Nearly all of cryptocurrency's top 20 tokens are down as we exit February 2022. Bitcoin has slumped to $39,000 while Ethereum is down 4% on last week, Cardano is down 5% and Crypto.com token is down 13%. The wider crypto market has also fallen to $1.79 trillion valuation – down from a  high of nearly $3 trillion just three months ago. 

But not all is negative in the crypto market. Many cryptocurrencies have shown strong growth over the past month, like Cosmos and Avalanche. Both of these tokens are tied to strong utilities that can generate value regardless of market conditions. Though they both have native tokens, their worth goes beyond a means of payment to become an investment in a growing technology. Take EverGrow as an example – this crypto newcomer is aiming to generate its own volume that's not attached to the token's actual price. 

In this article we'll look at how projects like Avalanche and EverGrow are seeking to change the crypto market.

EverGrow (EGC)

EverGrow was one of the quickest growing crypto when it launched in September last year, gaining over 25,000 investors and nearing a $1 billion market cap within weeks. Investors were attracted by its promise of passive income generation, as coinholders see Binance pegged USD (BUSD) deposited in their wallets daily. These rewards come from an 8% tax on all EverGrow (EGC) transactions and to date over $34 million has been redistributed to investors.

Rather than depending on token price to give investors a chance to make money, EverGrow's team is aiming at creating an asset similar to a stock that also pays dividends. Now the project development team are rolling out the world's first crypto and fiat integrated social media and content subscription platform, Crator. In the pipeline for Q1 is also staking pools, an NFT marketplace and NFT lending – which allows NFT holders to borrow against their NFTs as collateral. An online multiplayer battlegame as well as an Oracle-based play-to-earn (P2E) game are also in development. These projects should see more and more EGC transactions in the EverGrow ecosystem, giving investors a chance to make BUSD income regardless of market conditions.

EverGrow is currently trading at $0.0000004818 and showing a $1.6 million trading volume over the last 24 hours. Its market cap is a modest $200 million though this could likely grow in 2022 should the value from utility-based tokens continue to grow. At present EverGrow's team is seeking to break records in becoming the first crypto to generate its own trading volume, which in term will generate stable USD income for its investors.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche is the fastest growing of the crypto top 20 tokens, seeing 4% gains over the last week. Avalanche's AVAX token is nearing a $20 billion market cap and the AVAX token has a value of $81. 

Avalanche was created by a professor and PhD students at Cornell University. Its main aim to function as a platform for decentralised applications and custom blockchain networks – surpassing rivals like Ethereum in transaction speed. Avalanche can process up to 6,500 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum's 15. The project launched in 2020 and quickly raised $42 million in its first 24 hours of trading.

Avalanche's technologies are mainly of use to developers, who can build decentralised apps (DApps) and decentralised finance (DeFi) projects. The native AVAX token is a utility token. This means it serves as a medium of exchange on the Avalanche ecosystem, and collects fees from transactions, incentives and other use cases. AVAX holders can also stake to to secure the network, with stakers rewarded in AVAX. The advantage of holding AVAX is that its value is tied up with the technology of Avalanche itself. Crypto tokens like Bitcoin depend on market conditions to determine their price, but Avalanche generates its own value the more it can attract developers to its ecosystem. 

As risk creeps into the crypto market, many analysts suggest 2022 could be the year for utility-based cryptocurrencies to thrive.