A closer look at crypto research.

Good morning/evening.
 
Today I would like to run through token research and some of the tools I use. I am sure there are more that I am not using so please feel free to add yours in the comments. This is what I did when looking at ALTs and microcaps. Some were established and some were new tokens that were soon to be listed.
 
Now as I am 'old school' or some would say, 'just old' all these notes were scrawled in many notebooks (It is still on my to do list to type it all up!) There is a lot of information so I now have a spreadsheet where it is all organised with bookmarked links to the sites I use to gather the information. It also means I can update the sheet for each token as necessary.
 
 
What is the project? An overview.
I try to look at the project and its use case with a brief overview of the project.
 
Who are the team? Are they doxed or experienced?
A look at the team, what projects have they already been in? Are they experienced? I do hate projects where the team are just avatar pictures.
 
Community and marketing.
Here I look at X/Twitter, telegram and discord to see how the community is. I look to see if the interactions are just bot comments. I often also send an email asking a question or 2 to see if I get a response. 
 
What is the use case, will people use it now or in the future?
To me this is a difficult one, as what I think would be great with a great use case is not always the case. I am currently in a project with what to me is a great use case but only if they can actually sell the data we are gathering. No customers = no revenue and 2 years on and still no mainet, so not always easy to know.
 
Tokenomics.
Well there is a lot to look at here, If i am looking at microcaps then I guess under 50 million market cap but that would also depend on the other factors too. I try to see if most of the tokens are held by a few people (whales) also if an exchange holds a large percentage. If it is not a new token, how many are in circulation? Liquidity, will there be enough if I choose to sell. Token unlocks is another thing I look at to try and see when and how many tokens are to be unlocked and how often.
 
Backers of the project.
Who are the backers? How good are they? Having good backers can help a project get off the ground.
 
Where to buy? 
Where will I be able to buy the token? I do tend to avoid it if it is on Ethereum unless it is listed with a CEX. I don't mind a DEX but as I am not investing a fortune on ALTS and Microcaps I would prefer to avoid Ethereum gas fee's.
 
Are people buying or selling?
I like to keep a check on who is buying or selling and I will check some tokens I hold regularly, are the holders growing? small holders as well as medium holders and whales. I often add this new data to the spreadsheet as and when.
 
 
How high is the perpetual trading?
I see this as a bad sign if the perpetual trading volumes are higher than the actual market cap.
 
Narrative.
Does the token fit with a narrative that I think will be big. Again this can be speculative and my opinion can be wrong! At the moment I think AI is going to be big so I have a few different AI tokens. RWA also could also be good so I have a token that covers that too. (possibly lol!) I have a few gaming tokens as well so fingers crossed.
 
If I told you how many hours I have spent researching tokens you probably would not believe me, but it has been a lot. This is my first year looking at microcaps and researching them, as I only held BTC and a few L1s before so for me this is an interesting 'experiment' to see if 
1 I researched correctly.
2 That research pays off.
 
I only used small amounts of my funds on the microcaps and ALTS so it would not be too bad if I have got it all wrong, but hopefully that is not the case. I am still BTC heavy on my portfolio but to me I do see BTC as the safe bet even if I wont get the multiple XXXX returns some of the coins could achieve. SOL is my next largest holding.
 
Also the reason I have spent so much time learning how to research a token is simple. I don't want to just 'ape' in on a project, I want to learn how to pick what I invest in and understand the project or token. Even in crypto as a whole there is always so much to learn. 
 
MEMES
Don't ask me, I hold really small amounts of a few meme coins and I see that as a total gamble. Can you research a meme? Other than rug checker and liquidity levels I have no idea how to pick a meme so I really don't bother much, but yes I hold a cat token, a dog token, and a bear I think! but I do understand that this is not a real investment and they could all go to zero.
 
Some of the sites I use.
https://alphagrowth.io/
https://www.arkhamintelligence.com/
https://cryptobubbles.net/
https://www.coinglass.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/
https://cryptorank.io/
https://defillama.com/
https://dexscreener.com/search
https://dexcheck.ai/app
https://dune.com/browse/dashboards
https://www.rootdata.com/
https://sonar.watch/
https://token.unlocks.app/
 
As always, thank you for reading and feel free to comment. What tools do you use for token research? Am I missing something? It is a learning curve after all.