Quant, Arweave and Avalanche soar while Bitcoin searches for support

The cryptocurrency market once again entered a period of uncertainty on Aug. 18 as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to find momentum below $46,000 and large-cap altcoins pulled back slightly.

Several projects did manage to buck the trend and post double-digit gains thanks to cross-chain integrations and protocol upgrades that excited their respective communities and provided traders with lower-fee Ethereum network alternatives.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Quant (QNT), Arweave (AR) and Avalanche (AVAX).

AR continues its hot streak

Arweave's AR token has been one of the top-performing coins over the past week, with activity on the decentralized storage network continuing to set new record-highs in daily transactions.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AR on Aug. 14, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for Arweave was elevated into the green zone earlier in the week and reached a high of 71 on Aug. 14, around 19 hours before the price of AR increased 106% over the next four days.

QNT rallies 33%

The enterprise-focused Quant protocol specializes in facilitating interoperability across separate blockchain networks, and on Aug. 18, the QNT token posted its second-largest gain, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro.

Data from TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $149.61 on Aug. 17, the price of QNT rallied 33% to an intraday high at $200.18 on Aug. 18 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 436% to $179 million.

Momentum for the project has been on the uptrend since the formation of the Quant Developer program designed to help attract new developers to the project's ecosystem.

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Avalanche integrates with Aave and Curve

Avalance is a layer-one blockchain protocol that claims to be the “fastest smart contracts platform in the blockchain industry, as measured by time-to-finality.” The project also boasts having “the most validators securing its activity of any proof-of-stake protocol.”

Data from TradingView shows that after falling to a low of $21.44 early on Aug. 18, the price of AVAX surged 33% to an intraday high at $28.47 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 50% to $1 billion.

The project received a boost on Aug. 18 following the announcement that Avalanche had partnered with Aave and Curve to create a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program called "Avalanche Rush."

According to the announcement, the goal of the program is to “bring blue-chip DeFi applications to Avalanche, starting with two popular protocols, Aave and Curve.”

The overall cryptocurrency market capitalization now stands at $1.961 trillion, and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43.9%.

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