Ethereum 2.0 is now closer than ever before after a number of years of growth. Although the Medalla testnet had a rocky start, it seems that the development is still on track. Prysmatic Labs developer Raul Jordan said in a recent blog post that “2 to 3 months from the Medalla genesis block is still a perfect timeline.”
At this level, what are one other three months? An improvement to the platform has been considered since it was first launched in 2015. It’s taken a long time to get this far in implementing Ethereum 2.0, which shows that it’s much harder to change the engine in a moving car than it is to build one from scratch.
Many builders have taken advantage of the opportunity to construct their own engines since 2015, most frequently designed to beat the same issues that ETH 2.0 is seeking to resolve – and more, in some cases. While Ethereum 1.0 paved the way, Ethereum 2.0 will be released in a now thriving blockchain scene.
The competition is definitely getting tougher. EOS didn’t live up to the Ethereum-killer reputation it had before it launched in 2018. DOT is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, behind Ethereum. How will Ethereum 2.0 stack up against other platforms in solving some of blockchain’s most pressing issues, given that there may be much more competition?
Cardano vs. Ethereum 2.0
A lot of people have been waiting for Cardano to compete with Ethereum. Hoskinson, who was a co-founder of Ethereum, developed the platform. He left Ethereum in 2014 to start IOHK, the company that is now building Cardano.
Cardano’s latest implementation, Shelley, has been launching on its mainnet and receiving a lot of attention this year. The launch of staking has given the Cardano community an important boost, causing the ADA token to gain value. This shift is a mandatory move to continue expanding the functionality of the platform and reach the project’s goals. Although it will take some time, Cardano is working on a long-term implementation that is necessary to improve the platform and reach the project’s goals. Shelley is just the next phase with three additional rounds to go, the next one bringing in good deals, with scaling and governance to follow.
In contrast to Ethereum 2.0, which will eventually have an on-chain governance model, Cardano will have an on-chain governance model from the start. A consultant from Quantstamp, which conducts audits of codebases, told Cointelegraph that in his opinion Cardano will eventually become much more successful than Tezos, becoming second only to Ethereum in terms of smart-contract platforms.
Tezos vs. Ethereum 2.0
Tezos and Ethereum are both based in Switzerland’s Crypto Valley. Arthur and Kathleen Breitman developed Tezos, but the relationship between the Breitmans and the Tezos Basis has been full of fighting.
Tezos uses a delegated proof-of-stake consensus that it calls “liquid proof-of-stake.” However, researchers have found that Tezos is more decentralized than many other DPoS blockchains, although it does not achieve the same level of decentralization as Ethereum. It is most likely because Tezos does not have a limit on the number of nodes. Tezos and Ethereum 2.Zero can both provide high levels of security and speed, making them viable competitors. There is a primary distinction between the two, which is Tezos’ on-chain governance model.
The Breitmans’ original vision for the platform was for it to be self-sustaining. Anyone who meets the minimum staking requirements can vote on protocol upgrades, which are then immediately implemented after being voted on. The governance of Ethereum is an effort that is not related to the Ethereum chain and is not likely to change in the near future. So far, it’s true to say that neither model has proved itself inherently better than the other.
RSK vs. Ethereum 2.0
RSK was created in late 2017 and many people were excited about it because it promised to allow Bitcoin to be used for smart contracts. It had the potential to process a lot of transactions per second, which was a real threat to Ethereum’s scalability.
RSK can also be merge-mined with Bitcoin. The Bitcoin network’s hashing power has grown to 48%. This puts it in a good position to compete with Ethereum for network security through decentralization.
IOV Labs, the parent company of RSK, has been making progress in various areas. There are other platforms that compete with Ethereum, but the most notable ones are those that focus on interoperability and decentralized finance.
Earlier this year, RSK launched an interoperability bridge with Ethereum, which allows users to send tokens back and forth between the two platforms. This includes RSK-based stablecoins and leveraged tokens launched by developer Cash on Chain. Zaldivar believes that blockchain adoption will come from interoperability rather than competition. He informed Cointelegraph:
” We envision a future where Bitcoin, RSK, Ethereum, and other open blockchains form a network of networks, the Web of Value, that serves as the financial and social infrastructure. It is important that blockchain technology is able to work well with other systems to avoid any problems and to make sure it is widely used.
Qtum vs. Ethereum 2.0
This year was a big milestone for Qtum as they successfully forked over to a new version of the mainnet. Qtum is currently testing a PoS consensus, just like Ethereum 2.0. Even though Ethereum 2.0 staking will require a minimum stake of 32 Ether, Qtum is working to make sure that anyone can participate in its staking program.
Most recently, Qtum launched the ability to stake funds offline, making it one of the few platforms that allows users to stake funds that are stored in an offline cold storage wallet. The more tokens you stake, the bigger the reward, but there is no minimum stake required to participate. Jordan Earls, co-founder of Qtum informed Cointelegraph:
” This quote is saying that the recent shift to proof of stake confirms what the speaker has thought all along- that it is more energy efficient, user-friendly, and secure. We’ve seen an unfortunate increase in 51% attacks on [proof-of-work] chains like Ethereum Classic, contrary to the belief that Proof of Work is inherently safer than Proof of Stake. This validates our belief that proof-of-stake is the best way to reach consensus for most non-Bitcoin blockchain networks.
In addition to running on the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Qtum may potentially benefit from developments in Ethereum 2.0, such as sharding. Even though it is not like Ethereum, which can only use the Solidity programming language for now, developers can still write their decentralized applications in a much wider range of languages.
Matic Community vs. Ethereum 2.0
Matic Community offers many of the same advantages as a second layer for Ethereum, such as ERC-20 token compatibility. This project comes with the ability to handle up to 65,000 transactions per second. Binance and Coinbase Ventures both invested in the venture in its early stages. Binance did so by offering a token sale on its Launchpad platform for initial coin offerings, and Coinbase Ventures did so by being an early investor. Matic has also partnered with established initiatives, such as Decentraland, to allow high throughput.
If Ethereum 2.0 improves scalability, will this make second-layer projects like Matic Network unnecessary? Sandeep Nailwal, chief operations officer of Matic, doesn’t imagine that Ethereum 2.Zero will nail the scalability problem in the identical manner that Matic has, telling Cointelegraph:
“Ethereum 2.Zero doesn’t present infinite scalability. The best-case scenario is 64 shards, with sharded chains like today’s Ethereum chain. If PoS improves transaction speed by 50 transactions per second, the total throughput will only be 3200 transactions per second.
Nailwal believes that the straightforward truth of Ethereum supplying the next throughput will drive even larger demand, making a state of affairs the place Ethereum can by no means scale to the extent required by its DApp exercise, including: “First layer blockchains are settlement platforms. The quote is saying that the high gas fees makes it difficult for people to use ethereum for actual transactions. The person suggests that people who use ethereum for governance votes might avoid moving to a competitor platform.
Tron vs. Ethereum 2.0
An early rival to Ethereum, Tron launched in 2017. Justin Solar’s management of the company has resulted in great strides, including the acquisition of BitTorrent. In March 2019, Tether announced it would be launching a TRC-20 version of USDT. In less than half a year, the amount of Tron-based USDT in circulation was 12% of the total cash, due to Tron’s better performance than Ethereum.
Although Tron’s scalability is very good, it comes at a high price because the platform is based on delegated proof-of-stake consensus. In 2019, co-founder Lucien Chen announced he was leaving the project because of the “pseudo-decentralized” nature of Tron, which he believed was counterproductive to the company’s mission to “decentralize the web.” In contrast, Ethereum 2.0 will launch with over 16,000 validators on the Beacon Chain, according to ConsenSys.
Elrond vs. Ethereum 2.0
Elrond is one of Ethereum’s newer competitors, having launched its mainnet in July. Ethereum 2.0’s scalability may be challenged because it only achieved 260,000 transactions per second on its testnet. This is due to its adaptive state sharding mechanism.
Elrond’s approach to sharding is similar to Ethereum 2.0, according to Daniel Serb, head of enterprise development at Elrond. The nodes, transactions, and state of the blockchain are divided into several sections by each platform in order to achieve high processing speeds. Elrond begins with a set variety of shards that may course of 15,000 transactions per second, but it is possible to scale up if necessary. The protocol allows for the number of shards to increase dynamically, depending on traffic. The number of shards on Ethereum is fixed at 64. Builders might discover that constructing on Elrond is extra rewarding in the long run as compared with Ethereum, as Serb informed Cointelegraph:
” Elrond offers incentive for good contract authors by giving them 30% of the fuel used by their contract as royalties. The caller does not have to pay extra. Elrond’s contracts are upgradeable, which will make life much easier for any venture that uses them.
Algorand vs. Ethereum 2.0
The Algorand cryptocurrency was created by Silvio Micali, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and winner of the Turing Award. It was launched in 2019. The venture boasts that it is the first to use a “pure proof-of-stake” consensus that ensures network security by making it impossible for the owners of a small fraction of its ALGO tokens to cause any harm.
One area in which Algorand could compete with Ethereum 2.0 is in the area of platform development. Algorand is a blockchain platform that two of the largest stablecoins issuers, Tether and USD Coin, function on. In April, Props Mission, a decentralized community of apps, migrated from a non-public blockchain to a public blockchain powered by Algorand.
The head of product for Algorand, Paul Riegle, recently told Cointelegraph that the project has been looking into the DeFi space with its latest upgrades, with one of the more intriguing being “rekeying.” Currently, multisignature wallets can be a pain to manage if users want to change a certified private key holder. Rekeying would enable customers to move from a single key to a multisignature to a smart-contract-governed address with a built-in spending policy. This type of growth could make things a lot easier for DApp operators that take custody of user funds inside the DeFi house.
Cosmos vs. Ethereum 2.0
Cosmos launched in 2019, creating excitement in the blockchain community as one of the first platforms offering blockchain interoperability. Tendermint, a growth firm, was appointed by the nonprofit Interchain Basis to construct a cross-blockchain ecosystem.
Although Ethereum 2.0 will also focus on interoperability, Cosmos may have an advantage due to its earlier development in this area. Despite their large variation in architectural approaches, each initiative aspires to enable a diverse ecosystem of chains to interact with each other The unifying theme uniting all interoperable blockchain initiatives is that they all aspire to enable a diverse ecosystem of chains to interact with each other. Billy Rennekamp, grants supervisor on the Interchain Basis, informed Cointelegraph how interoperability advantages Ethereum 2.Zero as a lot as some other platform:
” The basic idea is that there should be a large and diverse ecosystem of blockchains that are able to communicate with each other (IBC) and form an interconnected web of blockchains, or Interchain. If Eth2.Zero uses IBC for their cross-shard communication, they will be able to use it for cross-chain communication as well.
Cosmos has the ability to scale through Tendermint’s Byzantine fault tolerance consensus. According to Ethan Buchman, sex basic BFT is the most efficient and practical method to reach consensus. ” He told Cointelegraph that Tendermint’s design decouples the BFT consensus engine from the Proof of Stake economics, permitting more experimentation in the economic details. The ETH2.Zero consensus is closely integrated with the rest of the ETH2.Zero stack.
Ardor vs. Ethereum 2.0
Ardor launched in early 2018. It was one of the first platforms to use a multichain structure and a proof-of-stake consensus. Ardor’s unique blockchain architecture provides significantly increased throughput compared to linear blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum. This construction is similar to Ethereum 2.0’s sharding mechanism, where Ethereum’s Beacon Chain will have sharded chains running as substructures in parallel with each other.
Ardor launched with the ability for child-chain operators to issue their own tokens which are compatible with the parent chain. Lior Yaffe told Cointelegraph that Ardor’s babychain bundling system allows utility developers to sponsor transaction fees for their customers and to optionally create a hybrid utility that is secured by a permissionless public chain. He said that both options are available on the mainnet. Although Yaffe is doubtful about when Ethereum 2.0 will be ready, they are still hopeful for its implementation.
No “one blockchain to rule all of them”?
So far, although each platform has clear advantages, none has yet been able to undermine Ethereum’s position in terms of adoption. However, since the full Ethereum 2.0 implementation could still be at least a year or two away, things could still change.
Even though Ethereum might be able to keep its place as the leading platform, there are reasons to believe that these other platforms will be able to survive in the long run.
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