10 Blockchains That Could Replace Ethereum
During 2020, Ethereum has reinforced its status as the most popular smart contract blockchain for dapps, but there are plenty of new technologies looking to take its crown in 2021.
In this article DappRadar looked at ten of these so-called third-generation blockchain contenders: Algorand, Avalanche, Cardano, Cosmos, Flow, Hedera Hashgraph, Harmony, Near, Polkadot, and Solana.
1. Algorand
Status: Live (June 2019)
Token: ALGO
Consensus: Pure Proof-of-Stake
Language: TEAL
Speed: +1,000 TPS
Block time: <5 seconds
Designed by MIT cryptography expert Silvio Micali, Algorand is designed to support dapps that can scale to billions of users and tens of millions of daily transactions with negligible transaction fees using atomic transfers. In particular, its smart contracts are integrated with layer 1 providing additional security.
2. Avalanche
Status: Live (September 2020)
Token: AVAX
Consensus: Proof-of-Stake
Language: Various, including Go and Solidity
Speed: +4,500 TPS
Block time: <3 seconds
Designed to be highly customizable, scalable and interoperable, Avalanche has two different consensus engines – one offering fast transactions and the other secure smart contracts. These run across separate metadata, asset and smart contract blockchains. Each dapp operates on its own custom blockchain running its own virtual machine.
3. Cardano
Status: Live (July 2020)
Token: ADA
Consensus: Proof-of-Stake
Language: Haskell, Plutus
Speed: 1,000 TPS per Hydra
Block time: 20 seconds
Famously started when Charles Hoskinson left the Ethereum project in 2014, the Cardano blockchain recently went live although the ability to create smart contracts is not yet operational. The blockchain consists of three elements; the Ouroboros protocol, the Cardano ledger and the Hydra off-chain scaling solution.
4. Cosmos
Status: Live (March 2019)
Token: ATOM
Consensus: Proof-of-Stake
Language: Various including Agoric and Ethermint
Speed: “thousands of TPS”
Block time: 1 second
Cosmos is a network of independent parallel blockchains that can scale and interoperate with each other. Developers create dapp-specific blockchains, either public and private. Cosmos also allows dapps to connect to any other ‘fast-finality’ blockchain using its IBC protocol.
5. Flow
Status: Live (September 2020)
Token: FLOW
Consensus: Proof-of-stake
Language: Cadence
Speed: TBA
Block time: TBA
Developed by the team behind CryptoKitties, Flow is an accessible, high performance blockchain designed for consumer dapps such as games and collectibles. It uses a multi-node architecture which splits validations into four separate stages, and also allows for upgradable smart contracts.
6. Harmony
Status: Live (June 2019)
Token: ONE
Consensus: Effective Proof-of-stake
Language: Various including Solidity and Vyper
Speed: +200,000 TPS
Block time: 5 second
Taking a different approach, the Harmony blockchain consists of four shards, each containing 250 nodes. It also uses a novel consensus model to reduce centralization and better distribute rewards to its validators. Currently it is focused on enabling compatibility with Ethereum via trustless bridges.
7. Hedera Hashgraph
Status: Live (Feb 2020)
Token: HBAR
Consensus: Proof-of-Stake
Language: Various including Solidity
Speed: 10,000 TPS
Block time: <5 seconds
Currently focused mainly on enterprise use cases, Hedera Hashgraph consists of various network services such as cryptocurrency, consensus, smart contracts and file services running on top of the hashgraph ledger. It is currently operating in a permissioned mode with some key features still in development.
8. Near
Status: Live (May 2020)
Token: NEAR
Consensus: Thresholded Proof-of-Stake
Language: Various including Rust and AssemblyScript
Speed: +1,000 TPS
Block time: TBA
Like Harmony, Near is a sharded blockchain design which is designed for running high performance dapps and onboarding millions users in a familiar manner. It is currently operating in a permissionless manner using one shard, and is testing its bridge technology to Ethereum. Nevertheless, first dapps using Near are already live.
9. Polkadot
Status: Live (May 2020)
Token: DOT
Consensus: Proof-of-Stake
Language: Ink!
Speed: TBA
Block time: 6 seconds
Similar in vision to Cosmos, Polkadot has an open concept in which multiple blockchains inter-operate in parallel within its network. Developers can create individual blockchains for their dapps. These chains run their own governance models but share their security with the entire Polkadot network.
10. Solana
Status: Live (March 2020)
Token: SOL
Consensus: Proof of History
Language: Various including C, C++, Move and Rust
Speed: 50,000 TPS
Block time: <1 second
Using a novel time-based Proof of History consensus model, Solana offers a very fast blockchain that enables developers to create their smart contract with familiar tools such as C and Rust. It is also working on bi-directional cross-chain bridges to other blockchains starting with Ethereum.
Source: dappradar.com
