Original article | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )

Author | Dingdang ( @XiaMiPP )

In the past few days, while the overall market has continued to weaken, a group of "old coins" have bucked the trend and risen, creating a frenzy on their own.

As mainstream narratives lose their luster, these long-forgotten names have reappeared at the top of the gainers list. They are not the creators of new stories, but they shine again amidst the ruins of the old era. Some see this as the "return of veterans," while others believe it's merely a temporary curiosity of new funds. But regardless, in a period of low liquidity and a lack of hot topics, the unexpected surge in old projects has become a mirror reflecting market sentiment.

DASH, ZK: The Rotation Game of Privacy Funds

Privacy coins are undoubtedly the core engine of this market rally. After ZEC surged 40 times in a month, the market faced a dilemma—unwilling to chase the price further, yet unwilling to miss out. As a result, funds began rotating among similar themes, with XMR, DASH, ZK, and MINA all making the list. (Related reading on the logic behind ZEC's rise: " The Revival of Privacy Coins: From Binance Delisting Candidate to a 13-Fold Surge, ZEC's Lightning-Fast Rebirth ")

The story of DASH (Digital Cash) dates back to 2014. Originally named "Darkcoin," it was created by Evan Duffield and uses CoinJoin mixing technology to achieve optional privacy, positioning itself as "digital cash." Although both Dash and Zcash emphasize privacy payments, their design philosophies, technological approaches, privacy strengths, governance methods, and practical uses are completely different.

Dash predates Zcash, emphasizing "fast payments + optional privacy + on-chain governance," sacrificing some privacy for speed, governance, and real-world merchant adoption, making it suitable for everyday small payments. Zcash, on the other hand, prioritizes absolute privacy , pursuing mathematical-level privacy but sacrificing speed, ease of use, and merchant acceptance, primarily for large-scale privacy transfers.

The difference in their positioning also determines the different user groups they attract. Dash still has thousands of real merchants in Venezuela and Colombia, and the DashPay wallet (username payment) is already online; Zcash has almost no real merchants, and 90% of its transaction volume comes from exchange arbitrage or the dark web. It is precisely because of its extreme pursuit of privacy protection that its space for survival has been drastically compressed under heavy regulatory pressure.

If DASH is the "realist" of privacy coins, then ZEC is the "idealist." One compromises with life, the other remains loyal to mathematics.

As for ZK (ZKsync) , it represents a "re-narrative of Ethereum" in the zero-knowledge proof field. ZKsync mainly achieves high throughput and privacy protection through zero-knowledge proof (ZK-Rollup) technology and is regarded as an important solution for Ethereum scaling .

On November 1st, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted a message praising ZKsync for its "quiet but valuable contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem." This tweet acted as a signal, and amidst the renewed focus on privacy, ZKsync became the focus, with its stock price surging by over 160% in the short term.

Although the price subsequently declined, on the evening of November 4th, ZKsync founder Alex released "ZK Token Proposal Part I," proposing a major update to the ZK token economic model: all network revenue will be used to buy back and burn ZK tokens, transforming them from simple governance tokens into assets with value capture capabilities.

Currently, the privacy sector remains a hot spot for investment, with projects like SCRT and ROSE gaining renewed attention due to the new narrative of combining privacy computing with AI. It can be said that, caught in the struggle between regulation and freedom, the privacy sector has become an "emotional outlet" for market funds—a refuge as well as a source of speculation.

ICP and AR: The old dream of the storage track is rekindled.

ICP (Internet Computer) was founded in Zurich, Switzerland in 2016 by brilliant scientist Dominic Williams, and developed under the leadership of the DFINITY Foundation. It officially launched its mainnet on May 10, 2021. Its ultimate vision is to completely replace centralized cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure with a public blockchain, turning the entire Internet into a "world computer".

Back then, Internet Computer conducted multiple rounds of private placements, raising approximately $163-195 million, with a valuation that once reached $9.5 billion . This was second only to Polkadot among blockchain projects at the time, making it the second-highest-funded L1 public chain in history, a true "king-level" project. Its funding lineup included well-known crypto investment institutions such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Polychain, and Multicoin.

However, the ideal was too ambitious, and reality too complex. The project initially reached a high of $2,800, before quickly plummeting to around $300, a drop of 90%. After four years, its valuation has dwindled from $9.5 billion to a mere $42 million, a truly lamentable situation. The token hit a low of $1.86 during the massive crash on October 10th, before rising fivefold within a month to a high of $9.84.

Arweave (AR) is a permanent data storage protocol founded by Sam Williams in 2017 and launched in 2018. Positioned as a "Permaweb," its core selling point is a one-time payment for permanent storage, addressing issues of data loss and censorship. Arweave abandons the linear structure of traditional blockchains, creating a unique "Blockweave" data structure. Miners, through a Proof of Access (PoA) mechanism, must not only store new data but also randomly prove their access to historical data to receive mining rewards. This economic incentive solves the problem of long-term data preservation in blockchain.

In February 2025, the Arweave mainnet officially launched, marking a historic leap for Arweave from "permanent storage" to "permanent computing." Before the launch of Arweave, the market had always defined Arweave as "expensive cold storage." Although it achieved true "one-time payment, permanent preservation," its application scenarios were mainly concentrated in cold data areas such as NFT metadata backup, archives, and mirror websites—areas where data is "written once and read infrequently." The emergence of Arweave has driven a narrative upgrade for Arweave, transforming it from "storage" to "computing + AI."

However, in the market, its price has remained sluggish for a long time. After reaching a high of $90 during the 2021 bull market, AR's price has hovered between $5 and $15 for an extended period, with its market capitalization lagging far behind cheaper competitors like Filecoin and Irys. In 2024, driven by both market sentiment and the AO narrative, it briefly rebounded to $50. Now, it's once again hovering around $5. Will it be able to replicate the 2024 trend and experience a rebound?

DCR: An Underrated Governance Textbook

Decred (DCR) is one of the earliest and most successful Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in the cryptocurrency space. Founded by former Bitcoin developer Jake Yocom-Piatt, it launched its mainnet on February 8, 2016. Decred was created to address Bitcoin's biggest pain point—rigid governance. It uses a unique hybrid PoW+PoS consensus mechanism, allowing holders, rather than miners, to lead network rule changes, budget allocation, and future direction. Specifically, PoW miners are responsible for producing blocks, while PoS stakeholders are responsible for validating blocks and voting. Any rule change requires 75% approval, preventing miner dictatorship or hard forks.

There are quite a few public blockchain projects like Decred that operate based on a fork of Bitcoin's code. Before 2021, the crypto industry's exploration of blockchain was basically an attempt to patch up Bitcoin's shortcomings using different technological paths outside of Bitcoin's framework. After the emergence of DeFi Summer, these projects were gradually overshadowed and disappeared into the annals of time, with DCR's price hovering between $10 and $30 for many years.

Conclusion: The resurrection of the old gods, or an echo of illusion?

In the short term, the rebounds of these older projects have mostly been followed by declines. After a brief period of euphoria, the market has returned to a period of calm and risk testing. Whether they can withstand this test will determine whether they replicate the ZEC miracle or simply repeat a fleeting illusion.

The deeper reality is that the current crypto market lacks new narratives and liquidity is tightening . The "resurrection" of old coins is more like a nostalgic act when funds have nowhere to go, a brief look back at the early "idealistic era" of crypto.

Perhaps investors don't really believe these old projects will "come back to life," but at least these names remind them that the crypto market once had faith.