It is obvious to say that the biggest gains in crypto are made when you find an early entry to a new project that later explodes and goes beyond 100M MC and beyond. Over the past few years we have witnessed people making gains on coins like Doge, Shiba, Floki, and recently Pepe! It was indeed pure luck for some, but for others it was based on research, and in this article i will go through the key factors that lead to the success of these projects as they might help us find the next one with a little bit of research. Think of this as a check list to consider if you decide to explore the degen lands and go hunting for these hidden gems.

1- Community

There is no 100X without a good community, especially when comes to low cap meme coins, you need to see a community that is emotionally attached to the project, they buy the coin because they fell in love with the meme, or the idea and took as their own, you can easily tell if a community is active by just observing the official coin's telegram / discord / twitter for a while. Communities are well tested during a dip, it is important to wait for one and see how the sentiment is, are community members buying more? are they defending the project and the team? of course you might see some fud but what matters is what the majority is doing / saying.

2- Team

When you invest in a project you actually invest in a team! It is very crucial to see that this team is active & building especially when the chart is being challenged! You need to find a team that does not focus on what the chart does, but rather focus on a clear vision, and keeps building no matter what. It is also a plus if this team did some sort of KYC or is doxxed. It is also good to check if this team had previous projects and how well they performed in the past. On the project's telegram / discord you need to check pinned messages, and observe the chat, this will give you an idea about how active the team is and what are they actually doing / planning.

One of the most important things to check as you research the team is how they spend the funds they make, how many tokens they have, are they selling their tokens or is it locked or to be used for a certain purpose. All these are important key factors that will help a lot with the decision making. 

You can tell a lot about a team by listening to their AMAs, it will be then obvious if this team knows what they are doing or just trying their luck in the crypto space.

3- Website & Socials

Website & socials are the face of the project, so you need to carefully inspect these, are they well made, time and effort was put into the website or is it like a 5$ web page that was done on fiver. You need to see good art, good branding, well written content, and a clear roadmap / white paper.

4- Marketing

Marketing one of the elements of success for any project. It is important to see that marketing strategies are clear, continuous, and effective. This also includes word of mouth as in community twitter raids. Are big influencers involved or big partnerships are planned? Are the little things like CMC, CG, Dex score .. etc are looked after or not? 

5- Narrative

It is important to consider why people might FOMO into this project. Is the meme trending / popular? do people love it? or does the project offer a solution that will solve an existing problem? Is it a new Elon Musk's cat / dog? Is the utility so innovative that many people will obviously use it?

All these questions are very important, and it is also important to get some feedback about these questions from different people because may be they see something you dont.

6- Technicals & Tokenomics

This is put last but it may be the first thing to check for because its easy to check and will help you avoid scams / rugs. It is crucial to know how much supply there is and how this supply is handled. Did the team burn some of the supply? Is liquidity locked / burnt? is contract renounced? and how is the holders distribution? you do not want to see unlocked liquidity without a good reason, you also do not want to see one holder holding more than 2% of supply without a good reason. Is the contract audited? it is always good to see that the contract was audited by a trusted firm. Is there any locked supply / team tokens? when will it be unlocked and if its not locked how is it being used? You do not want to be caught in a situation where team continuously dumping their tokens and nuking the chart. What is the liquidity to MC ratio? the bigger liquidity the better of course. How is the volume? if marketing is effective you should see some decent volume on daily basis.

What to do once your criteria is met?

Well lets say you did your research, and made up your mind that you are ready to invest in a low cap project, bare in mind that entry is everything now. The better the entry, the bigger the gains! Some might wait for a nice 40/50% dip then make their buy and just wait for price action to unfold, while others choose to follow a DCA strategy cause that dip may never come or may come at a higher floor where entry does not make much sense, with this strategy they buy the current price but keep some reserve to buy again if a dip happens. I personally follow both strategies, it depends on how hyped the project is and how volume is doing. It is also crucial to understand that these low caps are high risk. I have seen people putting their life savings into low cap projects and going all in, this is the last thing you want to do, please understand that in a low cap the main concept is making big profits on a very small investment, so you need to invest an amount that you are comfortable losing, an amount that wont keep you starring at the charts and getting emotional cause the ride with these coins is never easy and you could easily get triggered and take unnecessary losses if you are over invested.

I hope i covered everything! if you have any feedback or want to add some of the factors you check for before aping into a low cap please use the comments section.