Ethereum and its “killers” who covet it

Original title: "Ethereum and the "killers" who covet it"

Original author: Lorraine

TL;DR

1. After a round of bear market reshuffle, the mental outlook of those "Ethereum killers" in the past is not as good as before, but the potential energy retained is different.

2. As the only public chain in the time control group whose market value has not declined but increased, Solana has accumulated a lot in the trough and completed a "rebirth from the ashes."

3. Star public chains may never set the goal of becoming the second in Ethereum. They just want to be the first in their own track.

Directory:

1. The birth of Ethereum (ETH)

2. Attracting a killer, what is Ethereum’s crime?

3. The "Ethereum killers" who are generally optimistic in 2021

4. The market value does not fall but increases in the bear market. What is Solana's "killer"?

5. A brief review of the ups and downs of other "Ethereum killers"

6. Ending

In the period from the bear market in 2022 to the beginning of the bull market in 2024, the crypto world has ushered in several upward trends, large and small.

In addition to the most conspicuous protagonist "Bitcoin" whose price broke a new high and reached $73,750, the last round of Solana's native token, which was called the "Ethereum Killer" "SOL" also took one year and three months to sneak from the bottom of 9 dollars to 208 dollars, becoming the fastest-growing company in the market capitalization list.

The boomerang of the "Ethereum Killer" once again hits the crypto world in the head.

This also makes me wonder, there were so many chains in the past that claimed to subvert Ethereum, what are they doing now?

1. The birth of Ethereum (ETH)

Let’s start with the central object that was sniped Start talking.

The idea of the Ethereum network can be traced back to the end of 2013.

Founder Vitalik Buterin proposed in the white paper such an "open source, based on blockchain technology, allowing developers to create and deploy smart contracts on it, to Decentralized platform for centralized applications (DApps).

In July 2014, Buterin and his team began pre-sales for Ethereum (ETH), the native cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum network. The sale period lasted 42 days. Approximately $18 million was raised for the development and maintenance of the network.

In August 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was launched, mainly for developers, for developing and testing smart contracts. The opening price of ETH that year was about US$0.3, and soon it gradually climbed to the second position in market capitalization and remains firmly there to this day.

The time has come to 2017, ICO (Initial Coin Offering) has become a popular A popular way for blockchain projects and startups to raise funds.

Many projects choose to conduct ICOs on the Ethereum platform, and the market value of Ethereum has also reached a new high.

The choice of Ethereum network as the ICO platform can be mainly attributed to its following differentiated features:

1. Smart contract function & ERC-20 standard:

a. One of the core features of the Ethereum network is its support for smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements based on preset conditions, which allow developers to create complex applications on Ethereum with fast transaction confirmation times and low transaction fees (compared to Bitcoin). Such as on-chain financial transaction (DeFi) platform, on-chain games (GameFi), voting, etc.

b. Among them, the innovative "ERC-20" is another smart contract standard that provides unified rules for the creation and issuance of tokens.

Tokens that follow the ERC-20 standard can be integrated with Ethereum wallets and exchanges without additional development operations, allowing project parties to easily issue their own tokens on Ethereum and also It provides important convenience conditions for raising funds in ICO.

2. Mature ecosystem & active community:

a. At that time, the Ethereum network had developed a relatively mature ecosystem to bridge the entry of more developers, such as the smart contract programming language Solidity, the MetaMask wallet that provides convenient entrances, etc. These provide the necessary infrastructure and services for the deployment and issuance of new project tokens, greatly reducing the entry threshold for project parties.

b. And Ethereum has an active community, especially its developers and technical experts, who have spontaneously solved technical problems and provided services for many projects. provided innovative ideas and promoted project development.

Being able to rely on high-quality community and practical developer technical support plays a crucial role in the success of new projects.

3. Market recognition & liquidity:

a. As the cryptocurrency with the second highest market value at the time, Ethereum has gained market recognition, making it easier for ICO projects on Ethereum to attract the attention and trust of investors.

b.ETH, as the native token of the Ethereum network, has a large demand for it whether it is deployed by project developers or user transactions. High liquidity allows investors to easily enter and exit the market, and also provides good liquidity for ICO projects.

To sum up, the craze for ICOs on the Ethereum platform has also brought about a large number of project parties and investors to purchase the ETH currency itself. , the price of ETH currency rose accordingly, reaching a high of US$1,400 at the end of 2017.

2. What is Ethereum’s fault for attracting a killer?

Along the way, it seems that Ethereum has become the chosen one earning enough attention in the crypto world since its birth.

It continues to innovate and improve the blockchain world. The introduction of smart contract protocols has opened up unlimited imagination for the cryptocurrency industry and provided it with The popularity and prosperity of the benchmark events that emerged later - "2020 DeFi Summer" and "2021 NFT Explosion" have cultivated fertile ground, promoted the practical application and development of blockchain technology, and also attracted people from all over the world to the crypto world. More and more investors and developers are coming.

"If a tree is beautiful in the forest, the wind will destroy it"

When something is There are so many expectations and approving looks, but there must also be dissenting voices.

Ethereum does have the following problems that are mainly criticized by users.

In order to facilitate understanding, we can use "the obstacles that may be encountered when swimming in the pool" to be compared with "the obstacles that may be encountered when trading on the Ethereum network." "The problem":

For example, the capacity of a swimming pool is limited. As more and more people pour in, the pool will become overcrowded. You can't swim in it smoothly and quickly.

1. Scalability issues:

With the increase in the number of users and applications , the network becomes congested, resulting in longer block times and slow transaction speeds. When the demand for high transaction volume cannot be met, it will have a negative impact on many projects, especially in areas that require timeliness such as games (GameFi), on-chain financial transactions (DeFi) and NFT transactions.

(Source: Nervos column)

When the summer peak season arrives, this swimming pool will host a larger user base than ever before. If you want to swim out of your own lane calmly in the "dumplings" situation, you need to use your "money power" to summon the staff and deploy some low-priced admission users who used the "early bird price" or "discount coupons" to join first Wait in line, wait for the "money player" in front to finish swimming ashore, then return to the pool and move forward quickly.

2. Network congestion and high Gas costs:

In some specific periods (such as grabbing The creation of new mint NFTs, rapid transactions of airdropped tokens, etc.) will cause serious congestion on the Ethereum network, and transactions may be delayed or even unsuccessful, which greatly affects the operating experience.

If users want to quickly resolve network congestion in a short period of time, they need to pay higher transaction fees (Gas fees).

(2019 Sky-high mining fees: The handling fee is as high as 10,668.73185 ETH, but the transfer amount is only 350 ETH, which is 3% of the handling fee.)

The swimming pool has a lock The storage cabinet can be used to store your personal belongings. Although most of the time it is easy to open and take out without any problem, if it is not kept properly, you may be unlucky and find that all the valuable items in the cabinet have been stolen.

Or maybe you have carefully placed the items on the shore within sight of you and packed them with clothes. Only when you got to the shore did you realize that the clothes were still there and packed down. However, the civet cat exchanged the prince's belongings for him into worthless items.

You go to the swimming pool for help and check the surveillance. You only see the thief going out with the stolen goods, turning right, opening any door in Doraemon, and going to nowhere. A different world where traces can be traced;

You have no way to complain about the swimming pool, because you have signed a contract when you enter and you are fully responsible for your own belongings.

3. Security issues:

Safety, it can be said that in the blockchain world The red line is that with the development of blockchain technology, endless hacking techniques have also iteratively changed and unpredictable, and the Ethereum network has also suffered several major security attacks in its history.

For example, in The DAO crowdfunding project in 2016, the attacker exploited a recursive call vulnerability in the smart contract and stole approximately 3.5 million ETH (worth at the time) from the fund pool. approximately $60 million). This attack directly led to the split in the Ethereum community and ultimately led to the hard fork of Ethereum (divided into two different chains, ETH and ETC). This exposes potential security risks to smart contracts and the entire network, hiding unknown security vulnerabilities.

Of course, the probability of encountering the problems in the example when swimming in the pool is extremely low ;

The above transaction problems can occur on the Ethereum network, and they are indeed more frequent.

In summary, it has become uneconomical for users to conduct small transactions on the Ethereum network, which also hinders the large-scale and widespread adoption of Ethereum. Especially for application scenarios that require frequent operations and real-time transactions.

Because of this, many project parties have discovered new opportunities in these poor user experiences and are waiting for opportunities to polish their own pertinence. The magic weapon and alternative plan is to launch its own public chain to share this part of the traffic that Ethereum cannot eat.

3. The "Ethereum killers" who are generally optimistic in 2021

In order to be able It has caused a splash in the cryptocurrency world where the cost of attention is particularly expensive. When writing promotional releases, many media will label many star public chains as "Ethereum killers" to attract attention.

I turned here to an article on "forkast" at the end of 2021, titled "The top 5 "Ethereum killers" of 2021", which lists The following 5 "Ethereum killers" have been identified:

Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX), BNB Chain (BNB), Solana (SOL) , Polkadot (DOT).

The author is an Australian journalist who focuses on the encryption industry  ;LACHLAN KELLER  Although one person's opinion cannot represent everyone's views, it can reflect that it was the end of 2021, when some people were generally optimistic about potential targets other than ETH.

Just by observing the five phenomenal "Ethereum killer" public chains mentioned in this article, let's take a look at the past two years. Their B&A variations. (The following rankings are in no particular order)

Price trend is the best explanation of an underlying fundamentals

*The data comes from Messari. The data record deadlines are 2021/12/20 and 2024/03/24 respectively

From the table It can be seen from the figure that after a round of bear market, the prices of all currencies have fallen.

Among them, BNB has the smallest decline. After the recent bull market correction, it has basically reached the same level as the currency price at that time. It is far away from the ATH (All-Time High historical high point) in 2021. $690 is also gradually closing the gap.

The second is SOL.

Although the currency price recorded today has dropped slightly compared to that time, in the middle of this month, the Solana chain ushered in the pre-sale of multiple 10,000-fold meme disks. The craze has also raised the currency price to a maximum of $208, a slight increase from the data recorded at the end of 2021.

What’s more noteworthy is that among these five “Ethereum killers”, SOL is the only currency with an increase in market value, with an increase of +31.85%. The time market value even surpassed BNB and ranked fourth.

The prices of the remaining three currencies (ADA, AVAX, and DOT) have experienced a sharp correction of more than 50%, among which the native token of Polkadot, DOT It dropped more than 71%.

At that time, 2021, when Lachlan wrote the article, It was a bumper year for the cryptocurrency market, and the future seems to be unlimited:

Bitcoin price reached a new high of $69,000 at the time, and Coinbase listed Stark went public, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the first Bitcoin futures ETF, NFT, and the rapid popularity of the metaverse concept brought unlimited growth...

However, with the cyclical fluctuations in the industry, as well as the global epidemic, U.S. interest rate hikes, and the Luna black swan incident, a large amount of funds have accelerated their departure from the Crypto industry. The crypto world has also ushered in a bear market. At that time, the targets were generally optimistic They have also ushered in a comprehensive and deep correction.

In such a market full of randomness and volatility, ups and downs are normal.

But how can we travel through the ups and downs of bulls and bears in the sea of time, and still be able to get ashore neatly and rush to the next sea area after going back and forth, instead of being washed away by the sea water? How much of the body is left?

Perhaps we can get a glimpse of it from the performance of these "killers".

4. In the bear market, the market value does not fall but increases, Solana’s “killer trump card” What is it?

First, let’s briefly introduce various information about Solana——

· Founder’s background:

Founder Anatoly Yakovenko previously worked as a core engineer at Qualcomm in the United States and has rich performance Optimize experience.

· Project background:

Initially I wanted to create an order book trading platform on the blockchain, but It was discovered that Ethereum was unable to host large-scale on-chain transactions. In early 2018, Anatoly decided to build a smart contract platform together with Raj Gokal.

· Financing and cooperation project parties:

According to Crunchbase statistics, Solana has so far 13 rounds of financing, raising a total of approximately US$320 million. The largest single funding round was $314 million in June 2021, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

In the other rounds of financing, Multicoin Capital (which has been with the founding team since the seed round that no one cared about), Jump Crypto, and Alameda Research also provided considerable support.

· Differentiation characteristics :

The performance label that a public chain is most proud of is often written on the official website page.

A striking one-sentence introduction on the homepage - "Powerful for developers. Fast for everyone."

It can be clearly read from this official Slogan that Solana is very confident in the underlying technology of its public chain , the vision is also relatively simple and pure.

Mainly for two groups -

1 Developers "You can use innovative capabilities on the chain to develop functions to the extreme"

2 Every user "transactions on the chain are fast, really fast."

Keyword 1: Communities of Millions

-More than two thousand 10,000 active addresses

-Over 200 million NFTs minted on the chain

-20,000 participants at Solana Hacker House

-4.8W Developers participated in production projects during the hackathon

Keyword 2: Large scale Adoption (Mass Adoption)

-"Economy" The average cost of each transaction is 0.00064 (compared with the gas fee on the Ethereum chain, which can easily reach tens/hundreds of dollars) Contrast)

-"Fast" block generation time is 4s, and can process approximately 3170 transactions per second (Ethereum block generation time is approximately 15s, processing 25 transactions per second)

-"Decentralization" is verified by 1717 independently operating nodes, ensuring that your data remains secure and censorship-resistant. (There are currently 8188 nodes on the Ethereum chain)

-"Energy Saving and Net Carbon" creates an innovative combination of PoS (Prove of Stake) and PoH (Prove of History), which is a user-friendly Based on a new timing method for distributed systems, this mechanism allows the network to reach consensus without requiring a traditional block time interval, thereby increasing transaction speed and greatly saving energy. (A single PoS consensus mechanism is implemented on the Ethereum chain)

Keyword 3: Growth (Growth in All Aspects)

-"Payment" Solana Pay protocol is connected to physical merchants such as Visa and Shopify, allowing users to use SOL or any other Solana support Tokens (such as the stable currency USDC) can be used for real-time payments with extremely low handling fees, and there is no need to involve third parties such as banks or payment processors.

-"Game" uses solid technology to ensure the normal operation of multiplayer online game projects on the chain, achieving fast response and low latency, such as Star Atlas, Aurory, etc.

-"NFT" uses state compression technology, which can reduce the cost of NFT casting to $0.00011, helping projects to issue collections on the chain at a large scale and cheaply, that is, it only costs a few hundred to mint thousands or even millions of NFTs. Dollar.

-The total value locked (TVL) on the "DeFi" Solana chain has exceeded US$11 billion, and the average 24-hour transaction volume has exceeded 400 million. It is its solid infrastructure that allows the chain to undertake super-fast, Simple and cost-effective various DeFi applications.

Summary:

As the first in the reserve echelon of "Ethereum Killer", Solana's trump card is "I have what you have, and I have what you don't have."

Like Ethereum, Solana understands that powerful infrastructure technology is the cornerstone for the prosperity and development of a public chain.

Therefore, it attaches great importance to creating an active developer ecosystem, holds hackathons to attract outstanding developers, and actively attracts investors for various projects on its chain. Capital injection support for high-quality young entrepreneurial teams.

For example, it gave birth to top DeFi applications such as Phantom Wallet (a smooth and easy-to-use browser wallet), Raydium (DEX), and Magic Eden (NFT trading platform) , StepN (M2E fitness game) and more.

In order to maximize performance, a consensus mechanism combining PoS and PoH was created to improve scalability, sustain high throughput, and reduce transaction delays. time and reduce transaction fees, thereby optimizing user experience.

Of course everything has two sides.

The Solana chain has also experienced many large-scale downtimes and stolen security incidents.

Especially the bankruptcy of FTX in 2022, the reputation of founder SBF (an early supporter and active investor of Solana) was tarnished, which also affected the plunge of Solana’s currency price. dropped to single digits. And FTX/Alameda Research still holds a large amount of SOL tokens to be unlocked. This part of the assets is gradually being liquidated. It remains to be seen whether it will have a certain impact on the market.

But what is worthy of recognition is that after leaving the halo protection of various previous big bosses, , Solana, who was in the trough of the bear market, did not become depressed and forgotten. Instead, she firmly blazed her own path.

Lily Liu, Chairman of the Solana Foundation, has actively opened up the development territory of other countries. Developers have not given up on continuing to develop and work on the ecosystem, but have become increasingly active in innovating. .

(Solana developer retention rate increases significantly in 2023)

During this period, state compression technology that is beneficial to the issuance of NFT projects was launched, SAGA hardware mobile phones were launched, Solana Pay payment scenarios were expanded to Visa and physical merchants, and Wormhole was continuously optimized. ) and other chains’ cross-chain bridging performance, as the preferred chain in the DePIN field, it brings more DePin projects (such as Helium Mobile’s token MOBILE, which increased tenfold in a week) to users, and the various meme crazes that broke out on the chain...

It is this kind of evidence that constantly "refreshes the sense of existence" that allows investors to see that there are still unlimited opportunities on the Solana chain, ranging from single to tens of digits. The currency price is even more valuable, and the general optimism has convinced Solana with its rise. It has completed a "rebirth from the ashes" without shame and will return to the battlefield in 2024.

Excellent as Solana returns to the user's field of vision, the "killer" "Why did the other players in the pool join the queue? How are they doing now?

5. Brief review of the rise and fall of other "Ethereum killers"

BNB Chain (BNB, the initial total supply is 200 million, and there will be multiple destructions)

Pros

1. As the first exchange in the world, its rapid growth in transaction volume and user base has attracted investors’ attention. There is hope, and Binance has also launched the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) that is compatible with Ethereum smart contracts, providing a low-cost, high-efficiency decentralized application development environment, thus attracting a large number of projects and developers.

2. Unlike Ethereum, which has unlimited issuance, Binance adopts a unique token destruction mechanism, which uses a portion of the profits to repurchase and repurchase each quarter. By destroying BNB, this mechanism reduces the circulating supply, thereby increasing the value of BNB.

3.BNB is not only a trading medium, it can also be used to participate in liquidity mining and IEO (Initial Exchange Token Offering), and is also called the "golden shovel" by many users. For example, PancakeSwap on the BSC chain launched IFO (Initial Farm Offerings), allowing users to participate in the issuance of new tokens by pledging BNB in exchange for CAKE tokens.

Cons

1. In October 2022, BNB Chain suffered The hacker attack, involving a total amount of more than $566 million at the time, was also one of the largest security incidents in the cryptocurrency field to date.

2. In November 2022, the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange had a huge impact on the entire cryptocurrency market, triggering market panic and a crisis of trust. Although Binance and FTX are separate entities, market panic spread to other exchanges and their tokens.

3. Competition in the exchange market is becoming increasingly fierce. For example, last year when Inscription became popular, OKX took the lead and launched the Web3 wallet and attracted a large wave of users and funds. This also This has indirectly affected Binance’s market share and BNB’s performance.

4. As the exchange with the largest cryptocurrency trading volume in the world and a Chinese origin, Binance has faced increased regulatory pressure in the past bear market. Facing criminal charges from the SEC, it ended with the payment of a $4.3 billion fine and the resignation of founder CZ as CEO.

Cardano (ADA, maximum total supply 45 billion)

Pros

1.Cardano uses a new type of algorithm called Ouroboros The algorithm, essentially a proof-of-stake mechanism (PoS), is designed to provide high energy efficiency, security, and scalability. And it uses a two-layer system operation, the settlement layer (CSL) is used to process transactions, balances, smart contracts, etc.; the computing layer (CCL) is used to handle data storage for future applications. Each layer can be upgraded independently without slowing down transactions on the other layer, also to provide higher transaction processing speeds (TPS) and lower transaction fees.

2. Regarding interoperability and forking issues, Cardano/ADA solves them through side chain and smart contract technology respectively, allowing different mainnet coins to be safely converted and avoiding forking. The cross event also provided an example for the development of the industry.

3. A large amount of funds were raised in the ICO as early as 2017. It was one of the second largest ICOs at the time and has accumulated the loyalty and recognition of many old users. And Cardano is jointly promoted by three teams, with a detailed and clear division of labor:

●IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong): a Hong Kong company, led by founder Charles Hoskinson Composed of hundreds of elites, responsible for technology development.

●EMURGO: Japanese company, responsible for Cardano’s project ecological layout, supporting and incubating other project teams in the ecosystem, and solving funding problems (most sources of early financing There are public investors in Japan, so Cardano is also nicknamed "Japanese Ethereum").

●Foundation: Foundation, responsible for the financial supervision of Cardano, formulating ecological regulations and standards and community construction, popularizing and promoting the Cardano protocol, and responsible for communication and supervision with the government .

(2021, people The willingness to invest in Cardano is greater than that of Bitcoin. Source: Investor Sentiment Survey Report released by Voyager Digital in 2021)

Cons

1. The development progress is slow, there has been no "killer application" for several years, and the operation team's promotional words are not grounded enough, and users say that engineering is too obscure and difficult to understand.

2.Cardano as the basis of the network is built on the Haskell language, and the smart contract programming languages on it are Plutus, Marlowe and Aiken. Compared with other projects, the Solidity/Rust/Move language is still relatively niche, requires higher-level software engineers, and has high development entry barriers.

(Source: Binance Square , Cardano user's blog content)

Avalanche (AVAX, maximum supply 720 million)

Pros

1. Avalanches are A blockchain on Layer 0 is under construction. The protocol consensus mechanism is a new type of consensus algorithm that combines the advantages of classic Byzantine Fault Tolerance (CBC) and Satoshi Consensus (PoW), through random subsampling. To achieve scale, security and speed. (For detailed explanation, please refer to this article compiled by Rhythm: https://www.theblockbeats .info/news/28137 )

2. Avalanche chain It consists of 3 subnets, namely: transaction chain (X chain), contract chain (C chain) and platform chain (P chain). This brand-new mechanism improves the overall transaction speed on the chain. Officials claim that the throughput of each subnet is as high as 4,500 TPS.

3. The foundation launched Avalanche Rush, a $180 million liquidity mining reward program, aiming to attract more DeFi projects and users to join the ecosystem. This initiative has significantly boosted DeFi activity on Avalanche and increased on-chain TVL.

4. Not only supports sub-second confirmation, but also supports access to a variety of virtual machines, such as EVM and WASM, making it an Ethereum-compatible blockchain. . Through cross-chain bridges, assets can be easily transferred to Avalanche for trading, providing more options for DeFi users.

5. In the game field, because subnet technology allows each game to build a customized chain according to its own specific requirements, this means that game developers have extremely Great flexibility to optimize the performance parameters of the blockchain. Game developers can even provide gas-free transactions to lower the threshold for players to participate in the game.

6. Actively seek other opportunities for growth. For example, the foundation launched the "Avalanche Vista" plan to support the value of tokenization of off-chain assets; realize interoperability between Uniswap and Avalanche through LayerZero; JPMorgan Chase and Evergreen Subnets collaborated to build a proof-of-concept demonstration area The potential of blockchain technology, smart contracts, and tokenization in automated portfolio management; AvaCloud joins forces with Citibank to test the feasibility of leveraging blockchain infrastructure for foreign exchange trading; helps Amazon provide computing power and storage, and more.

7. At the end of last year, we actively embraced the popularity of inscriptions. Within a week, the transaction volume of inscription casting and trading on the chain exceeded 10 million US dollars.

Cons

1. AVAX has a low circulating supply (~48%), leading to potentially undesirable price suppression and excessive volatility.

2. Avalanche’s ecosystem and tokens are not closely linked. The current token economic model does not require subnets to support their role in AVAX. Activity payment

Polkadot (DOT, unlimited inflation token)

Pros

1. Polkadot is a project built on Layer 0 of the Web3 Foundation and was founded by Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of Ethereum.

2. Polkadot uses the Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) mechanism to elect validators, and the GRANDPA mechanism is used to finalize the consensus algorithm of the block. This dual governance model ensures decentralization and strong security of network decision-making.

3. Polkadot is called a "multi-chain network" and aims to seamlessly integrate various blockchains, allowing communication and data transfer between chains. . Parachains are a unique structure in the Polkadot network. They are connected to the Polkadot main network through Polkadot’s Relay Chain, aiming to achieve parallel interoperability between multiple blockchains. flexibility and scalability, while maintaining their independence and security, and also improving network throughput.

4. Invented the Parachain Auction narrative. That is, in order to connect to the relay chain, the parachain needs to obtain a slot through auction. The auction process is decentralized, with DOT tokens locked up to bid for slots.

5. The developer ecosystem is active. According to the 2023 developer report released by Electric Capital, Polkadot network developers submitted a total of 22,232,604 pieces of original code throughout 2023. Developer contributions accounted for 10.5% of all code submissions in the Web3 field, with the second largest number of full-time employees. The number of developers, second only to Ethereum, reaches 792.

Cons

1. The Polkadot ecology is relatively complex, and the working principles and technical details are difficult for ordinary users to understand, which increases learning costs and participation thresholds.

2. Although the cutting-edge decentralized governance model OpenGov has been launched, few voters actually actively participate in voting and proposals, making the final decision-making process centralized. ization and lack of community involvement.

3. The activity declined after the first round of slot auction, and new stories are needed to re-activate users. Moreover, the number of parallel chains that can be supported is limited, and the auction system is not friendly to start-ups and small innovators with small amounts of capital.

4. There is a gap in information transmission and feedback between Polkadot officials and users. The latest developments cannot be synchronized to the community in a timely manner, and the communication skills are not enough. Plain and easy to understand.

5. In terms of the economic model, the inflation rate is high and the use scenarios of DOT tokens are relatively limited, causing some users and investors to have doubts about the actual use of the tokens. and long-term value.

According to Chainalytics Labs' mainstream public chain activity statistics in May 2023, from "user activity", "developer activity", "financial status" , and "social activity". In addition to the developer participation ranking, Polkadot's other scores are very different from BNB and Solana. The user activity index ranking is even the lowest, and the overall ranking ranks third.

(Source: Chainalytics Lab)

Summary:

According to time After searching for these famous public chains by clicking on the pictures, looking back, I just feel a little confused.

The crypto boom in 2021 has made these star public chains unparalleled, but more than two years later, they are basically still recovering from the severe losses of the last bear market. , looking back at the reporter who wrote the article on forkast at the time, he stopped writing as early as the beginning of last year, and the X account homepage no longer follows and updates any content about the encryption industry.

There are too many stories about high-performance public chains. From the beginning, everyone’s eyes lit up, but later the actual delivery results were unsatisfactory and made people no longer want to It’s easy to buy in this kind of narrative.

5-1

Almost every chain takes "High throughput" and "low transaction fees" are regarded as the tickets for the "killer game", but they also have their own differentiating highlights——

BNB Chain (BNB): As the first chain in the universe, the large number of users that its CEX attribute can bring naturally gilts the token. BNB has also been given the leverage to participate in liquidity mining and IEO. When the currency becomes a golden shovel that can leverage more benefits, the long-term demand for it by investors and users is naturally self-evident.

Cardano (ADA): Unique and detailed team division of labor, it accumulated a large number of audience support and investor attention in the early stage. Subsequent development progress was slow, there was no "killer application" for several years, and it was far away from community members. Some users quietly left during this period.

Avalanche (AVAX): The groundbreaking protocol consensus mechanism and the three subnets performing their own duties have greatly optimized its transaction speed. Low latency and low fees have made Avalanche Chain's achievements in the gaming field even more dazzling. It has cooperated with South Korea and other "MapleStory" games to launch a Web3 version called "MapleStory Universe". And it also actively pursues various marketing rules, embraces hot narratives, such as inscriptions, cooperates with Web2 companies, and strives to become the preferred platform for traditional companies to issue encrypted assets on the chain, etc.

Polkadot (DOT): Its multi-chain structure and extremely active developer ecosystem are its strongest bargaining chips. But it may also be because it develops engineering-oriented technologies too one-sidedly and neglects mental education and external marketing within the community. When the value of tokens is cut in half in the bear market, it is difficult for Polkadot Chain to retain users who have little knowledge of technology and insufficient faith.

5-2

In data collection In the process, what impressed me most was actually a 30,000-word long article from the "Polkadot Ecological Research Institute" on the Polkadot chain: "10,000-word strategic report: How should Polkadot get out of growth difficulties, and where is the way out in the future?" ?". (I strongly recommend that everyone click on it and read it. You will really be moved by this sincerity and intention.)

This organization has focused on studying Polkadot and Polkadot for five years. The development opportunities and prospects in the Polkadot ecosystem have been supported by the Polkadot treasury six times in a row, making it the OG team in the community.

In the article, the researcher team not only sincerely acknowledged the prevalence of negative emotions among users in the community, but also analyzed in detail the current situation and technology obtained by the Polkadot chain. Results, even problems with social media account operations, obvious advantages and disadvantages of public chains, etc.

In addition, the team also thoughtfully shared some derivative thinking, such as "What innovations have been introduced in the development of public chains in recent years?" "The growth logic of public chains. What exactly is it like?"

In addition to paying attention to the Polkadot chain itself, researchers also find shining points and improvement points from other public chains that perform well or poorly in the market, and use these points to Let’s give feedback and think about how Polkadot Chain can break through.

5-3

Based on the opinions in the report and my feelings after swimming in the sea of information, the following opinions can be output:

5-3-1

The most unavoidable word in the Crypto world: "Follow the trend"

In a bear market where development is generally sluggish, funds have become conservative and have withdrawn, and user enthusiasm for participation has also faded.

The price trend is unstable or even declining, and the team’s development progress or actual application does not meet expectations. These have brought serious consequences to investors, developers, and users. Uncertainty.

If the project side fails to come up with an innovative narrative that grabs attention and launches a phenomenal application at this time, it will still spend most of the budget on a single financial incentive. The effect is not great, because users are more inclined to sell out and leave the market in a precarious environment, which is more obvious than in a bull market.

When the flywheel of the positive feedback mechanism cannot rotate, it will directly lead to a decrease in activity and sluggish ecological development. External investors will become more hesitant to enter the market, causing the project to fall into Death spiral situation.

There is a high probability that many project parties will feel that they have encountered a bearish market at the stage when they should be developing vigorously.

This industry itself is famous for its definite "cyclicality", and it is precisely because of the cycle that it leaves room for you to "arbitrage" .

For ordinary users, "profit" may mean buying low and selling high, but for project parties, it is a waste of less valuable time in a bear market. In exchange for building a ladder to the sky that can save effort and jump to the bull market.

When there are cycles, there are ups and downs, and when there are fluctuations, there is rhythm.

If you clearly focus on adapting to the trend in the appropriate cycle, and even make preparations for the next cycle, Maybe even though there are constant bumps and stumblings on the way forward, it won’t be such that I stumble and find it difficult to move.

5-3-2

In a market with many monks and few people, the rise of a public chain is inseparable. How is the development of DeFi on it?

When DeFi flourishes, the tokens on that chain are often used as native token assets.

When there are more and more DeFi gameplays that can be played, it also means that the scenarios in which tokens can be applied become richer. This playability and positive feedback The mechanism makes users more willing to hold tokens for a long time, thus attracting more people to join.

Often how many tokens can be locked in a DeFi application also reflects the liquidity, activity and user participation of the chain's ecology.

As the Polkadot researcher mentioned above, it is precisely because of the slow development of Polkadot chain technology and the late launch of DeFi applications that all the dividends at the end of the bull market have led to a bear market. More than half of its market value has evaporated.

"DeFi can empower other projects on the chain in the same way as traditional financial empowerment entities, and can bring more assets to other projects. The composability and higher asset utilization rate can also leverage more funds for the entire public chain.

DeFi is equivalent to the public chain. Just like banks and other financial institutions are to cities, they are important financial infrastructure. Therefore, under the premise of limited resources and limited time, giving priority to the development of DeFi is the primary goal of the public chain."

5-3-3

The investors who pay the most are those who have the strongest ability to deploy "people" project side.

We must admit that every round of prosperity must contain bubbles.

When a cyclical retracement occurs, these bubbles will be the first to burst and dissipate.

Only by retaining real users and constantly attracting new people can the top of a glass of beer be filled with beautiful foam and attract the attention of investors.

When the goal in the bear market is more focused on "people",

will make the project The party will cherish the existing developers and users more, share every step of the plan, and make the collective feel more involved;

It will force the project party to be more innovative and think more Producing new narratives that can attract more people;

It will make the project team more sensitive to "people scenes". If web3 is empty, go to web2 to find more people. quantity.

……

You can say, "Specialize in the new, not in the old" is the golden rule in Crypto.

But "old" ones like Solana, with their silent hard work and strong marketing capabilities, constantly come up with new tricks to keep people here, and even Many new incremental entrances have been created, such as DePIN, RWA, AI+Crypto, active construction and merchant payment tracks in the web2 world, etc.

It is like a good student who is not partial to subjects. Not only does he have a correct attitude, but he also has some ideas for every approach;

It is also like Doraemon with a treasure bag, making people always curious and looking forward to what kind of surprises it will give people.

6. Ending:

There is no doubt that even if there are more powerful enemies It appears that this round of bull market has been slightly weak, but Ethereum still holds some unique and irreplaceable advantages.

It is the first blockchain platform to implement Turing-complete smart contracts;

The Ethereum Foundation has nearly the most mature blockchain ecosystem in the crypto world, the most active developer community, continuous technology development iteration capabilities, and strong management capabilities;

The chain carries thousands of decentralized applications (DApps), and has opened a Pandora’s box of explosive growth such as DeFi Summer and NFT craze for the crypto world.

This huge ecosystem has provided developers with a wealth of tools and resources in the past few years, and has also attracted a large number of users and developer communities.

As the future Ethereum ETF application is expected to be gradually implemented, technology continues to be upgraded, and Layer 2 capabilities become more powerful, it will also bring more to the market. Unpredictable benefits often take several years to observe and draw conclusions.

And I increasingly feel that the public thinks that some celebrity public chains are There is "covetousness" in Ethereum, but it is just a fictitious gimmick.

Perhaps from the beginning, these project teams did not regard Ethereum as an insurmountable mountain.

Remember what Zhang Xiaoyu said,

“Choose carefully Your competitors, because it’s likely that you’ll end up looking a lot like each other.”

These public chains, which are known as "Ethereum killers", each have their own winning formula and unique narrative. Discover the chronic disease that is limited to Ethereum. I have the corresponding antidote, and I can also learn the advantages and strengths of Ethereum, let alone think that I will be Ethereum 2.0.

They don’t bother being so-and-so killers. They want to open up a new track in the end and go their own way.

I still hope that they and other high-quality public chains standing in this bull market can step on their own ladders in the upward cycle. Jump higher and bring more surprises to the entire crypto market.

The original intention of all project teams is to use blockchain technology to better achieve decentralization and ensure financial freedom. Sovereignty, no matter how rugged the road, will eventually lead to the re-building of the Tower of Babel in everyone's hearts.

I still believe it.

Reference link:

https://www.coinbureau.com/analysis/ethereum-killers-analysis/#idea-1- %E2%80%93-the-secret-to-ethereum%E2%80%99s-success-lies-in-its-simplicity

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https://foresightnews.pro /article/detail/47354

https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/28137

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Original link