$AAVE has spent four years in the adoption cycle, yet the price has not reached the ATH it achieved during the speculative cycle, which lasted a year. During that period, the scope for speculation on projects like $AAVE was high, as they launched at much lower market caps, and the retail upside potential was significantly higher compared to today, where top projects are launching at billion-dollar valuations. Most of these newly hyped VC-stage projects have already undergone their speculative phase before the TGE, and their launch price is often similar to the ATH price of projects from the last cycle, which spent their entire speculative phase in public markets. That being said, many of the newly launched VC projects of the current cycle might already be in the four-year adoption stage by the time their TGE occurs. This also means that these coins could take up to four years just to reach their TGE listing price. There could be some outliers, like SUI, which even reached an ATH above its listing price. Such outliers might be able to sustain a speculative premium during the adoption phase as long as they maintain positive public sentiment. However, this is only possible if they have enough speculative momentum to keep the community bullish even during downtrends.