Protocol Wars: Competition Heats up for Ethereum as Competitors Gain Traction

It&39s hard to argue that Ethereum (ETH) currently reigns supreme as the king of the altcoins, but does this mean that its dominance is unchallengeable? We have borne witness to quite a few altcoins spike both in price and value recently, to the point that it has left several crypto enthusiasts to wonder about whether Ethereum will stay atop the altcoin mountain or if it will eventually be overtaken by one of its main competitors. Here&39s are our top three picks in the battle against Ethereum for base-layer supremacy.

Solana (SOL)

Solana has lately skyrocketed in popularity as the cryptocurrency&39s price continues to rise to new all-time highs. SOL was selling at around $30 a little over a month ago and the current price is a bit around $150, which is a phenomenal amount of growth, to say the least. Bandwidth and transaction costs are two issues that have often hampered cryptocurrencies. Solana overcomes both of these by enabling over 70,000 transactions per second at a low cost. It has additionally managed to perform more transactions since its debut in 2017 than that of Ethereum. Moreover, Solana&39s transaction speed and bandwidth make it ideal for general usage as well as the creation of exchanges and platforms on top of it.

Like Ethereum, Solana could soon begin burning tokens and like Cardano, smart contracts may be added soon too. Solanart, the project&rsquos NFT marketplace, had additionally managed to reach a new milestone of a million SOL in total volume. Make no mistake about it, Solana is highly scalable and a top contender that can certainly challenge Ethereum&rsquos dominance.

Cardano (ADA)

Currently sitting in the top three cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Cardano (ADA) is only beaten by both Bitcoin (BTC) and its rival Ethereum. However, this is not to say that Charles Hoskinson&rsquos project hasn&rsquot been successful, far from it in fact. ADA was trading at less than $0.5 just over a year ago, which makes its recent growth all the more spectacular as it lately reached over $3 to set a new all-time high. With the Alonzo hard fork expected to occur on September 12th, we shall leave the &lsquoShelley&rsquo era behind and enter &lsquoGoguen&rsquo, during which the highly anticipated smart contract capabilities will finally be added to the network. Once this happens, the developers will be allowed to build decentralized applications (dApps) on top of Cardano. Hoskinson is a former co-founder of Ethereum and while he has praised Vitalik Buterin for his work, it would not be a far-fetched assumption to say that Charles wouldn&rsquot want to challenge the altcoin king&rsquos dominance given his checkered history with it.

Polkadot (DOT)

Polkadot may be defined as a platform that enables several blockchains to communicate messages, particularly value, in a trust-less manner, while sharing their unique features and pooling their security. In a nutshell, it is a scalable heterogeneous multi-chain technology.

Polkadot seems to be heterogeneous primarily because it is completely adaptable and makes no assumptions about the type or structure of the network&39s links. All non-blockchain systems could become parachains if certain requirements are met. Polkadot is similar to a collection of separate chains (such as Ethereum or Bitcoin), but with two significant additions, namely trust-free interchain transact ability and pooled security. Currently, DOT&rsquos price is $33 per token, and while Polkadot has dropped down the ranks a bit, it is still in the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap. Like Cardano, Polkadot was founded by a former Ethereum co-founder, Gavin Wood.