups are risky though, because there are a lot of scammers in there and people who want to dump their bags on dumb investors, so do your proper research before jumping in.
2. Crypto charts
There are a few websites out there that make charts for almost every token. A great example is dextools.io. If you go to the site you can see the trending tokens (top 10). Click on those and start your research.
3. Trending coins
Coinmarketcap and coingecko both have a trending coin section. These are usually the coins that are looked up the most on the sites. Go to these project’s pages and research the tokens.
4. Verified Ethereum contracts
Etherscan has a great little features that not many know about, an overview of the smart contracts that have their source code checked. You can check all the verified contracts here. This is a great start for your research. I look for a project with a normal name and high number of Txns and start from there. You click on the contract and on the contract page under ‘More Info’ you click on the Token Tracker ( if any). The next step is to look at the ‘Holders’ tab to see what the distribution is. The little document icon means that it’s a contract and contracts that look like this are burn addresses > 0x0000000000, so you can ignore those holders. You can check if the distribution is fine, not too many whales and not too many tokens airdropped via e.g. Disperse.app. I also check the tab ‘DEX TRADES’ to make sure the token is traded properly and is not being dumped (dextools is also good to check that).
5. Track whale wallets
To find these wallets you need to do some digging. There are multiple telegram and twitter accounts that show the big trades of whale wallets. When you have found these wallets, go to etherscan, check what they have in their bags and go from there. Always check if they bought these coins themselves or if they got them for advising or promoting, since this will make a difference in their ‘commitment to their bag’. You can also subscribe to certain services, such as nansen.ai, on which you can see all the trades of the wallets. Take into account that you aren’t the first to see those trades, so invest with caution.
6. Track newly registered crypto domains
This one requires a bit more knowledge of the existing crypto projects and their domains, but if you know what to look for you’ll definitely find some new projects early on! The trick is to go to websites like Whoisds or DNPedia and to research all the newly registered domains on a daily basis. Search for domains with tld’s like .finance or .app, depending on the current trend. Also look for domains that contain ‘token’, ‘swap’, ‘seigniorage’ or anything that is hyped. Make a list of all those domains and check them regularly for any updates and filter out the nonsense. I find about 2-5 domains each time that are promising. After you found the domains, start your research!
I’ve written multiple guides on whitepaper research, here’s one: Cryptocurrency Whitepaper Research for Beginners. We have thousands of whitepapers on file here.
How do I research these tokens?
1. Read the whitepaper :)!
For me this is always the first step. Don’t worry about the technical buzzwords, you just need to verify the following things.
– What problem are they solving?
– What is the token distribution/token economics? How much tokens are allocated to the team, used for marketing, % for public sale
– What is the token price for each stage of investments? Was their a seed sale and for how much? When do these tokens unlock (vesting)?
– What’s the public sale price? Fully diluted market cap? Runway for the team?
– Etc.
2. Social media
Search the project on social media. Go to their Twitter, Telegram, Discord etc. and read what the community says about the project. Focus on the people that are unhappy to see if there’s anything you should know, it’s ok to be skeptical, since you’re about to invest in the project. Follow the right people and ask questions.
3. Contracts
As explained above, you can get a lot of useful information by looking at the contracts and token on etherscan. Check if the contract is verified. You can also go to certain telegram groups to get them verified. Look at the trading patterns under DEX Trades, because when everybody is selling it’s usually not good news. Next thing is to check the holders and how the tokens are distributed and if there’s been a massive airdrop. Go to the wallets of the Whales (biggest holders) and see how they got their tokens, multiple buys or airdropped etc.).
4. Github
As a no-coder Github looks difficult. The best tip I can give is to check the number of commits. The more commits from different developers, the more work is done on the project and the bigger the chance is that they’re the real deal. Remember that Github is open source and most crypto projects will keep the most important parts of their code to themselves to avoid being copied, so when in doubt always ask the team if/when they’re open-sourcing their code.
5. Google is your friend
Google is your friend. Search the project’s name, the team, the token, partners etc. Make sure they are the real deal and can deliver what they promise. Google certain texts on their site and the whitepaper to verify that they’ve written that themselves and are not a copy or fork of a different project. Make sure to put the text between ” and ” to search for those exact words.
6. Ask questions
On discord, telegram, twitter you name is. There are no dumb questions and the team should be willing to answer them or to direct you to the right place with the answers. Do check pinned messages, medium articles and FAQ’s first since that would cover the most of your ‘dumb’ questions.
Conclusion
So that was my short list on how to find proper cryptocurrency projects and how to research them. I will update this list regularly and add things I missed!
John,
CEO All Crypto Whitepapers
Follow me on Twitter or Linkedin.
