How do you view these two projects as potential investments? I mean buying them off of an exchange and holding them long term

Hey everyone, haven't posted here in a long long time. As I've been looking at the rising crypto markets lately, I started looking for some new promising projects to invest in. And since I am doing my own research now, I've also decided to ask around for opinions here as bitcointalk usually has a great amount of super knowledgeable users.

My whole investing strategy for the previous bull cycles was always pretty dumb simple and straightforward - I buy an alt on an exhcange, hold it for a year or two and sell at OR near the top. I got really lucky in 2017 with buying Verge (XVG) and in 2019 with buying Telcoin (TEL), sold it couple years later for huge gains. And that's pretty much all I did in crypto. Of course I had my fair share of poor decisions too, but they were always offset by big gains made from "lucky" crypto picks.

I've never involved myself in defi/staking/airdrops etc etc. but now as I look at how crypto has evolved, I am trying to broaden my horizons and not just buy and hold a shitcoin hoping it will 100x.

So anyway, at the end of 2023 I've come across a great project called Celestia (TIA). I've been watching its price action for months, researching it and came to the conclusion that it ticks almost all the boxes I'm looking for:

1. It got listed like 4 months ago and already 10x-ed in price
2. As far as I've understood, you can stake it to be eligible for Celestia native airdrops as well as airdrops in upcoming projects like Eigenlayer, Stride, Pryzm, LightLink, Plume etc etc etc, essentially making TIA a golden goose for airdrop staking/farming.

Now, I don't think I'm gonna buy TIA now as it's value has gone through the roof with its current MC over 3B. My question, what new crypto projects would you recommend to buy in the coming months to get something similar to TIA? So basically, a) fresh/new technology, great fundamentals b) market cap not too big (FDV is another story) c) can be used to potentially qualify you for new airdrops, etc?

At this point, I am looking at projects like Starknet, Polyhedra, Blast, Taiko, Eigenlayer, Wormhole, Mode, Drift Protocol, zkSync. Your thoughts? Sorry for the wall of text lol..