Original Article Title: "The Collective 'Resurrection' of Old Coins such as DASH, ZEC, and ICP: A Sign of Capital Nostalgia or a Precursor to a New Narrative?"

Original Article Author: Ding Dang, Odaily Planet Daily

Over the past few days, while the overall market has continued to weaken, a group of "old coins" has risen against the trend, triggering a frenzy of their own.

As the mainstream narrative gradually loses its momentum, these long-dormant names have reappeared at the top of the gainers list. They are not the creators of a new story, but are once again shining in the ruins of a bygone era. Some see it as a "return of the veterans," while others believe it is merely a momentary curiosity of new capital. However, in any case, during a period of low liquidity and a lack of hot trends, the unexpected stir of old projects has already become a mirror reflecting the market sentiment.

DASH, ZK: The Rotating Game of Privacy Funds

Privacy coins are undoubtedly the core engine of this market trend. After ZEC surged 40 times in a month, the market found itself in a dilemma—hesitant to chase further yet unwilling to miss out. Consequently, funds began rotating among similar thematic projects, with XMR, DASH, ZK, MINA, and others all making their way to the top.

DASH (Digital Cash)'s story can be traced back to 2014. Originally named "Darkcoin," it was created by Evan Duffield and achieved optional privacy through CoinJoin mixing technology, positioning itself as "digital cash." Although both Dash and Zcash have privacy payments as their core selling point, their design philosophies, technical roadmaps, privacy strengths, governance models, and actual use cases are entirely different.

Dash's inception predates even that of Zcash, with the former emphasizing "fast payments + optional privacy + on-chain governance," sacrificing some privacy for speed, governance, and real-world merchant adoption, making it suitable for daily small-value payments. The latter, on the other hand, focuses on "absolute privacy protection," pursuing mathematically rigorous absolute privacy but sacrificing speed, user-friendliness, and merchant acceptance, primarily used for large-scale private transfers.

Their differing positioning also determines their user base. Dash still has thousands of real merchants in Venezuela and Colombia, and the DashPay wallet (username payments) has already been launched. In contrast, Zcash has almost zero real-world merchants, with 90% of its transaction volume coming from exchange arbitrage or the dark web. It is precisely due to its pursuit of ultimate privacy protection that its survival space has been severely compressed under heavy regulatory pressure.

If DASH is the privacy coin's "realist," then ZEC is the "idealist." One compromises with life, the other is loyal to mathematics.

As for ZK (ZKsync), it represents the Ethereum narrative of the zero-knowledge track. ZKsync mainly achieves high throughput and privacy protection through zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-Rollup) and is seen as an important scaling solution for Ethereum.

On November 1, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin praised ZKsync in a post for their "low-key but valuable contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem." This tweet acted as a signal flare, reigniting the privacy narrative, with ZK becoming the focus and experiencing a short-term price surge of over 160%.

Although there was some retracement afterward, on the evening of November 4, ZKsync founder Alex released "ZK Token Proposal Part I," proposing a significant update to the ZK tokenomics: all network revenue will be used to buy back and burn ZK tokens, transitioning it from a mere governance token to an asset with value-capture functionality.

Currently, the privacy sector remains a hotbed of capital chase, with projects such as SCRT, ROSE, and others receiving renewed attention due to the new narrative combining privacy computing and AI. It can be said that amid the tug of war between regulation and freedom, the privacy sector has become the "emotional escape" for market funds, serving both as a refuge and a speculation.

ICP, AR: The Rekindling of the Storage Track's Old Dream

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

Back then, Internet Computer went through multiple rounds of private fundraising, raising around 1.63-1.95 billion USD, with a valuation reaching as high as 9.5 billion USD. At that time, it was second only to Polkadot in terms of fundraising amounts in blockchain projects, making it the second-highest fundraising L1 public chain in history and a true "kingly" project. The fundraising lineup included well-known crypto investment institutions such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Polychain, Multicoin, and others.

But idealism is too grand, and reality is too complex. The project reached a peak of $2800 upon launch, then quickly fell to around $300, marking a 90% drop. Over 4 years, its valuation dwindled from a peak of $9.5 billion to its current market cap of $42 million, a rather lamentable decline. The token hit a low of $1.86 during the October 10 crash, surged 5x within a month, reaching a high of $9.84.

AR (Arweave) was founded by Sam Williams in 2017 and launched in 2018 as a permanent data storage protocol known as "Permaweb," with the core value proposition being one-time payment, permanent storage, addressing data loss and censorship issues. Arweave departed from the linear structure of traditional blockchains and introduced the "Blockweave" data structure. Miners, through the Proof of Access (PoA) mechanism, not only have to store new data but also randomly prove they can access historical data to be eligible for mining rewards. Through this economic incentive, it tackles the challenge of long-term blockchain data preservation.

In February 2025, the AO mainnet was officially launched, marking Arweave's historic transition from "permanent storage" to "permanent computation." Prior to the AO launch, Arweave was primarily seen as "expensive cold storage" in the market. While achieving true "one-time payment, permanent storage," its use cases were mainly focused on cold data areas such as NFT metadata backup, archives, and mirror websites where data is written once and read infrequently. The emergence of AO propelled Arweave's narrative upgrade, shifting it from "storage" to "computation+AI."    

However, in the market, its price has remained depressed. After peaking at $90 during the 2021 bull market, AR's price has traded sideways between $5 and $15 for an extended period, with its market cap far behind cheaper competitors like Filecoin and Irys. In 2024, driven by market sentiment and the AO narrative, it briefly surged to $50. Now, it is once again hovering around $5; can it replicate the performance of 2024 and embark on another rebound?

DCR: The Underrated Governance Bible

Decred (DCR) is one of the earliest and most successful "on-chain governance organization" (DAO) projects in the cryptocurrency space, founded by former Bitcoin developer Jake Yocom-Piatt and launched its mainnet on February 8, 2016. Decred's emergence aimed to address Bitcoin's major pain point—governance ossification. Through a unique hybrid PoW+PoS consensus, it empowers holders rather than miners to lead network rule changes, budget allocations, and future direction. Specifically, PoW miners handle block production, while PoS stakeholders validate blocks and vote. Any rule change requires 75% approval, preventing miner centralization or hard forks.

Public blockchain projects like Decred, which are based on Bitcoin's codebase, are not uncommon. Before 2021, the crypto industry's exploration of blockchain was mostly outside Bitcoin's framework, attempting to patch its existing flaws through different technical paths. After the DeFi Summer, these projects were gradually overshadowed, fading into obscurity over time, with DCR's price trading sideways between $10 and $30 throughout the year.

Epilogue: The Resurrection of the Old Gods, or an Illusionary Echo?

From a short-term price perspective, the rebounds of these old projects have mostly been followed by retracements. The market, after a brief euphoria, has returned to a calm risk assessment phase. Whether they can withstand this test will determine whether they replicate the miracle of ZEC or reenact the illusion of a flash in the pan.

A deeper reality is: the current crypto market faces a scarcity of new narratives and tightening liquidity. The "resurrection" of old coins seems more like a nostalgic act of finding solace for idle funds, a brief look back at the early "idealistic era" of crypto.

Perhaps investors don't truly believe these old projects will "resurrect," but at least these names remind them: there was once faith in the crypto market.

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