The Ethereum Killers: List of Chains that may pose A threat to ETH

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the digital asset that laid the foundation for the wide array of tokens and available on the market today – from DeFi platforms to NFTs, it was ETH’s ERC-20 and ERC-721 that got the ball rolling. However, a few issues with how the ETH blockchain function led to the development of new competing blockchains that may pose a threat to ETH.

The biggest issue regarding the Ethereum blockchain is scalability. As the network grows its user base, the process of validating transactions starts to become more expensive and time consuming. To deal with this problem, Vitalik Buterin and his team have started the roll out of Ethereum 2.0 – however, a full migration to the new and improved Ethereum will only be realised next year.

With the crypto market moving closer and closer to mainstream acceptance through NFTs and Crypto gaming, other blockchains have come up to challenge Ethereum’s dominance. All these blockchains promise faster transaction speeds at a significantly reduced cost when compared with the number 2 blockchain – without the need to add a second layer to relieve network congestion.

Though Ethereum remains a prominent figure in the push for decentralization, the competition – dubbed the Ethereum killers – have been making massive gains all throughout the year and increasing their user bases enough to possibly pose a threat to Buterin’s baby. So without further ado, here are the blockchains that look well suited to dethrone Ethereum.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Just like Ethereum 2.0, Avalanche runs on the more energy efficient Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. The biggest difference is that AVAX does it a whole lot faster, claiming a capacity to process more than than 4500 transactions per second.

Apart from the high speeds and lower costs, another advantage of the Avalanche network is it’s compatibility with Ethereum’s Solidity – making migration from Ethereum a simple process.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance is a name that is more synonymous with the act of trading cryptocurrencies in order to profit from their price fluctuations, after all, it is the world’s largest digital assets exchange. However, Binance also runs a programmable blockchain –  the Binance Smart Chain, which isn’t too dissimilar to Ether’s.

The BSC has been around since 2019 and offers significantly cheaper transaction fees than Ethereum at $0.01-$0.05 while managing up to 39.2 transactions per second.

Solana (SOL)

If the speed at which a blockchain network runs is its most valuable asset, then Solana is king in this department having claimed an ability to process up to 50 000 transactions per second. Thanks to those speeds, Solana has become home to Circle’s USDC stable coin and has had the value of its native token SOL increasing by more than 10,000% this year.

Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR)

Hedera is not one of the most renowned crypto projects out there, however, there are a few things about this coin that make it a noteworthy competitor in the tussle to be the number one programmable crypto currency network. 

Firstly, Hedera runs a unique Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that is powered by their proprietary hashgraph and boasts more than 10 000 transactions per second. Secondly, Hedera has also gained a lot of support from major corporations like Google, IBM, LG and TATA Communications – to name just a few, which puts Hedera a step ahead of Ethereum when it comes to attracting institutional investment.