What good projects are worth investing in?

Readers often leave comments at the end of articles asking:

What good projects are there to invest in within the current crypto ecosystem?

This question is difficult to answer because everyone's situation is different, leading to vastly different feelings.

Recently, I came across an article by Shen Chao titled "Google and Visa are both laying out plans; what investment opportunities are hidden in the undervalued X402 protocol?" (full text can be found in the reference link at the end of the article). The "investment opportunities" mentioned in this article resonate well with my current thoughts and situation.

Some time ago, I shared with everyone an agreement released by Google regarding AI Agents payments. This agreement has generated significant buzz not only in the AI field but also in the crypto ecosystem. In light of this wave of enthusiasm, Coinbase took the opportunity to launch the X402 protocol.

This protocol is not originally from Coinbase; it is actually a payment protocol that has existed in the HTTP standard but has not been implemented for various reasons. Coinbase's biggest contribution is that they have taken this opportunity to refine the protocol, fully filling the gap for payments based on crypto assets.

In addition to Coinbase, other well-known giants are also participating in this protocol, including Google, Amazon, Anthropic…

Even the payment giant Visa announced shortly after the protocol's launch that it would support this protocol.

All of this sounds great, so Shen Chao's article categorically lists the opportunities hidden in this large track.

Let's take a look at the opportunities listed in the article:

The infrastructure lists three projects: Coinbase, Cloudflare, Visa

All three projects have publicly traded stocks in the US market. Among these three projects, I have looked into them, but I only feel I understand Coinbase a bit more deeply.

So I automatically excluded Cloudflare and Visa.

As for Coinbase, there is another issue: I believe that the valuations of AI and crypto stocks in the current US market are generally not low. Comparing Coinbase's current price to its current revenue and its potential future revenue, I don't see much attractiveness in Coinbase's stock at this price point, so I won't buy Coinbase stock at this price.

Next, the article lists six projects in the crypto ecosystem: @AEON_Community, @PayAINetwork, @daydreamsagents, @GoKiteAI, @questflow, and @peaq

Generally speaking, these six projects are more application-layer oriented. The competition at the application layer will definitely be quite fierce in the future. Currently, known giants laying out in this field include Circle, Stripe, and Paypal, and I believe more giants will enter this track in the future. Therefore, whether these six projects have any particularly special advantages that warrant investment right now requires careful consideration.

So, from the perspective of the track, their overall attractiveness to me is not particularly high.

Now let's look at the specific projects:

@AEON_Community and @PayAINetwork have not issued tokens. For projects that have not issued tokens, unless I particularly like them, I will immediately exclude them if I don't find anything impressive after a glance.

So I excluded these two projects.

@questflow has not issued tokens, but it has a Virtual AI Agent @santavirtuals that it initiated and supports. I bought some @santavirtuals earlier and have been observing it. From a risk-reward perspective, I won't buy more now, and even if I consider reinvesting, I wouldn't buy this project but would consider buying into the overall ecosystem's mainstay, Virtual.

@daydreamsagents has issued tokens. My consideration for it is similar to @santavirtuals; I won't buy this project alone, and if I do buy, it will be for ecosystem projects.

So I also excluded these two projects.

@GoKiteAI is a layer 1 blockchain specifically built for payments and has not issued tokens. @peaq is a layer 1 blockchain that has issued tokens.

Whenever I see new L1 blockchain projects, a sense of fatigue arises within me. For such projects, I prefer to observe for a while to see if they can truly grow an ecosystem; otherwise, they can easily become "ghost towns" with only a name but no substance.

So I currently have no strong desire to participate in these two projects either.

Adding it all up, none of the nine opportunities listed in the article are ones I am willing to spend money on right now.

These views are merely my personal thoughts and do not imply that these projects are bad.

I am just sharing my genuine feelings when I see a bunch of so-called "opportunities" right now.

In fact, from the perspective of track analysis, the projects listed in this article comprehensively summarize the important projects closely related to this track in the current ecosystem.

However, for various reasons, they do not have a particular appeal to me. This feeling of fatigue is not only from the payment track but also from many other sub-tracks.

So, despite the seemingly bustling and diverse so-called "opportunities," the ones that can be pinpointed and are truly worthwhile are actually very few, if not nonexistent.