Get the weekly summary of crypto market analysis, news, and forecasts! This Week’s Summary The crypto market ends the week at a total market capitalization of $2,17 trillion. Bitcoin continues to trade at around $62,300. Ethereum experiences no changes and stagnates at around $2,400. XRP is down by 2%, Solana by 1%, and Dogecoin by 3%. Almost all altcoins are trading in the red, with very few exceptions. The DeFi sector decreased the total value of protocols (TVL) to around…
Battle of the Altcoins: Crypto Projects That May Overtake Ethereum
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Cryptocurrencies have grown both in adoption and popularity over the past two years. Even companies are on board, with experts saying that it is the first step toward cryptos going mainstream. Bitcoin is in the lead with the highest market capitalization. Coming in second is Ethereum, leading the battle of the altcoins.
Ethereum gained and is still gaining popularity because it was the first crypto after Bitcoin to bring more usability. Its usability extends from just a means of payment to smart contracts. Due to this, it has managed to maintain its position just below Bitcoin since its launch. In the article, we shall look into what Ethereum is all about and why some projects could overtake crypto;
A Look At Ethereum
Ethereum, as mentioned, is the second-largest crypto by market capitalization totaling over $240 billion. In just the past 12 months, it has generated a 650% return. However, Ethereum has a long rough road ahead to achieve a ‘decentralized computer.’
Ethereum has its issues. Other projects have criticized its high energy requirements, scalability, high transaction costs, and relatively slow transaction speed. In addition, the growing popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) brings massive competition to Ethereum. Offering better utility and reduced comebacks, Ethereum might be thrown out of the market.
On the other hand, several analysts believe that crypto has the most attractive bull case in the crypto space. The reason is that many catalysts for growth are outlined for the future. Its biggest so far is the transfer of proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, the Ethereum 2.0 project. With that in mind, let us look into the altcoins and possible competitors of Ethereum today.
Can Cardano Outperform Ethereum?
Cardano is one of the most popular altcoins in the crypto space. Over the last 12 months, it has grown 840%. It was developed in 2017 by Charles Hoskinson. It aimed at being more energy-efficient than Ethereum, hence a suitable alternative.
Cardano is at the top of the list for several reasons. First, it operates on a proof-of-stake system. With a PoS system, users carry out transaction validations with an equity stake on the platform. Hence, compared to Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work, which requires a lot of electricity and energy saving. In addition, it can handle up to 257 transactions in a second, with a million target in the future.
Recently, Cardano received the much-awaited Alonzo hard fork upgrade. The upgrade is bringing smart contracts to the network. Users can now create and deploy smart contracts to create dApps, blockchain games, and even NFTs. With more expected to come on the network, it will gain massively by the end of 2021.
Cardano’s program is in Haskell. The language is best suited for data analysis and business setups. Consequently, it gears future applications to financial or organizational. Through usability and privacy protection measures, Cardano becomes a groundbreaking solution.
The project is still in its infancy, and much more growth is coming. However, achieving this has been slow because of the complex scientific methodology used to eliminate faults.
How About Solana?
This month, the Solana network’s cryptocurrency took seventh place in the top ten cryptos. SOL has grown 12 times its initial price in a year, and its market value is more than $48 billion. At the moment, it is one of the fastest-growing altcoins.
Its enthusiasts have termed Solana as an Ethereum competitor, and it just might be. It has a growing ecosystem whereby projects are built. Solana also accommodates an incredible 65,000 transactions a second. No one, including Visa, has come near this.
Currently, a transaction on the network costs between $0.00025 and $0.0001. Compare this with a 3 percent transaction cost of Visa, Bitcoin, or Ethereum for $10-$65. Charges for Ethereum should be so low that the problems about scalability are solved but are relatively high now.
Many investors believe Solana is a significant candidate to dominate this space due to its design and name. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is one of the names himself. The SBF approval stamp is a significant thing in the crypto industry, and it is hailed by many as the world’s leading crypto investor.
Polkadot is the Real deal among Altcoins
Nicknamed the “platform of platforms,” and by others, developers designed the “Ethereum killer,” Polkadot to be just that. Both Polkadot and Ethereum attempt to allow the development of decentralization applications in their respective ecosystems.
Ethereum uses its ‘smart contracts’ to achieve this functionality. As a result, developers can construct and test their ecosystem applications. On the other hand, Polkadot allows this by creating applications that connect via a relay chain with other ledgers. It is this functionality that makes Polkadot more attractive.
We can add improved scalability to this as well. The white paper of Polkadot mentions scalability as a shortcoming in the technological stacks currently available. A problem to be deployed on Polkadot — scaled-out — can be substantially simulated over many parachain systems. The system scales as a distinct section of the Polkadot network and may perform all components of each parachain simultaneously.
In other words, the parachains of Polkadot run and produce parallel blocks (hence the name). This feature enables a fast and smooth running of the network.
Although Polkadot is more recent, prominent developers like Advance and Airgap have hopped on.
Last But Not Least, Binance Smart Chain
The Binance Smart Chain (BSC) is an additional smart contract sector project. It is a blockchain built by the prominent digital asset exchange, Binance in 2019.
The BSC Network facilitates the development of high-performance dApps and other smart contract-based applications. It is compatible with the native Binance Chain. BSC combines the Binance Chain’s high transaction performance with Binance Smart Chain’s smart contract features.
BSC seeks to assist traders and investors in managing their digital assets with low latency and cheaper costs. At the same time, it gives a rich toolset for dApp development, resolving 2 of Ethereum’s significant critiques.
Binance provides faster and cheaper transactions for Binance Smart Chain versus Ethereum. The network has an average 3.0-second block time and a 39.2 TPS performance. Due to this, it is three times faster than Ethereum. All these built-in features make it a viable Ethereum competitor that could even overtake it.
Conclusion – Battle of the Altcoins
Ethereum has become the basis of decentralized finance, despite its critique. Not surprisingly, the network has created about 79.23% of all dApps.
Its shortcomings have been noticed. Therefore, various initiatives have subsequently created blockchains and put them up as “Ethereum killers.” Their developers designed them to increase DeFi and smart contracts’ market share. At the same time, they tackle Ethereum issues such as scalability and transaction costs.
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In the future, they may end up not as its killers but as coexisting blockchains. The DeFi industry is growing at a high rate yearly (88x). Hence, there is room for all projects to contribute to the future of Web3 together. The future of DeFi is also likely to develop on multiple high-performing networks rather than one single entity, a measure of true decentralization.
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