Fear and volatility remain the theme of the week as Bitcoin 

BTC

$18,832

 continues to face stiff resistance near the $42,000 price level and stock markets were also hard hit on Jan. 18. Investor fear over this year's proposed rate hikes continue to apply bearish pressure and at the closing bell, the DOW was down 530 points, or 1.4%.

Despite the downturn, altcoins managed to overcome the noise and several posted double-digit gains on Jan. 18.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24-hours were Elsastos (ELA), API3 (API3) and Prometheus (PROM).

Elastos launches a token buyback program

Elastos protocol, a Web3-focused project aiming to become the "blockchain-powered version of the internet," broke out with a notable 22% rally.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $2.80 on Jan. 8, the price of Elastos has blasted 120% higher to reach a daily high of $6.16 on Jan. 18 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 142% to $7.57 million.

The surge in price and trading volume for ELA came after the Elastos Foundation announced plans for an upcoming ELA buyback program. The platform’s first decentralized exchange, Glide Finance, also saw an uptick in the total value locked for its protocol.

API3 and “first-party” oracles

API3 is a protocol focused on enhancing the communication capabilities between smart contracts and application programming interfaces (APIs) as a way to facilitate the secure and reliable transfer of up-to-the-minute data.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for API3 on Jan. 18, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for API3 spiked to a high of 77 on Jan. 18 around one hour before its price began to surge 26% over the next two hours.

The surge in interest for API3 comes as the protocol's first-party oracles are gaining momentum within the crypto community.

Related: Analysts warn that Bitcoin could dip to $38K 'before an eventual breakout'

Prometheus prepares to launch

The Prometheus protocol offers users a decentralized framework for data monetization designed to facilitate the secure and private exchange of data.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that PROM spiked 30.84% to reach a daily high of $14.68 on Jan. 18 amidst a 300% surge in its 24-hour trading volume.

The price turnaround for Prometheus comes as the project prepares for its full mainnet launch. This will include the initial support for seven assets including Binance Coin (BCH), Wrapped BTC, PROM, Tether 

USDT

$1.00

, USD Coin 

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$1.00

 and Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.973 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 40%.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.