Project research skills bring the best competitive advantage to each individual in the Crypto space. But I personally feel that most of us are not really interested in developing research skills or rather do not know "what" to prepare to practice research.
I also realize that my research skills are still very limited, which is understandable because the Crypto market is so large, each different niche or project has a different way of operating. Most importantly, the market changes every day and every hour, so simply updating knowledge in a timely manner is already too much. But when you start researching, it will take a lot of your time, not to mention other disturbing factors that will make us hesitate to research.
This is also the reason why most people follow KOls and Influencers because they regularly update the market and update information very quickly so that we can "make a profit". This can be a good strategy if you have a certain understanding of the market to filter and refer to information as well as avoid "bad KOLs" to avoid losing money and losing trust.
So today, I boldly share my research training strategy to help newbies have a set of reference materials to practice with. Hopefully, by learning based on this knowledge, it can help many of you reduce confusion, shorten training time and quickly achieve results to apply to make yourself more confident when ""making" bets.
** These are just the knowledge and experiences that I have collected and practiced in a short period of time participating in the market. There may be old or inaccurate knowledge and it may be effective for you personally but not necessarily applicable to everyone. So I hope that those who are experts will only add and not criticize, I am very open to learn from everyone.
Note that this is not a tutorial on researching a project but a comprehensive article to help you prepare the necessary knowledge to practice research skills. There is no specific research framework for all projects. So to maximize effectiveness, please take the time to read articles about each term, you can go to Google or YouTube.
1 PREPARE
As mentioned, the crypto space is very large and it is difficult for one person to cover every niche and every change every day. Therefore, before starting research, you should determine for yourself that:
a) Find projects and identify research projects: Search according to trends, according to information, according to new market narratives,...
b) Which field is the project about to research: DeFi, GameFi, Bridge, Layer0, Layer1, Layer2, Lending & Borrowing, NFTs...
c) What is the development stage of the project?
No product
Already have a product but no token yet
There is a product and tokens have been issued
Then, depending on each stage and area in which the project develops, apply the following research skills and go deeper into analysis.
RESEARCH SKILLS TRAINING DISTRIBUTION FRAMEWORK
We will break down the research training process into 4 different parts:
Understand market structure
Research Crypto skills
Profit evaluation skills
Understand the factors that affect Crypto (Macro/Microeconomics; Financial History; News; War;...)
A) UNDERSTANDING MARKET STRUCTURE
Here, understanding the market structure means understanding the technical layers of crypto, how this market is created and how it operates. Going deeper, you need to prepare the knowledge I will mention below depending on the level from basic to advanced.
We must first learn to understand what we are investing in. Once you understand it, you can see where its value lies, and then, depending on your experience, you can grasp and evaluate the opportunities for yourself. Depending on each level, you need to prepare the following knowledge:
A.1: For newbies
• Terminology in Crypto
• Basic applications of Crypto
• How Bitcoin works
• Distinguish between hot wallets and cold wallets
• How Ethereum was born and operates
• Distinguish: PoS and PoW
• Notes on security in crypto
• Distinguish between CEX and DEX
• Practical use: Hot wallet (Non-custodial wallet like Metamask); CEX exchange (Like Binance; OKX); DEX (Such as Slingshot, Matcha, Uniswap)
A.2: Intermediate knowledge
• Learn about Yield Farming
• Basic tokenomics
• Layer 0 / Layer 1 / Layer 2
• Deep understanding of popular Layer1: Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, Atom...
• What is Impermanence Loss?
• What is EVM?
• What is Slippage?
• What is staking?
• Infrastructure: Bridge; Oracle; DeFi; GameFi…
• What is NFT?
A.3: Advanced knowledge
• What is MEV (Maximum Extracted Value) and how does MEV work?
• Advanced Tokenomics
• What is DAO? DAO structure and applications?
• Different programming languages: Solidity, Rust, Move,…
• Understand the operating structure of a market maker (MM - Market Maker)
• What is Ethereum Merge?
• Web3 vs Web2
• Updated daily according to market changes
Please read this knowledge first to understand the market structure. Along with the process of reading knowledge, you should practice using products in the market to understand deeply and understand the true nature.
The best practical way to learn is to participate in retroactive activities, bounty, feedback... because they bring both experience opportunities and the opportunity to make money for you.
Of course, this is the first preparation step for newbies, if you have already grasped it, please skip this part.
B) RESEARCH CRYPTO SKILLS
Specific research skills apply specifically to the crypto market that you need to practice after being equipped with knowledge of market structure. Basically, we divide research skills in crypto into 3 main categories:
FA (Fundamental Analysis) - Fundamental Analysis: Analysis based on the fundamentals of a project such as use cases, adoption & growth process, revenue, tokenomics, supply and demand, development team developers, partners, communities, investors, etc.
TA (Technical Analysis) - Technical Analysis: Analysis based on looking at chart patterns, technical indicators, support and resistance levels, moving averages, RSI, etc. This is not an easy skill to learn. I recommend that beginners only learn to understand the nature and meaning of the indicators to support basic analysis.
On-chain Analysis - On-chain analysis: Data in the crypto market is stored on-chain and completely public for everyone. Knowing how to analyze on-chain can give you a huge advantage over the rest. For example, checking capitalization, checking whale wallets, monitoring market makers, monitoring liquidity, abnormal trading volume of a token, looking carefully to know who is buying, at what stage (seed, private,...), how much to buy, signs of discharge or collection, etc. From there, deduce the meaning of each on-chain behavior that affects the price increase potential of a token.
However, to expand further, you need to have the following factors to upgrade your research skills:
Experience and real combat experience: The more you experience, the more experience you have? At a certain level, you will be able to "feel" the market. This is really difficult to describe because by nature most of us cannot reach that level.
Be sensitive to stories that lead the market: Narrative - stories that create trends > GameFi, DeFi, Web3,... are examples of narratives. If we want to be sharp, it also depends on whether our experience with the market is long enough and mature enough or not. Depending on the niche you operate in, very few people are good at this skill.
Know how to use supporting tools: Using the right supporting tools helps save time, increase market coverage and greatly increase your research efficiency. There are many useful free and paid tools, maybe one day I will sit down and summarize the tools I use most often (the important thing is that they are free) for your reference (if you want to use them). you need).
Having connections with many people in the industry: You can call it a skill or an advantage, this part goes without saying, "most relevant". Expand your connections with other people in the field, even better if you go to work for a crypto company. As I mentioned many times above, crypto is very large, I cannot afford it alone. So if you have connections, you will have more "bets". In the company, you will have relationships with many project parties. By learning from the project, you will have a deep understanding of how to develop and operate a product. If you know the founder or market maker, you will have an easier time understanding the "confidential" information.
C) PROFIT EVALUATION SKILLS
Not every good project will bring you profit. You must know the project's valuation to determine the project's profitability.
Basically, we will need to practice the following skills to upgrade our ability to evaluate and profit from a project or token:
Know how to read tokenomics parameters: Market Cap; Fully Dilluted Value (FDV); Circulating Supply; Total Supply; Vesting;... For this part, please read the instructions online, it's not that I'm lazy to write but this article is too long, plus there are many detailed articles online.
Compare with leading projects in the same segment to determine pricing standards. From there, determine the profit taking point.
Learn about trading psychology & emotional management (this is just dangerous): Eliminate fomo in your thinking to have a less "maxi" view of the project, then when pricing nor "illusioned".
Build a reasonable investment portfolio for easy tracking: Creating lists to track potential projects will help you save time when looking back later. The list can be divided by segment, by project stage or by market cap, etc. For new projects that do not yet have tokens, observe the development team, community, etc. If you already have tokens, observe performance and MM methods. price driver,…
Risk management strategy: Prepare risk scenarios for each project segment, it helps you have a more comprehensive view of an investment portfolio. In general, always identify risks & rewards from there to have a reasonable investment allocation to help manage risks more effectively.
D) UNDERSTAND THE FACTORS AFFECTING CRYPTO
This is clear, the more deeply and broadly we understand many different fields, the more perspectives we will have and the more objective our judgments will be. But how can we know everything, right? So we will select factors that are relevant and have an impact on the crypto market:
Can learn more about economics (macro/micro)
History and financial operations
Marketing/Branding/Business Model
Political news, finance, economic indicators,...
Learn how FUD works: FUD is not necessarily bad news, but it is an effective price-making tool for market makers. Sometimes FUD is real to collapse, sometimes FUD is fake to get rid of goods -> collect cheap prices,...
The requirements in this section are not too extreme, you just need to choose a few factors of interest to monitor and read more often. There are many of you who already have a certain understanding of many different professions and can find ways to apply and compare them immediately in the market.
I'll stop here for this article. Thank you for reading. I hope you can add more if there are any shortcomings. If you have free time, please invite the experts to comment for further instructions
