Synthetix ‘tops’ these rankings, but can SNX really ride the hype train now?

• Synthetix’s development activity underscores the network’s growing efforts towards attracting more users
• SNX’s bearish performance fueled by whales and institutional sell pressure though

Synthetix was one of the most promising crypto projects during the 2021 bull run. However, it has been struggling to stay in the limelight since as the DeFi segment gets more saturated. Similarly, its native token SNX has also been on a bearish spiral lately.

Can Synthetix make a comeback? Well, this DeFi protocol has been putting up a fight in an attempt to maintain its relevance. Consider this – Synthetix saw strong development activity recently, allowing it to be ranked as the top DeFi protocol in terms of DA in the last 30 days.

A precursor to a big move for SNX?

The aforementioned surge could be tied to some of the project’s latest announcements. The protocol recently announced a new integrator protocol called TLX which enables leverage trading. In fact, TLX announced just two days ago that it achieved over $400 million worth of traded leveraged tokens.

Synthetix is also reportedly working on a new perps integrator. These observations point towards the possibility of more demand for SNX within the Synthetix ecosystem.

SNX has been on a bearish trajectory for almost 5 months. Its $1.29 press time price tag represented a 75% discount from $5.28 – Its highest YTD price tag achieved in March.

Source: TradingView

SNX’s press time price seemed to be lower than its price levels during its previous bearish phases. Hence, the question – Can it bounce back? Well, on-chain data revealed some interesting findings regarding the SNX token.

Whales and addresses and others…

Roughly 98% of all addresses holding SNX were at a loss, at the time of writing, while only 0.76% were in the money. This suggested that there was very low accumulation at or below the press time price level. This aligned with the balance by time held which revealed that the number of HODLers fell by 37,830,000 SNX in the last 8 months.

Source: IntoTheBlock

The number of SNX traders rose over the last 2 months, indicating a preference for short-term price gains. As a result, SNX has been unable to sustain a decent uptrend. Meanwhile, ownership stats revealed that whales have been contributing to sell pressure in the last 30 days.

The balance in whale addresses dropped by about 7.3 million SNX in the last 4 weeks. Investor addresses tanked by 7.78 million coins during the same period. However, retail addresses registered positive growth by about 490,000 SNX.

Source: IntoTheBlock

The acquisition by retail holders pointed to a possible sentiment shift.

However, retail buyers may not have much of an impact in the market. SNX could remain subdued unless we see a shift in whale and investor holdings in favor of accumulation.