AVAX's tough year - What needs to change for Avalanche?

AVAX has underperformed most of its competitors in terms of YTD return on interest
Sentiment and social volume around Avalanche fell as prices surged

Avalanche [AVAX] has had an extremely difficult time since the beginning of the year, compared to other altcoins in the market. In fact, according to recent data, AVAX has fallen by 21.52% YTD, causing massive losses to its holders.

Source: WuBlockchain

How is AVAX doing?

At press time, AVAX was trading at $33.99. Since the beginning of April, however, the price of AVAX has consistently declined. On the charts, it hit multiple lower lows and lower highs during this period – A sign that AVAX has been tracing a bearish trend. Additionally, the RSI (Relative Strength Index) for AVAX fell too.

What this means is that bullish momentum around Avalanche fell significantly over the last few days. Additionally, the CMF (Chaikin Money Flow) followed the RSI south – A sign that more money is flowing out of AVAX’s market than the volumes coming in.

Simply put, it would take a huge amount of bullish interest for AVAX to see hike once again. To break its prevailing bearish trend, it would need to push past the $50.78-price level on the charts.

Source: Trading View

AVAX’s performance on social media platforms will also play a great role in dictating its price movement. Over the last few days, the social volume around AVAX has remained consistent. However, weighted sentiment around AVAX also fell materially during this period. This means that negative comments around AVAX outnumbered the positive ones, at the time of writing.

If AVAX doesn’t regain the favor of users on social media, the price of AVAX could fall even further in the future.

Source: Santiment

State of the network

Additionally, the popularity of the Avalanche protocol has also started to decline, as indicated by its usage. AMBCrypto’s analysis of active addresses on the Avalanche network indicated that the number of daily users of the platform fell significantly. Coupled with that, transaction activity on the network also declined.

Additionally, a decline in interest was seen in terms of the DeFi sector as well. TVL and DEX volumes, for instance, took a hit – A sign that users have been losing interest in Avalanche on multiple fronts.

Realistic or not, here’s AVAX market cap in BTC’s terms

For a trend reversal, the popularity around both AVAX and the protocol would need to improve.