I continue to believe that serious crypto investors ought to cryptos with utility first. Those that do so are best positioned to benefit from the huge upside in crypto in the long run.

A quick note: Yes, memecoins can and do provide huge upside over the short-term. However, each is destined to fail in the long run unless they find utility at some point.

Anyway, you get the point — you have to provide some real world use in order to remain viable for the long term. Fortunately, that’s exactly what the cryptocurrency projects discussed below have in common. Thus, investors should expect that they can each provide massive upside over the long run. Let’s take a look at those three cryptos and the utility they provide which bestows them with huge upside potential.

Solana (SOL-USD)

Solana (SOL-USD) has been referred to as the Ethereum (ETH-USD) killer again and again. It’s a flattering comparison to make given Ethereum’s utility. 

Ethereum is one of the fundamental networks in the cryptocurrency space. The peer-to-peer network dominates the smart contracts that govern the secure application of transactions. And that’s where Solana comes in: Its utility is very similar, yet it does so more cheaply and at greater speeds.

Investors have recognized that fundamental truth for the past few years. That’s the reason Solana continues to perform as well as it does. The fact that Solana secures transactions much faster than Ethereum with lower fees is a clear example of utility. It’s also the primary reason investors continue to believe that Solana may one day usurp Ethereum’s position.

It’s very difficult to assume Solana’s exact upside. However, Ethereum currently trades for $3,580 while Solana trades for $173. It is therefore reasonable to assume Solana has 10x potential and more if it is to replace Ethereum in the future.

Filecoin (FIL-USD)

Filecoin (FIL-USD) combines cloud storage demand and cryptocurrency providing unique utility to investors. 

The way that Filecoin works is fundamentally easy to understand. There are essentially three parties to note; clients, storage miners and retrieval miners. Clients pay to store or retrieve data. That means individuals and enterprises with excess file space to lend on their devices can get paid in FIL. 

I think it’s a particularly innovative and relevant cryptocurrency application for today. A rental economy has emerged whereby people can monetize unused assets. Why should that not apply to the blockchain? The answer is that there is no reason and file coin is a prime example of the value of that utility.

I’d argue that projects like Filecoin have massive upside because they offer an easy way to monetize crypto for everyday people. You, me and anyone else can take advantage of excess storage on our devices and receive FIL in return. 

Render (RNDR-USD)

Render (RNDR-USD) is a crypto with real utility and huge upside that bears many similarities to Filecoin. 

Both projects leverage valuable resources that most everyone has access to. In the case of a Filecoin, it is memory and in the case of render it is a GPU. It’s the same story here as immediately above: if you have excess GPU in your devices you can monetize it through Render.

GPU is relevant for many reasons. The acronym is probably familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) for example. It is the GPU chips from those companies that are in such high demand for artificial intelligence applications today.

Previously, GPU was more associated with gaming applications as it increases graphical processing ability. Today, it is still used for that application but is also becoming interesting in relation to generative AI graphical content creation. In turn, Render has become highly interesting to investors for its utility along with its rapidly increasing price.

On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.