3 Coins That Could Outperform Shiba Inu in April

Forget Shiba Inu. These coins have more potential.

Shiba Inu grabbed headlines at the end of March with the official launch of its Shib Metaverse, but it still failed to realize any significant price gains. All in all, SHIB only gained 1% across the whole month, while market leader Bitcoin (BTC) was up just over 3.5%, according to CoinGecko data.

There's a lot of excitement about metaverse tokens, but observers have raised several concerns about SHIB's project and the recent announcement did little to reassure them. SHIB is still almost 70% down from its October high. The challenge with SHIB and other meme tokens is that they don't have strong fundamentals, meaning investor sentiment can have an outsized influence on prices.

Sure, Shiba Inu has a decentralized exchange (DEX) and is now building a metaverse. But its exchange doesn't hold a candle to the existing DEXs, and so far the Shib Metaverse doesn't compare favorably to existing projects. With that in mind, here are three cryptos that could outperform Shiba Inu in April as well as in the longer term.

1. Solana (SOL)

The super fast smart contract cryptocurrency grew at an incredible rate last year, but stalled a little along with the rest of the crypto market this year. However, a couple of technical difficulties have not stopped the network from attracting new projects and Solana now boasts over 1,500 ventures in its ecosystem.

There are two reasons to pay attention to Solana in April. One is Solana Miami, a conference that runs from April 5-10 and will focus on the Solana community. The other is that OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, will soon trade Solana NFTs on its platform. There have been rumors about the integration for several months, but OpenSea has confirmed it will happen this month.

2. Polkadot (DOT)

There's an issue in the crypto industry that's becoming increasingly relevant: interoperability. Put simply, we need cryptos to be able to communicate with each other so that the industry can grow. That's the problem Polkadot seeks to solve and it's taken some big strides in that direction this year.

Polkadot uses something called parachains, which are individual blockchains that connect to its main network. It has a limited number of parachains available, and last year it auctioned out those places. The projects that won are now starting to develop their products, and as a result, interest in Polkadot is growing. According to DeFi Llama, the amount of money on Polkadot's system grew by over 1,200% in March, making it the 11th biggest crypto in terms of assets on its platform.

3. Wilder World (WILD)

If Shiba Inu's metaverse announcement has you looking for a metaverse token, Wilder World is worth a closer look. Perhaps you don't want to buy the bigger, more established players like The Sandbox (SAND) or Decentraland (MANA), though these may be safer bets. It is very early days for metaverses and we don't yet know which projects will emerge as frontrunners. For that matter, we don't know if the decentralized crypto-based virtual worlds will beat those created by tech giants like Meta.

Wilder World is a 5D virtual world designed by a collective of virtual artists. Its first city is Wiami, a digital version of Miami, and users can buy land and condos there. It already has some interesting partnerships with leading digital artists and the platform currently features several NFT collections.

Bottom line

If you're a Shiba Inu or meme token fan, perhaps it’s time to branch out into other cryptocurrencies. The memes are fun and there's something special about being part of a community. But the projects above have communities too, and the projects all have stronger fundamentals and better long-term potential.

In this month's altcoins to watch column we also looked at the Ethereum (ETH) merge -- a major step for Ethereum in its long-awaited upgrade. It will move the second-largest crypto to a new, environmentally friendly model and cofounder Vitalik Buterin says it's due to happen before the summer. I didn't include Ethereum in the list above because it's such a huge coin. But it is worth keeping it on your radar in April.

With over 18,000 cryptos to choose from, the important thing is to do your own research and only invest money you can afford to lose. Only you know your financial situation and investment priorities, which means you're best positioned to decide if these cryptos are worth putting on your watchlist. There are so many projects with more potential than Shiba Inu, and it can be fun to dig for them.