Future of Blockchain: Is Ethereum still the one? What is the future of DeFi?

Ethereum is moving the crypto movement right now, is widely regarded as the second biggest crypto on the blockchain, and has undergone a massive bullish rise over the last 2 years. It is a cryptocurrency that runs on smart contracts to verify the veracity of trades and the movement of digital currency that is made on the platform. Thanks to its rapid trend to the forefront of DeFi crypto, ETH was heralded as the future of cryptocurrency and decentralized finance. That was because until recently, it seemed like the best choice for developers when it came to DApps, NFTs, and DeFi crypto in the crypto space. You can visit a site to learn what are proof of stake coins and how they are tied to Ethereum’s growth in their next update.

Now, though, things have changed and the Ethereum blockchain faces stiff contention from the new and risingcryptos. The future of ETH and the cryptographic community is no longer as certain as it used to be. Due to the incredible popularity of Ether, others have been able to find flaws in the system and capitalize on that, eating on its huge standing in the digital market.

How Ethereum Came to be at The Top

A lot of crypto casuals might be asking how Ethereum became so popular when all they knew was Bitcoin. The first known crypto was Bitcoin and after it blew up, several developers attempted to build upon that to create more operative altcoins to no avail. The first cryptographic platform to legitimately challenge the monopoly of Bitcoin has been the crypto Ethereum and its coin, Ether or ETH for short.

But how and why did the crypto Ethereum do so well on exchange websites like https://redot.com? The main thing about Ethereum that appealed to crypto adopters and developers was the fact that it housed a system that lets you make smart contracts – a feat Bitcoin could not do. This feature changed the landscape of decentralized finance as many investors took a liking to the way the smart contracts worked. This changed Ethereum’s future and skyrocketed it to the forefront of the crypto conversation. Since then, Bitcoin has definitely made some significant improvements regarding its scalability but ETH still edges BTC in the DeFi crypto area.

Pros and Cons of Ethereum

The global rate of adoption when it came to ETH was astronomical and something no one could have predicted. Especially in 2021, the rate of buying and general transactions involving Ether reached 8 hundred thousand daily active users towards the end of the year. The overall value of $150 billion worth of DApps working on the ETH crypto space in that year alone. When you look at the variety and efficiency of the services given to crypto adopters that trade with Ether, you would understand why and how Ethereum’s future got so bright.

One of the benefits is lending which gives you the opportunity to borrow Ether or borrow stablecoins with Ether as your collateral. Another one is when the person purchasing Ether and the one selling agree on the future value of a portion of ETH in the transaction. A third is the ability to manage your assets in a more cohesive manner. More services rendered by Ethereum are insurance, trade, and stablecoins.

But too much of anything is not good, and Ethereum got too big until its popularity and many users made things harder to manage. The system got overcrowded, leading to congestion that made transfer fees much higher – commonly called gas fees. The purpose of the higher charges is to give the miners that validate transactions more of a reason to use the proof-of-work consensus system that Ethereum makes implements.

It must be noted that Ethereum currently plans to release its Proof-of-stake system to make things work better with the high number of transactions. With Ethereum’s new PoS consensus known as Ethereum 2.0, it hopes to cement the future of ETH as the undisputed king of the crypto market for now and in the future. The problem now is that there have been delays and problems with ETH2, hampering its full launch and the public’s faith in the system. Couple that with the new platforms coming to fight for the throne, and you have a real scare for Ethereum regarding the future of cryptocurrency.

The Rising Stars

There is no shortage of protocols present in the crypto ecosystem that wish to shoot up the ladder to the higher echelons of the blockchain network, but only a select few have been able to stand up, garnering a good rate of buying and transactions as well as being used in the real world. These small but effective number of crypto platforms are beginning to lure typical Ethereum investors to their sides instead. Three of these from the rising elite are Solana, Polkadot, and Algorand. Which of these will be the Ethereum Killer? We’ll have to wait and see if it can be done, and if it is, which platform will do it or if it will be a combination of the three and more rising coins.

Solana is the most popular among the rising stars and is known most of all for its ridiculous speed when compared to Ethereum. It can perform 50,000 transactions in a single second but the network itself hasn’t attained this incredible height in practice yet. Even at the speed it realistically works at regarding transactions, it dwarfs Ethereum but it’s not only that. Solana does this while requiring much lesser transaction fees than Ethereum.

Polkadot is all about interoperability, ensuring that numerous chains are able to function together with little to no hassle. It must be noted that Polkadot hasn’t launched yet, so all this is said with optimistic caution.

Algorand is developed by a group of incredibly gifted people when it comes to cryptography and this can be seen in its level of performance in many areas. It has high speed and low transfer charges while also having no downtime history. The adoption of this coin might be slow but it is consistently trending upwards. Maybe slow and steady really wins the race.

Ethereum faces a strong challenge from these three as each of them outlines a particular weakness of the platform. Can ETH2 assure people that Ethereum is the place to be for the foreseeable future, or will these “killers” really put the nail in the Ether coffin? Only time will tell.