The peloton is starting to break apart.
After several weeks of uncertain market conditions, the gaps are now becoming visible. Some assets are still holding pace. Others are slowly drifting out of the race.
And week after week, one simple reality keeps returning:
in a fragile market, staking helps absorb the shocks… but it does not change the underlying direction.
CAT 1 — AKT keeps dominating the race
This week mostly confirms AKT’s dominance.
With +84.8% without staking and nearly +92% with staking since the beginning of the race, AKT remains far ahead of the rest of the group.
While many assets are simply trying to survive the market, AKT continues to attract capital and maintains a momentum clearly above Bitcoin.
TAO also remains strong.
The project still holds a comfortable lead over BTC, even if the pace has slowed slightly after the strong acceleration seen in March and April.
Bitcoin continues to play its usual role:
stable, consistent, difficult to drop.
And that is probably the key takeaway from this checkpoint:
many assets are no longer just underperforming the market…
they are now underperforming Bitcoin itself.
ETH, AVAX, OSMO and ALGO remain under pressure.
ATOM limits the damage better thanks to staking, but still struggles to recover a real trend.
Staking helps… but it does not save everything
The gap between the “with staking” and “without staking” curves is becoming increasingly visible.
On some positions, staking genuinely helps soften part of the losses:
- CTK: -30.1% → -21.6%
- BAND: -30.3% → -25.3%
- FLUX: -26.4% → -21.4%
- ATOM: -10.0% → -5.2%
But staking does not magically turn a weak asset into a winner.
LAVA remains the most brutal example this week:
despite the rewards, the position is still sitting around -85%.
Staking remains what it has always been:
an accumulation and smoothing tool.
Not a magical shield against a bear market.
CAT 2 — A market still heavily fragmented
The second category remains extremely divided.
NLS continues to be the only truly positive asset in the group with +7.9% without staking and +9.4% with staking.
GNO remains almost neutral and shows a certain resilience in a difficult environment.
Behind them, the rest of the group continues to struggle heavily:
- FLUX still fails to recover momentum despite staking yield.
- BAND and CTK recover slightly thanks to rewards.
- LAVA continues its collapse and remains far behind the peloton.
In the end, the same pattern seen in CAT 1 appears here as well:
the assets capable of attracting real network activity or maintaining a strong narrative are resisting.
The others are slowly eroding week after week.
What this race is really showing
This checkpoint becomes interesting because it goes beyond raw performance.
We are now starting to see three categories emerge:
- assets still capable of attracting attention and capital,
- those surviving mainly thanks to yield,
- and those entering a slow erosion phase.
Staking remains useful.
It increases the bags.
It reduces some losses.
It potentially prepares for the next cycle.
But it never replaces fundamentals.
And in a market where capital becomes more selective every single week, that difference quickly becomes visible again.
Final Results — CAT 1
| Asset | Without Staking | With Staking |
|---|---|---|
| AKT | +84.8% | +92.0% |
| TAO | +26.6% | +28.6% |
| BTC | +14.2% | +14.6% |
| ATOM | -10.0% | -5.2% |
| ALGO | -12.6% | -10.9% |
| ETH | -20.4% | -19.5% |
| AVAX | -28.1% | -26.8% |
| OSMO | -40.6% | -39.6% |
Final Results — CAT 2
| Asset | Without Staking | With Staking |
|---|---|---|
| NLS | +7.9% | +9.4% |
| GNO | -0.9% | +0.8% |
| FLUX | -26.4% | -21.4% |
| CTK | -30.1% | -21.6% |
| BAND | -30.3% | -25.3% |
| LAVA | -85.1% | -84.9% |
Methodology
- Starting point: $1000 invested per asset on January 03, 2026.
- “With staking” performances include simulated average APR rewards over the period.
- BTC remains the main benchmark for measuring relative alpha.
- Historical AKT prices until April 25 were normalized from EUR → USD using an indicative 1.08 exchange rate.
