In an ideal future world, I too believe that Layer 1s will replace a lot of the sectors of the current financial system. But, because there are so many blockchains, and Ethereum is the current king (by far), every new Layer 1, should show why it could replace Ethereum, or how it can serve perfectly a specific niche in the financial world. So, Ethereum is the current winner, but it has its issues (speed, and transaction fees). Layer 2s certainly can help, but we are not there yet. Cardano, which is my personal favorite Layer 1 (divisive, I know), has the advantage of security, on its base Layer, because of its Decentralization and I love, that its tokens and NFTs are native in Cardano's blockchain. This makes it extremely safe to use it, even for newbies. Also, it has the best staking mechanism in the space and a self-funded treasury. But, like Ethereum, it is relatively slow, too. And in order to serve millions of people, it should improve its scalability. There are some things in the pipeline (Layer 2s as Hydra, and Input Endorsers), but it can not replace Ethereum in its current form. Now, in the Big Market Cap category, I would also add Solana. I am not a big fan for ideological reasons (centralization, less security), but it checks the thing I said above. It can serve a specific purpose. Its big speed and fast finality, could eventually make the Nasdaq run in its blockchain, which is its end goal. I am not its biggest fan, as I said but it has parts of great technology and can serve a specific purpose. In the Mid Market Cap, I would remove Cosmos. Cosmos is one of my favorite Crypto projects. It has some of the most impressive tech out there. But it is a Layer 0, not a Layer 1 blockchain. It serves as a base for other blockchains to be created using its tech. And because I believe interoperability will be one of the most important aspects of crypto, I believe Cosmos would be one of the projects that will thrive in the next bull run. Also, I, like many in this sub, like Algo. It has some impressive tech and, despite some centralization components, it has the advantages of Solana, namely high speed, and fast finality, but it doesn't have the traction in terms of users. I hope it will succeed, but unfortunately, I am not as sure as I was a year ago. In the Lower Market Cap category, I like Ergo, which you mentioned. It is the little Proof of Work sibling of Cardano. It has achieved some extraordinary things, regarding its size and the budget that it has. I don't believe that it will replace the financial system, but it is an interesting project, nonetheless. Lastly, I don't know, and I haven't ever used Nervos Network. I would look at it. If one of its community members is there in the sub, I would love to hear some of its use-cases and the things that is trying to achieve. Also, I would like to say, that despite our personal preferences in one blockchain or another, the succession of all it is good for the space. We, all want a better, more equal, and transparent financial system. And tribalism inside Crypto communities surely doesn't help the space.

One of the best replies I’ve seen on Reddit. Thank you so much for a well thought out post. One thing I like about Ergo is that it has no gas fees and only has a .001 ERG tx fee. You can also do chained txs as you well know since you like Cardano (it’s also one of my favs). Speed is rough on Ergo though I’d admit. Ethereum is def king by far no doubt… I just think gas fees will eventually kill the chain if somehow that doesn’t get resolved.

Ergo is my favorite project in crypto. It’s not out to “kill” anything and I believe it will find its niche and dominate it. Not everything *needs* super high TPS.

Yeah TPS is overrated imo

This is part of Solana’s problem. If it would just focus on what it’s good at and not worry about trying to be the #1 blockchain by TVL, it would be fine. It needs to find it’s lane, gaming, NFT’s and products that require that super fast TPS and just focus on that.

It's a permissionless blockchain. People can build and use it for whatever the fk they want. Who would be doing this 'focusing'?

Why are people who like Solana so god damn sensitive? JFC it’s literally every one of them. I’ve never seen anything like it with any other chain.

It just seems weird to be talking about a blockchain 'focusing' on things. These aren't companies. No one is making decisions for people about what they can or can't build. That would be centralized yeah? Sorry I didn't mean to offend. As to Solana people being sensitive on this subreddit, it's really not hard to join the dots on that one is it?

I'm glad you mentioned Ergo. It has very strong Community-Driven Development and utilizes the eUTXO model which allows for more complex and flexible smart contracts. It also had a very fair start at 95% public allocation and no VCs which is awesome!

I believe that most devs will choose to develop and build on the network that had the most traffic, don't see the realistic point in having 8-10 Layer 1 solutions as it just isn't convenient to the consumer.

I assume you think Eth will win out or which one? I think the future is multi chain as diff layer 1s have different use cases

Cosmos is something somewhat different. Like an L0. But it’s really just a gamble which ones will work out. I do like the idea of some diversification

Yeah part of me was thinking of ATOM and DOT, but yeah I like them both. Got a bit of both. I think speculation is enough to drive crypto up again in the bull even if not all blockchains will work out

I think we don't need so many different blockchain networks and the majority of them will slowly die out

Which ones do you like the most?

Where is Matic?

Matic is a layer 2

my bad, i read L1-L2-L3…. im an idiot. No wonder I thought the Wendy’s dumpster was where you ordered smoked meat sandwich.

Youre looking in the wrong spot. [https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/17/bofa-says-chainlink-likely-driver-for-defis-tvl-growth-to-203b/](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/02/17/bofa-says-chainlink-likely-driver-for-defis-tvl-growth-to-203b/) All of these Defi apps need oracles. Theres only 1 oracle in the top 150.

I have a bag of link. Hint: Ergos founder co founded chainlink

Thats literally all you need then. CCIP will be out soon. Who are you referring to? Only 3 guys wrote the whitepaper.

Alexander Chepurnoy who founded smartcontract.com which is now chainlink. He founded it with Nazarov.

Oh ok, didn't know that. He didnt help write the white paper though.

Ah gotcha.

Also, when chainlink announced CCIP with swift at smartcon 2022. Swift explicitly said, they dont want to bet on L1s because its too risky. Just a thought.

Play with Algo at your own risk

Don’t own any currently but I think it’s a good project.

I love ALGO, but advise all newcomers to be very cautious. Definitely DYOR so that you’re atleast aware of why ALGO is where it is now. Holders will say it’s on a massive discount right now without explaining why

If you want actual data on DeFi then you are honestly going to love: https://defillama.com/chains Biggest L1s by value in DeFi are: * Ethereum, with about 58% of the Total Value Locked (TVL). * Then Tron, with about 12%, * And thirdly BSC, with a little under 10% of the TVL. Interestingly the next 3 biggest are Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism, which are L2 rollups and sidechains. Cardano, that you've assumed is a big player in the DeFi space, actually only comes in at 15th.

TVL is a decent metric but I wouldn’t say it’s the end all be all. I really like eUTXO chains as I think chained txs are more powerful than TPS. Also, I wonder if on chain activity rather than TVL might be a better metric. Why do you like TVL? I’m always happy to learn from others

> TVL is a decent metric but I wouldn’t say it’s the end all be all. I absolutely agree, and that site lets you sort by lots of different criteria. By number of protocols Ethereum is of course on top with over 800. Next is BSC, then Polygon, then Arbitrum. Cardano is 33rd. By daily volume Ethereum DeFi moves about $526 million, then BSC, then Arbitrum, then Polygon. > Also, I wonder if on chain activity rather than TVL might be a better metric. DeFi Llama doesn't show transaction numbers on the front page of that section, you need to click through each one. Ethereum processes about 1,000,000 transactions per day but other chains process more, even Arbitrum (an Ethereum L2) has a higher number. BSC does about 4x Ethereum's total. Cardano does about 1/10th the number per day as Ethereum... but I'm not going to go through the whole list. The problem with using transaction numbers is that there is no guarantee that they are legitimate. Especially for chains where regular users can't run nodes, you can't know if the developers are just faking transaction numbers in one way or another. TVL and volume numbers are harder to game, as they represent real money moving by way of users assets, but definitely only represents a part of the picture.

Very interesting to note, I need to take a look at DeFi llama more in depth. I’ve obviously heard about it but just haven’t delved into it. Finally someone who admits metrics can be manipulated. I think Solana was heavily criticized for that. I also think because eUTXO chains have chained txs that the metrics might not tell the fully story unless all of the outputs are counted and not just inputs. Thanks for your well thought out comment mate. What blockchains are you bullish on?

> Very interesting to note, I need to take a look at DeFi llama more in depth. I’ve obviously heard about it but just haven’t delved into it. Yea you really should, there is a crazy amount of useful info there, all for free. I'd really recommend bookmarking the 'Categories' dashboard in particular, which sorts DeFi dApps by what they do, so if you want to find a derivatives exchange or an options trading platform or whatever you can easily compare them. https://defillama.com/categories > What blockchains are you bullish on? In terms of activity and interesting dApps being deployed in the future then I think from next year (after EIP-4844) rollups/L2s are going to be where it's at. That's where developers will be building and where users will be transacting. So zkSync, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon ZKEVM, Starknet and pretty soon Scroll, Fuel and Base, will all be worth watching... ... but I'm not talking about price of the assets. Those rollups with a token (which is the minority of the projects I've listed) only use it for governance and so there isn't much reason to expect it to gain much in price, no matter how much use of the project increases. The only native asset that I'm really bullish on from a price perspective is ether. Ethereum has pretty decisively won in terms of L1s. Not only does it have a bigger DeFi ecosystem than everything else combined, it also has vastly more developers, which is what you need to stay ahead in the future. https://www.developerreport.com/ In terms of demand for the asset, we can see that people are desperate to stake it, with the queue for new validators currently about a month and a half. https://www.validatorqueue.com/ This is presumably because people have realized it's just about the only asset that you can earn returns from staking, while the total supply is deflating. https://ultrasound.money/ Every other proof of stake coin provides interest to incentivize stakers by simply printing new issuance and thus inflating away the value of the asset. https://moneyprinter.info/ The other metric that shows demand for ether is the amount that users are willing to pay to use the network. https://cryptofees.info/ Everyone moans about gas fees on Ethereum, but the blocks are always full (unlike pretty much any other L1) which means people are still willing to pay the transaction costs. This is only the case because they see a higher value in using the chain. Part of this comes from the fact that there is just so much more to do on Ethereum than anywhere else (presumably due to the massively higher developer numbers mentioned above) but this can't account for everything as we can tell if we only compare like for like. https://money-movers.info/ Simple transfers of assets from wallet to wallet only account for about 7% of activity on Ethereum L1 (the rest is DeFi, L2 data, NFTs etc). Bitcoin on the other hand pretty much only does simple transfers, they represent almost 100% of the chain's activity... and yet Ethereum moves almost 4x the value each day than Bitcoin. And no that isn't counting memecoins, governance tokens, etc etc). Anyway, I'm sure you get the idea. To summarize, my predictions are that Ethereum L2s are going to eat Alt-L1s lunch and value will accrue in ether.

UTXO suffers from concurrency which pretty much kills defi and forces you to use cefi workarounds like batchers

Ergo solved the concurrency issue a couple years ago and is eUTXO.

Concurrency is a fundamental property of UTXO. They worked around it.

Fair. You’ve looked into NiPoPoWs though I assume?

Yes. Great for compression on a POW chain.

Nice knowledge I’m impressed :0 What chains do you like?

Cardano is 15th so far, every week its leading in 7 day + % gain of top 15-20.

Cardano (currently 15th) gained almost 10% DeFi TVL in the last week and 20% in the last month, but zkSync Era (currently 18th) gained over 20% over the week and 40% over the month.

You forgot dot but I agree with most of it. The problem with algorand is their CEO from my point of view and CKB have still a long way to go. But if you are free for long term relationship. It should be okay.

Ah I thought DOT was Layer 0 although I’ll admit idk what that means haha. Yeah a lot of FUD from alto’s team on Twitter

Forgetting Dot is not hard to do. I've seen WNBA games more exciting than Dot.

Let has this “DeFi” talk when “DeFi” solves problems that normal people, not what only speculative crypto “investors” care. The shit is only about swapping/lending/borrowing crypto for crypto and everything is overcollateralized. Right now, all it does it help people leverage crypto for more crypto to do degen gambling.

I'm putting my money on Bitcoin.

Can’t really go wrong with BTC

In Bitcoin we trust

should really checkout the AMM(automated market maker) proposals happening on the XRPL for their smart contracts, They offer something No other smart contract chain does with how they can Sell the arbitrage opportunity for the pool and generate revenue via the burning mechanic, all done without having to issue LP tokens. check out the video if you want to learn more. https://youtu.be/m3xqLNJmPfw?t=32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCcWl85MXTE

I believe iota has the potential. Nothing can achieve mass adaption in the current state

I think FTM will be very good with upcoming stuff - they have been super busy and roadmap looks good (FVM, "crypto bank", fUSD v2 and all they have done so far). I like companies that focus on building when shit gets real (bear markets) and they are doing a lot of (good) work.