In our two previous crypto analyses, published in November 2025 and June 2026, we identified the $60,000 range as a long-term buying zone for Bitcoin. It was also anticipated that Bitcoin would likely form a double-bottom formation before the new bull market began. However, BTC's strong bullish performance in the second half of August suggests the low for this cycle is already in. Nevertheless, a second bottom is always on the table, likely as a higher low. Bitcoin is now trading at $77,800.

• Major support at $74,670 and next at $69,000
• Major resistance zone for BTC at $82,100-$82,300, and next at $94,100

RSI Precision’s Strong Bullish Signal for Bitcoin in September 2026

Monthly RSI Precision broke a major downtrend in August -The same signal confirmed the beginning of a new bull market in December 2022.🔗 Add RSI Precision for free on TradingView

By examining the bear market patterns of RSI Precision in 2022 and 2026, we can observe significant similarities in market structure. In the chart below, Bitcoin Index and RSI Precision.

Chart: Bitcoin Index and RSI Precision (2021-2026)

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Five Promising Layer-1 Projects

At the beginning of this new crypto market cycle, this analysis examines a selection of Layer-1 crypto projects. We focus on Layer-1 projects for the following reasons:

• DeFi ecosystems, which host stablecoins, are built on Layer-1 platforms.
• Wall Street has shown strong interest in investing in major Layer-1 projects through ETFs, including Ethereum and Solana.
• The upcoming tokenization of stocks and bonds is expected to be built on Layer-1 platforms.

Our comparison consists of five promising crypto projects. More specifically, it includes Ethereum, the most important infrastructure project; Solana, a highly utilized and scalable Layer-1; Avalanche and NEAR, two smaller but promising projects; and Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network (DON) operating on top of existing blockchains.

 

 

Comparing Major Layer-1 Projects

In the following table, the primary data source is DeFiLlama.

Blockchains	Ethereum	Solana	Chainlink	Avalanche	NEAR
Current Capitalization (FDV)	$302.6B	$65.1B	$12.7B	$5.75B	$3.02B
Current Price (per token)	$2,480	$103	$12.7	$8.05	$2.23
Token Inflation (annually %)	0-1%	3-4%	~0%	4-5%	≤2.5%
DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL)	$49.2B	$5.95B	$1.76B	$0.479B	$0.065B
TPS (Max Transactions Per Second)	30 TPS -1,000+ TPS via Layer 2	Between 1,000 and 4,000 TPS	Operating on top of existing blockchains	Can scale to 4,500 TPS	Can scale to 1 million TPS
Chain Fees (annually)	$68.5M	$302M	$62.7M	$0.48M	$0.58M
Active Addresses (per day)	504K	2,210K	N/A	192K	78K

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Assessing the Five Crypto Projects in Greater Depth

After comparing the basic fundamental data of the five projects, let’s examine each of them separately.

Ethereum (ETH)

Ethereum is the largest and most decentralized Layer-1 platform, with the deepest liquidity, a well-established smart contract developer ecosystem, and strong institutional adoption. Most stablecoins are built on Ethereum, while the current DeFi total value locked exceeds $49 billion. The main disadvantage of ETH is its historically high gas fees and the limitations of its base-layer scalability. Currently, scaling relies heavily on Layer-2 rollups such as Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

• ETH technology is built around the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
• ETH has no fixed annual inflation rate -Validator issuance is partly offset by EIP-1559 fee burning.
• ETH shows a -37% five-year cumulative return.

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Solana (SOL)

Solana is a high-speed and low-cost blockchain platform designed for payments, DeFi, NFTs, and gaming. Solana provides sub-cent transactions thanks to its parallelized execution and Proof-of-History design. Daily active addresses surpass 2.2 million, while annual chain fees are reported at over $300 million, which is highly impressive. These figures are the highest in the industry, demonstrating strong adoption and a highly profitable network operation.

The major drawback for the chain has been network outages and congestion, although its reliability has improved significantly in recent years. Moreover, Solana remains more centralized than Ethereum and has a smaller, although rapidly growing, institutional base.

• SOL technology uses a high-performance architecture combining Proof of Stake with Proof of History to process transactions rapidly.
• SOL inflation gradually declines toward a 1.5% terminal rate. An active governance proposal could also accelerate the reduction in new token issuance.
• SOL shows a -29% five-year cumulative return.

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NEAR (NEAR)

Built for speed, scalability, and usability through Nightshade, NEAR is a blockchain designed to make decentralized applications easier to build and use, with a strong focus on scalability and user-friendly experiences. Its technology uses sharding to increase transaction capacity and emphasizes simplified account management and developer accessibility. However, NEAR’s liquidity and developer and user base remain considerably smaller than those of Ethereum or Solana.

• Its 2025 upgrade reduced maximum annual inflation from 5% to 2.5%.
• NEAR shows a -61% five-year cumulative return.

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Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche is a smart-contract platform that uses a unique consensus mechanism and subnet architecture, allowing projects to launch custom, application-specific blockchains with their own rules while still benefiting from interoperability within the broader ecosystem. This flexibility is attractive for enterprises and gaming and financial applications seeking dedicated chains. However, the AVAX ecosystem and developer mindshare remain smaller than those of Ethereum or Solana. In addition, its fundamental metrics deteriorated significantly during 2025-2026.

• AVAX continues to have token issuance through staking rewards, although it also includes a fee-burning mechanism designed to limit supply growth.
• AVAX shows a -85% five-year cumulative return.

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Chainlink (LINK)

Chainlink provides decentralized oracle infrastructure that connects smart contracts with real-world data, APIs, payment systems, and cross-chain environments. This means that it is not a standalone blockchain, but rather a dominant decentralized oracle network, providing price feeds, cross-chain messaging through CCIP, and off-chain data to smart contracts across nearly every major blockchain.

Its major disadvantage is that its value depends heavily on the growth of the broader smart contract ecosystem it serves, while it also faces increasing competition from other oracle providers such as Pyth and API3.

• As a token, LINK's price dynamics are tied more closely to protocol usage and staking demand than to its role as a transactional base-layer asset, such as ETH or SOL.
• LINK's supply is capped at 1 billion tokens, so the focus should be on unlock and distribution pressure rather than perpetual protocol inflation.
• LINK shows a -66% five-year cumulative return.

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Final Thoughts

As a leading technology, blockchain is here to stay, and under the Trump administration, we will likely see another bull cycle in the cryptocurrency market over the coming months and years. Bitcoin remains the top choice in any cycle, but keep in mind that during the early stages of every bull market, altcoins tend to outperform BTC significantly. In this context, investing in large Layer-1 platforms such as Ethereum and Solana may be a good strategy for the next 4-5 months. However, as the bull market enters its later stages, it may be better to focus exclusively on BTC.

 

■ Bitcoin Bullish Signal in September 2026 and Five Layer-1 Projects (2013-2026) (*)

Giorgos Protonotarios, Financial Analyst

TradingCenter.org (c) - September 10th, 2026

 

(*) This article is provided solely for analytical and educational purposes and should not be interpreted as investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell Bitcoin, or any other financial instrument.