Three serious competitors for Ethereum in 2021
Ethereum has become the block chain of choice for many developers of decentralised applications (dApp). Ethereum has by far the largest developer community, even surpassing that of Bitcoin. However, there are more and more serious projects that could put Ethereum in the shade. The three most promising Ethereum competitors under the microscope.
After several years of development, the first phase of Ethereum 2.0 has been launched. A major upgrade is planned for 2015 and the fact that it is far more difficult to change the engine in a moving vehicle than to build it from scratch speaks for itself. This is why many former ETH developers have taken the opportunity to develop Bitcoin Circuit their own block chain. Will Ethereum lose its first-mover advantage?
Cardano vs. Ethereum
Cardano (ADA) has been one of the most promising smart contract platforms in crypto space for some time now. The project was originally founded by the mathematician Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum. Charles Hoskinson left Ethereum in 2014 and subsequently created the profit-oriented IOHK Foundation.
The crypto currency ADA has been in the headlines more and more this year as Cardano introduced the Shelly-upgrade on his Mainnet. Shelly enables Cardano’s staking and, like Ethereum 2.0, is just one of many phases. Shelly is only the second phase of the ADA update and three more upgrades will follow. In the end, Cardano will be a scalable block chain on which smart contracts can also be programmed.
In addition, Cardano ultimately wants to operate an on-chain governance model in which every ADA holder should be able to participate. In the future, Cardano will probably be best suited for applications in the financial and organisational sector. This is because Cardano, unlike Ethereum, is programmed in Haskell. Haskell is a programming language that is particularly suitable for business applications and data analysis.
Tezos vs. Ethereum
Tezos was founded in 2018 and the foundation behind Tezos is located in Zug, the crypto-valley of Switzerland, as is Ethereum. Arthur and Kathleen Breitman developed Tezos. However, the early years of the Blockchain project were often marked by internal power struggles between the Breitmans and the Tezos Foundation.
Tezos works with a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which it calls „Liquid Proof-of-Stake“. However, researchers have found that although Tezos does not have the same degree of decentralisation as Ethereum, it is more decentralised than many other DPoS block chains.
This is mainly due to the fact that Tezos has not set a limit on the number of nodes. This means that Tezos can become more and more decentralised as its size increases. Tezos and Ethereum 2.0 could therefore compete with each other in terms of security and decentralisation in the future. The main difference between the two block chain projects is the on-chain governance model of Tezos.
When the Breitmans designed the Ethereum competitor, their vision was that the Tezos platform could upgrade itself independently. The aim is to create a competitive block chain that can effectively develop from within. Each Tezos holder can vote on what should happen next with the platform.
In contrast, Ethereum has always had off-chain governance. In all probability, this will not change so quickly in the future. Nevertheless, it is unclear which system will prove to be superior to the other.
Polkadot, the ETH killer?
Gavin Wood is the co-founder of Ethereum. After working as Chief Technology Officer of the Ethereum Foundation for several years, he felt that Ethereum’s design was ultimately limiting. For this reason, he designed the Polkadot white paper in 2016. He chose the name Polkadot because it is a pattern with no beginning and no end that picks up the understanding of decentralised applications.
According to the cryptoanalysis company Messari, Polkadot is a block chain project that clearly stands out from the competition:
It stands out absolutely, both from a design point of view and from the size of the community around Polkadot.
More than 250 projects, ranging from Stablecoins to social networks, will be built on the network launched in May, according to the Polkadot Project tracker. This is an incredible increase. While developer interest in Bitcoin and Ethereum has declined, the number of monthly active developers on Polkadot has increased by more than 40 percent since the project was launched in May.
Instead of running apps via Smart Contracts running on a block chain as Ethereum does, Polkadot allows each app developer to create his own block chain. These blockchains are interoperable, which means that they can communicate with other blockchains. This makes it possible for developers to design their blockchains individually. For example, it is possible to determine how high transaction fees are or how quickly certain transactions can be confirmed.