TheDefiEdge used four criteria to select tokens with appreciation potential: product-market fit, income generation for holders, resilience to market downturns, and fundamentals.
Recently, crypto trader and entrepreneur Cobie promoted a survey on X to gather community opinions on the most promising tokens for long-term investments, excluding Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Hyperliquid, and stablecoins.
The survey received 2.6 thousand responses and over a million views. Among varied responses, many of which were biased, with traders and investors taking the opportunity to promote tokens from their portfolios, the pseudonymous analyst TheDefiEdge made a selection of the five most promising based on four objective criteria.
TheDefi Edge evaluated the long-term appreciation potential of cryptocurrencies based on product-market fit, income generation capabilities for holders, resilience to market downturns, and technical fundamentals.
The five cryptocurrencies chosen by the analyst for long-term investments were: Aave ($AAVE ), Pendle (PENDLE), Ethena ($ENA ), Worldcoin (WLD), and Jupiter ($JUP ).
AVE: DeFi Lending Giant #AAVE
Aave is established as "the largest of all time in DeFi money markets." Currently, it is the largest decentralized finance protocol by total value locked (TVL).
The protocol demonstrates perfect market fit, with fundamental metrics like new users, deposit volume, and loan volume showing a consistent growth trend.
The project's financial strength and sustainability are evident from the fact that "its lowest monthly income in 2025 was $4.79 million."
What sets AAVE apart from other protocols is its ability for continuous innovation and long-term vision. The project's roadmap is full of catalysts, including the launch of its own stablecoin (GHO) and the development of the Horizon platform, focused on tokenizing real-world assets (RWA).
Furthermore, unlike other governance tokens, "AAVE truly generates value through mechanisms like buybacks and rewards for stakers," creating a sustainable economic model that directly benefits token holders in the long term, notes TheDefiEdge.
PENDLE: Absolute dominance in Yield trading #PENDLE🔥🔥
Pendle has achieved an absolute leadership position in its category – yield trading. Direct competitors of the protocol hold less than 1% of Pendle's TVL, the analyst highlights.
The innovative model of splitting yield-generating assets into Yield Tokens (YT) and Principal Tokens (PT), allowing users to provide liquidity for new tokens, earn fixed income through the principal token, and speculate on yield tokens, ensures constant demand in the market.
"Just in 2025, Pendle has already generated $18.72 million in revenue," states TheDefiEdge.
According to the analyst, PENDLE's appreciation potential is based on its market share expansion potential:
"The interest rate derivatives of the traditional market move over $400 trillion in traded volume. Pendle is the on-chain protocol for that. Planned updates in its roadmap, such as the Boros upgrade, aim to bring TradFi products to the blockchain."
The value generation mechanisms for PENDLE token holders ensure benefits linked to the protocol's growth, positioning PENDLE as a fundamental bet for investors who believe in the maturation of the DeFi ecosystem, concludes the analyst.
ENA: Investing in the Future of Stablecoins #ENA
Stablecoins are "the most successful crypto product" in the market. The consistent growth of the sector will soon reach exponential levels, claims TheDefiEdge.
The traditional market itself recognized that potential, as evidenced by the valuation of Circle's shares exceeding the market capitalization of the USDC stablecoin.
Despite the success of Circle's IPO, "we need a crypto-native stablecoin," says the analyst. Among the available options in this segment, such as Frax and Sky, Ethena emerged as a strong candidate for leadership. In less than a year, Ethena USD (USDe) became the largest semi-decentralized stablecoin in the market, surpassing MakerDAO's DAI.
TheDefiEdge highlights that Ethena's long-term strategy goes beyond traditional stablecoins, with the development of tokens like USDtb, "a digital dollar backed by BlackRock's tokenized money market fund (BUIDL)" and iUSDe, a version of the yield-generating stablecoin sUSDe for the traditional market.
“Betting on stablecoins is a guaranteed win. And ENA is the most popular token to gain exposure to that narrative," concludes the analyst.
WLD: Human Identity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence #WLD
TheDefiEdge states that the spotlight in the decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) sector is still open. “The current consensus is Bittensor TAO, with a fully diluted market capitalization (FDV) of $7.4 billion, but in the long run, WorldCoin, with an FDV of $9.3 billion, seems to be better positioned," it claims.
Worldchain is a global identity ecosystem, where every human being can create a unique WorldID through zk proof based on iris scanning. Humanity proof will be “fundamental in a world dominated by AI, with deepfakes and agents," says the analyst. This unique identity infrastructure represents a competitive advantage that the main rivals in the sector cannot replicate.
TheDefiEdge attributes its optimism with WLD to four factors: the involvement of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, with the project – “any future initiative from the company in the field of cryptocurrencies will benefit WLD," according to the analyst; World already has over 12 million registered users; the project has just begun its operations in the United States, expanding the project's growth potential; and Worldchain offers unique humanity proof applications that can be adopted by other companies and applications. TheDefiEdge highlights that even the popular dating app Tinder recently closed a partnership with World.
Despite the optimism with Worldcoin, the analyst makes three considerations: massive token unlocks for team members and investors; the lack of income generation mechanisms for WLD holders; and the questions regarding the privacy of WorldID users' data.
World has been questioned by government authorities in various jurisdictions, including Brazil, where the National Data Protection Agency (ANPD) prohibited the distribution of tokens through humanity verification via iris scanning.
JUP: Vertical Integration in the Solana DeFi Ecosystem #JUP
Jupiter has established itself as the leading aggregator of decentralized exchanges (DEX) on Solana, but its long-term vision goes far beyond just being a liquidity layer for DeFi protocols in the ecosystem.
The protocol is "building a vertically integrated DeFi platform" to offer perpetual trading products, DCA (dollar-cost averaging) investment tools, and portfolio management, among other things.
This vertical integration strategy positions Jupiter as a complete hub for DeFi activities on Solana, capturing value across multiple layers of the ecosystem, according to TheDefiEdge.
Two recent announcements demonstrate the project's growth potential. Jupiter Lend, developed in partnership with Fluid (the innovative lending protocol), will integrate a money market into the platform, significantly expanding its service offerings.
Even more ambitious is JupNet, "an omnichain network that will aggregate all L1s from Solana to Ethereum," allowing access to a much larger capital market.
"The market is leaning towards vertically integrated DeFi platforms, and in Solana, Jupiter is the leader in that category," positioning JUP as a strategic bet in the growth of the Solana ecosystem and the evolution of decentralized finance, concludes the analyst.
SOL and the entire Solana ecosystem should receive an additional short-term boost with the launch of the first SOL ETF with integrated staking. As reported recently by Cointelegraph, Rex Shares' ETF could hit the market at any time.
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