While the larger Bitcoin market appears to be on a recovery path above the $ 48.5,000 mark, several altcoins and their double-digit gains over the past week are still holding traders in check. One of the altcoins that has seen massive price spikes and gained social attention is Aragon’s ANT token.

Aragon, an Ethereum network-based protocol that powers DAOs, is developing governance structures to incentivize community participation where trading volume has increased by more than 75% and market capitalization by more than 15% in the past 24 hours % has increased. With the price of ANT rising more than 88% in a week, the market appeared to be looking for further price gains for ANT, but before that it is important to see what triggered the rally and whether the price gains will continue.

What led to the increase?

The ANT token has gained around 75% in the last four days after its price spike on December 12th. The rise in price has also resulted in high trading volumes for the asset on the spot market due to the coin on consecutive days. The trading volume increased six times compared to the volume at the beginning of December.

Source: TradingView

The price increase is in connection with the DAO’s global hackathon to attract developers to participate in the Aragon ecosystem. In fact, there have been rumors that the DAOpunks NFT project could airdrop ANT holders to further support the coin’s rally.

What’s next?

While things seem shaky on the price side, looking at Aragon’s on-chain activity is a confusing scenario. Active addresses for ANT did not see much growth, although rising from the December 11th lows, but more than 70% less than ATH as of late November. Active deposits have also risen sharply.

Source: Sanbase

In addition, the total number of addresses, which remains the same in the balance, is a sign of a lack of participation in the network. Actual 7-day change to new addresses according to data from In block is -60.00% and the number of active addresses has decreased by 18.75% year-on-year.

Source: IntoTheBlock

Institutional interest in the asset doesn’t look too positive either, and the low volume of transactions and the high volume of the network are signs that the big players have missed the scene.

Additionally, whales and HODLers dominate the ANT ownership statistics, and a lack of investors and retail buyers could be responsible for the volatile price developments from old later in the year.

However, the price structure has been quite volatile and the coin has seen some big ups and downs in the last month. Additionally, despite the recent surge of over 70%, the Alt is still nearly 50% below its all-time high. Overall, ANT remains a high risk, largely speculative asset with a fledgling ecosystem.

While the increasing adoption of the Aragon app could help increase the token price significantly in the long term, in the short term it is better to check out yourself before doing so.