Alpha Hunting Guide: What the wise trader does in the beginning, the fool does in the end

TL;DR

When Alpha Hunting, there are no shortcuts:

• You have to read—a lot,
• You have to make friends,
• You must freely share all the alfa you can find to become worthy of receiving alfa,
• You need the best tools and must learn to use them well; then, you must learn to use the new one that comes out tomorrow.

After all of that, it’s easy.

How I learned to chart less and Ape more

In the cold, hard, ruthless crypto world, you need skills to survive as soon as the dog coins stop pumping. We braved countless parents’ basements and grilled the brainiest and most self-destructive degens this industry has created so far to gather the best resources and tools that can keep you alive and on top in this PvP arena. We’ve split our alpha-hunting alpha into some general categories so you can find the area where you suck the most and begin improving immediately.

Alpha Primer

90% of new projects fail. To avoid getting caught bag-holding too many duds, we must begin the hunt with a solid understanding of what makes a project likely to succeed. This article from DeFi Education is a great place to start with a glossary of terms and a thorough explanation of alpha.

Fundamentals — Finding promising projects with teams that can execute.

Here’s a good read on How to Judge if a Crypto Protocol can Execute its Vision from TheDeFiEdge. It explains how to more reliably determine if a new project’s founders have what it takes to follow through, a helpful foundational understanding. In addition to knowing what makes a team win or lose and which characteristics can be an asset or a detriment to their success, there’s a handful of practices and habits that can dramatically improve your chances of finding more gems and fewer bricks. Here are some tips and tricks that help us keep up with the constant onslaught of new projects, make better decisions, and find the right things to buy when no one else is interested:

• Read whitepapers — Going straight to the source and extracting the idea directly from a founder’s brain is still a very reliable method for discovering innovative projects.
• Follow champions on Twitter — For many years, Twitter has maintained its dominance as the best and biggest congregation of dedicated and rational crypto opinion leaders. They are still one of the best sources for fresh information on new and upcoming projects. Here are some of our favorites: @VirtualBacon1, @CryptoSources, @Darrenlautf, @SmallCapScience
• Join Discord Servers — Any serious project these days will have a Discord. Joining it and taking a good look around can tell you a lot about the degree of professionalism and effort the team is capable of sustaining.
• Follow The Money — check what new projects have caught the interest of the bigshot VCs that are early to everything: 3AC, A16z, Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, Alameda Research, there’s a lot.
• Search Twitter for Keywords — track the frequency of a founder’s tweets and get a heads up when a new project or update is about to launch or gain a lot more attention.
• Check Crypto Job Listings — If something is about to blow up, they’re going to need lots of people. Job listings can strongly indicate how well funded and organized a new project is in the early stages.
• See What Builders are BUIDLING — Like digging through crypto job listings, looking into the under-construction projects happening at various hackathons can be a way to discover the next big thing before all the others.
• Join an Alpha-Hunting Community — Team up with other degens to scour the web for fresh opportunities. The AlfaDAO Discord is one of our favorites.
• Watch the ‘Trending Search’ Feature — this simple tool is surprisingly helpful and is found on many listing sites like CoinGecko or DexScreener.
• DIY Alpha — This is when you see a chance to invest in a project early, then you jump into the project, help them ship, and create your own ‘luck.’
• Respect the Power of Memes — if you assume projects are destined to live or die based solely on fundamentals, you’ll find this market rather disappointing. Worthless projects can see meteoric rises fueled purely by community hype.

Alpha Hunter’s Tool Box

To get a good deal on anything, you need to know what it’s worth. To be early to anything, you need tools to help you find it fast.

Research Tools

Token Terminal

https://www.tokenterminal.com/ — Financial data aggregator for blockchains and dApps

RugDoc

https://rugdoc.io/ — DeFi safety and education community

Messari

https://messari.io/ — Leading crypto-research and market intelligence group

Delphi Digital

https://members.delphidigital.io/ — In-depth research platform dedicated to crypto and digital assets

Web3Alerts

https://web3alerts.app/ — New project dashboard with real-time Twitter alerts

LunarCrush

https://lunarcrush.com/ — Social intelligence for cryptocurrencies

Data Analysis Tools

Glassnode

https://studio.glassnode.com/metrics?a=BTC&m=addresses.ActiveCount — The best on-chain derivatives data in the industry.

Dune Analytics

https://dune.xyz/browse/dashboards — Community managed Ethereum ecosystem analytics

Nansen

https://pro.nansen.ai/ — Wallet analysis tools and on-chain trends data

Dashboards

Coindix

https://coindix.com/ — DeFi monitoring tool that tracks over 10k vaults on 26 chains to keep you informed about all the current best yield opportunities across DeFi.

DexScreener

https://dexscreener.com/ — On-chain transaction tracking and charts for brand new trading pairs.

DeBank

https://debank.com/ — Cross-chain wallet profiler

Calendars

Ape O’Clock

https://www.apeoclock.com/ — Yield farm, GameFi, and DeFi launch aggregator tracking upcoming and current opportunities.

RugDoc Calendar

https://rugdoc.io/calendar/ — New farms, tokens, and NFT launches

Closing Remarks

Crypto evolves very quickly, and rotations are happening faster. Opportunities present themselves every day if you can learn to identify a winner swimming in an ocean of losers. My fellow degen friends and I are using some or all of these tools and strategies. Learn to use them to separate the signal from the noise, and you stand a chance. Good luck.

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