Which Of These Ethereum Killers Will Take The Top Spot?

We’re not suggesting that Ethereum will be crushed by it’s rivals, however it is worth thinking about. In a market that allows it, it’s not unrealistic to imagine Ethereum being knocked off it’s podium by one of it’s many competitors. This isn’t a bad thing of course, competition is healthy after all.

The reason Ethereum is ranked second for market capitalisation is simple, the Ethereum project is huge, it’s super successful and it’s often considered to be Blockchain 2.0, marking an era of improving technologies. In order to appreciate the full scale of Ethereum, we need to explore just how many pies it has it’s fingers in… if Ethereum had fingers of course. According to ConsenSys:

“Of the top 100 tokens by market cap, 94 percent are built on top of Ethereum. Of the top 800 tokens, 87 percent are built on Ethereum. Most of these tokens are ERC-20 tokens, which made possible the majority of the $5.5 billion raised through token sales in 2017 and the $6.5 billion raised in just the first quarter of this year.”

With over 250,000 developers part of a community of very passionate and forward thinking people, Ethereum will be hard to beat, but that doesn’t mean the likes of EOS, Stellar, NEO and TRON aren’t going to give it a try.

Are these projects really Ethereum killers?

They may not have been designed to wipe out Ethereum, however the aforementioned have been built to address some of the issues their own communities have found within the Ethereum blockchain. EOS for example aims to address transaction speeds, according to BTCManager:

“The Ethereum network can only process around 15 transactions per second. This is very low in comparison to other traditional payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard. This fact is one of the reasons that the cryptocurrency sector, including Ethereum, cannot compete with the traditional service providers yet. EOS, however, claims to be able to process upwards of 6000 transactions per second.”

Moreover, EOS promises no fees, something that Ethereum is often crippled by. In terms of market cap, EOS has a long way to go before it can truly compete with Ethereum, yet in terms of technology, I would argue that the EOS platform is moving leaps and bounds ahead of Ethereum at the moment,.

Likewise, Stellar wasn’t built to wipe out Ethereum, though the technology behind Stellar does offer some advantages over the Ethereum blockchain. Speedy transactions (settled in less than five seconds) and a simplified smart contract system, reinforced by a proven cross border transfer system, Stellar has the capacity to move past Ethereum, should the projects ever clash in the future.

NEO’s Smart Economy provides something very unique that the Ethereum blockchain cannot. By digitising physical assets, NEO have designed a platform with a much more versatile future. I suppose you could argue that Ethereum is at risk of becoming old news, when the likes of NEO are pushing the blockchain in a totally new direction. Yes, in terms of market cap, NEO has a long way to go before it pushes Ethereum off the top spot, though we must still consider that it does indeed boast the technology to do so. According to BTCManager:

“NEO can support smart contracts and decentralized applications, the platform goes a step further and allows for the digitization of physical assets. Through digital identity, NEO can link tangible assets to their owners and store this information on an immutable blockchain. The potential for this is infinite as any number and type of asset can be linked to an identity. NEO utilizes PKI (essential public infrastructure) to verify these identities. This is an advantage when it comes to adoption as the use of this standard means that governments and traditional industries are more likely to use the platform. Moreover, the NEO platform supports atomic swaps.”

Last but not least, TRON, the ex-Ethereum project that could one day challenge Ethereum for the top spot. The pure decentralisation of TRON means that the TRON network is faster, more secure and more supportive of certain apps and contracts. TRON have a clear vision for the future, one that is planned out as far as 2037. We know TRON will be around for a while, perhaps then, TRON could simply just, out live Ethereum?

As stated, we aren’t suggesting that any of these projects will force themselves past Ethereum just yet, though the future is always going to be uncertain for every cryptocurrency. If the climate is right, who really knows what could happen?

References
BTCManager