Here is a short list of 5 altcoins who will probably have a good year 2021, I know there are a lot of other interesting projects because cryptocurrency is a world full of opportunities, but I made this list according to my knowledge & personal opinion so if you wish to talk about a specific project go ahead in the comment space. Let's dive into it !

1. Chainlink (LINK) :

2020 was already an incredible year for Chainlink, in terms of price, popularity, etc... and 2021 could become a landmark year for this project. Basically Chainlink is a blockchain-base middleware, acting as a "bridge" between cryptocurrency smart contracts and off-chain resources like data feeds, various web APIs, and traditional bank account payments. This way, Chainlink allows Smart Contracts to communicate with external resources on their own. Their token LINK is an ERC20 token based on the Ethereum Blockchain. It is used to pay Chainlink Node operators for the retrieval of data from off-chain data feeds, formatting of data into blockchain readable formats, off-chain computation, and uptime guarantees they provide as operators.

As a result Chainlink appears as an essential project for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and this translates into impressive numbers, indeed during this year Chainlink entered the Top 50 and then the Top 10 to currently sit at the 8th place, a crazy ride. The price of LINK also increased in a dazzling way, from 2$ in early January to 19.2$ in mid-August to stagnate around 12$ today (for the long term an investment around 8$ could be interesting).

I can't make any predictions in terms of price for LINK but I think we can be optimistic about it, especially because LINK will benefit from Bitcoin's bullrun in 2021 and its accumulation period which has been going on for several weeks now. Overall the project is solid, promising & indispensable, Chainlink has already demonstrated nice things but I think it's only the beginning and we can expect a lot more in 2021.

2. Aave (AAVE) :

A project who already evolved a lot during this year, anciently named LEND before the v.2 was released this year, a project who succeeded in asserting itself as a major actor of Decentralized Finance. Aave is a decentralized non-custodial money market protocol where users can participate as depositors or borrowers. Depositors provide liquidity to the market to earn a passive income, while borrowers are able to borrow in an overcollateralized (perpetually) or undercollateralized (one-block liquidity) fashion. The main objective of Aave as a protocol is to bring DeFi to the masses.

Aave worked his way to the Top 50 during late 2020, a recent project listed back in October but already promising despite a small market cap for now, the team around the project is of course a solid one who managed to make this project as safe as possible (very low risk of hack). The price of AAVE went from 51$ down to 27$ to reach its ATH around 100$, it currently oscillates around 80$ (around 70$ is good price for the long term).

No predictions for its price in 2021 however its ATH will certainly be overcome. Overall the project is young, took a new start and I think we should give it more time but so far in a short period of time Aave showed interesting things, I highly recommend you to keep an eye on it.

3. Elrond (EGLD) :

2021 is really bright concerning Elrond, indeed scalability is probably the major stake for cryptocurrency during the upcoming year and Elrond appears as a solution for this scalability issue. Basically Elrond is introducing a genuine State Sharding scheme for practical scalability, eliminating energy and computational waste while ensuring distributed fairness through a Secure Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. Having a strong focus on security, Elrond’s network is built to ensure resistance to known security problems. In an ecosystem that strives for interconnectivity, Elrond’s solution for smart contracts offers an EVM compliant engine to ensure interoperability by design.

Like Aave, Elrond changed its token in October 2020 to EGLD, as a result the token price went from 7$ up to 28$ and is now staying around 24$. It has a small market cap but has a lot of room to grow to something, like for Aave the year 2021 must be a pivotal year and the project must overcome the expectations.

Like every promising altcoin Elrond has a dedicated and strong team around it, as a result of everything I said previously we can expect Elrond to break its ATH by far and possibly reach crazy numbers in conjunction with Bitcoin's progression. 

4. Polkadot (DOT) :

With a similar aspect with Elrond, Polkadot aims to solve this scalability problem and so 2021 could be an interesting year for this young but resourceful project. Polkadot's objective is to deliver a robust platform for security, scalability, and innovation. Currently, Polkadot is in the NPoS phase of launch. Polkadot enables cross-blockchain transfers of any type of data or asset, not just tokens. Connecting to Polkadot gives users the ability to interoperate with a wide variety of blockchains in the Polkadot network. 

Listed back in September 2020 the historic of Polkadot is poor, currently sitting at its ATH 6.5$ the token price has a lot of room to grow in 2021, once again in conjunction with the bullrun. Polkadot's future ascension could easily be similar to the one Chainlink had in 2020 and could hit interesting targets indicated by Fibonacci bands (13.5$, 17.5$ or even 20$).

5. SwissBorg (CHSB) : 

Once again an interesting and young project, in 2020 SwissBorg added the Yield farming and other features especially concerning their token CHSB. If you want to know more about this excellent wallet I recommend you to check this article, moreover their token increased a lot in value during the end of the year. Basically because the developer's team is listening to what the community is asking and suggesting, the only criticism we can make is that SwissBorg is a Smart wallet and doesn't allow trading. The CHSB also has a token burn protect mechanism which is very efficient in order to sustain the price.

As a result the price went from 0.05$ up to 0.29$ and is now around 0.26$, the token like the Application has a lot of potential and 2021 appears to be a perfect opportunity for the project in order to develop even more and to be more democratized. There are good entry points at 0.24$ or even 0.17$, and concerning its possible value in 2021 it's difficult to tell it depends of a lot of factors especially the number of people who will join the SwissBorg community because it's a utility token.

I actually recommend you to get on board of the project through this link to download the wallet, actually there is still a limited welcome reward (stops January 1st) if you sign up through the link and deposit at least 50€ (fiat or crypto) you will receive a reward ticket up to 200€ in BTC. This smart wallet and the project is really worth it, go take a look by yourself you won't regret it.

Like I previously stated there are a lot of projects who also probably deserved to be talked about for this 2021 year so feel free to do it in the comments.