Self-proclaimed Ethereum-killer blockchains such as Cardano, Solana and Avalanche have been enjoying a lot of success recently.
Summary
The case of Avalanche
Last Sunday, the crypto AVAX, from the Avalanche blockchain, hit an all-time high at over $146 and entered the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
AVAX’s market cap at around $31 billion is just slightly below that of the USDC stablecoin at $36.2 billion.
Avalanche surged shortly after Zhu Su, CEO of Singapore-based hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, tweeted that he had:
“abandoned Ethereum despite supporting it in the past”.
Yes I have abandoned Ethereum despite supporting it in the past.
Yes Ethereum has abandoned its users despite supporting them in the past.
The idea of sitting around jerking off watching the burn and concocting purity tests, while zero newcomers can afford the chain, is gross.
— 朱溯 🐂 (@zhusu) November 21, 2021
Within hours of this tweet, Su himself, who has long been a major investor in Avalanche, was among the first to tweet the news that AVAX had entered the top ten cryptocurrencies by capitalization
Together with Polychain Capital, Three Arrows led a $230 million funding round on Avalanche last September.
The stats say that on a seven-day basis AVAX is up 46.9%, in a bear market phase, 83% in two weeks, over 133% in the last three months and since the beginning of the year, AVAX has grown by a staggering 3,795%.
Avalanche, the blockchain that wants to replace Ethereum
Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized applications (dApps), centred around DeFi. It is a natural rival to Ethereum, but at the same time also to Solana, another cryptocurrency that has grown tremendously over the past year.
Both blockchains aim to make their platforms for crypto apps and projects much faster and cheaper than the queen of smart contract blockchains, Ethereum.
Avalanche has long claimed to be the fastest smart contract platform among blockchain networks in terms of time to finality (the process by which a transaction becomes irreversible). It also has the largest number of validators of its PoS (Proof of Stake).
It recently launched a $200m fund, which will be used to expand its DeFi ecosystem.
Solana
Solana, launched last April, is said to have fast and cheap transactions.
According to the company, the blockchain can process 50,000 transactions per second, compared to Ethereum’s 15-30, with costs of $0.00025 per transaction. Its crypto, SOL, is now the sixth-largest by market capitalization. It is one of the best-performing stocks on the markets since the beginning of the year.
The other Ethereum Killer blockchain: Cardano
Alongside Solana, among the most popular large-cap coins of 2021 is Cardano (ADA), a smart contract blockchain that is attracting the attention of many crypto developers and investors.
The main goal of Cardano’s founders is to create a blockchain that is more sensitive to environmental sustainability.
It has now become the third-largest cryptocurrency by capitalization after Bitcoin and Ethereum. In 2021 alone, the coin has grown by 1000%.
Alongside these projects are many smaller, cheaper and more scalable blockchain projects, among which Flow, Polkadot, Algorand and Cosmos are worth mentioning.
