While Bitcoin searches for support, Quant, Arweave, and Avalanche soar

The cryptocurrency market once again entered a period of uncertainty on Aug. 18 as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to find momentum below $46,000 and large-cap altcoins pulled back slightly.

Many projects managed to defy the trend and posted double-digit gains due to cross-chain integrations, protocol upgrades that thrilled their respective communities and provided traders lower-cost alternatives to the Ethereum network.

Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView data show that Quant (QNT), Arweave and Avalanche were the largest gainers in the last 24-hours.

AR continues its hot streak

Arweave's AR token has been one of the top-performing coins over the past week, with activity on the decentralized storage network continuing to set new record-highs in daily transactions.

VORTECS(tm) data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AR on Aug. 14, prior to the recent price rise.

Cointelegraph's exclusive VORTECS(tm), Score is an algorithmic comparison between historical and current market conditions. It is derived from a combination data points, including trading volume, market sentiment and recent price movements, as well as Twitter activity.

The chart shows that the VORTECS(tm), Score for Arweave rose into the green zone earlier this week. It reached a peak of 71 on August 14, just 19 hours before AR's price increased by 106% in the following four days.

QNT rises 33%

The enterprise-focused Quant protocol specializes in facilitating interoperability across separate blockchain networks, and on Aug. 18, the QNT token posted its second-largest gain, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro.

Data from TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $149.61 on Aug. 17, the price of QNT rallied 33% to an intraday high at $200.18 on Aug. 18 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 436% to $179 million.

Avalanche can be integrated with Curve and Aave

Avalance, a layer-one crypto protocol, claims to be the fastest smart contracts platform in blockchain industry measured by time-to finality. It also boasts the most validators for securing its activity than any proof-of stake protocol.

Data from TradingView shows that after falling to a low of $21.44 early on Aug. 18, the price of AVAX surged 33% to an intraday high at $28.47 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 50% to $1 billion.

The project received a boost on Aug. 18 following the announcement that Avalanche had partnered with Aave and Curve to create a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program called "Avalanche Rush."

The program's goal is, according to the announcement, to "bring blue chip DeFi applications to Avalanche starting with two popular protocols Aave or Curve."

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization is now at $1.961 trillion. Bitcoin's dominance rate of 43.9%.