What happened to ETH Gas fees ?
Everyone’s trying to jump ship from Ethereum’s layer one. It seems that this week, finally, the community has had enough of Ethereum ETH gas fees .
That’s a bit of exaggeration, as ETH gas fees are high precisely since people are willing to pay such a premium for Ethereum block space. But we’re seeing a kind of “applied trickle-down economics“. Where some brave degens are wandering outside to see what else exists in the world.
The impact has been especially pronounced on Binance Smart Chain. The number of daily transactions has skyrocketed within the past few days. Fueled by new clients coming out to play with its DeFi offering.
Successful ETH competitor, or should we say Ether killers ?
The “Ether killers” story has existed likely ever since there has been an Ethereum to kill. Projects like EOS, Tron, NEO. Cardano pulled in a lot of attention in 2017-2018 for their guarantee of way better scalability. With the special case of Cardano, which to this day has not completely launched, all of them offer a more scalable environment for DApps, though that’s accomplished at the cost of worse decentralization.
However, three years afterward we’re still complaining about ETH gas fees . A few may interpret that as a win for decentralization, but in all honesty, the reason for Ethereum’s dominance is basic: The bear market happened.
The bear market rapidly eroded interest and brought fees down to reasonable levels, making all these other platforms completely unnecessary. All individuals required was a blockchain to execute with tokens, and Ethereum’s arranging impact made it excel at that.
Importantly, Ethereum was also exceptionally friendly to developers, at least mostly due to its network effect. Platforms like EOS were never able to duplicate that. That kept all the innovation that was then brewing beneath the cover solidly on Ethereum, sealing the destiny of these first-gen Ether killers. They may have some traction, but they’re likely never aiming to really slaughter or “flippen” Ethereum.
So, today’s traction on BSC is very much a case of bull market froth. When ETH gas fees go down on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and all smart contract platforms that fail to attract truly innovative developers will falter.
What is special about Ethereum?
Imagine you’re a DeFi developer for a second: You have this amazing idea that nobody else bought it, where do you build it? The first thought coming to your mind is Ethereum. There’s rich funding, a lot of liquidity, and since your idea is new you don’t need to worry about DeFi competitors anyway. The only possibility where you might actually prefer another blockchain is if you literally can’t implement it on Ethereum, for example, due to limitations of the EVM or because your protocol would use up all the ETH gas fees by itself.
Without giving users and developers a compelling reason to switch sides, newfangled Ether killers are just looking at failure like last year. Unfortunately, that reason can’t be scalability alone, since Ether killers are betting that Ethereum will fail in both the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap and its rollup development. There is, however, a decent opportunity in “picking up the scraps” by acting like a double skin for Ethereum, and it seems that a lot of would-be Ethereum competitors are moving in that direction.
Can any competitor actually “flippen” Ethereum at this point? it is possible. It requires innovation and a bit of systemic failure from ETH gas fees side. The two ingredients of any historic case of upstarts dethroning the champion. Think of BlockBuster, Nokia, Poloniex. People thought they’d continue to dominate at the time. But the companies came up making some massive blunders that cost them to fail.
Ethereum community acts to secure its lead
The pressure to perform is part of what led to this week’s biggest news for Ethereum DeFi. Matic rebranding to Polygon and chasing a self-described “Polkadot on Ethereum” strategy. The project, endorsed by prominent Ethereans. Aims to create an interoperability framework for all of Ethereum’s followings and sidechains and to stand against the Ether killers group. Let continue the ” ETH Gas fees have encouraged Ether killers ” article
The plan is sweet and exceptionally much necessary. Without rollup interoperability, DeFi developers would have been constrained to go where everyone else is, overloading that specific platform. The news is tremendous for Ethereum’s dominance potential, but the methodology requires great execution.
Still, the rollup-centric path that ETH gas fees are taking makes me feel. That the Ether killers narrative will inevitably pass on. Winner-takes-all results are amazingly uncommon and there’s no reason to think it’ll be any different in crypto. In the long run, great interoperability solutions. — Where compatibility does not depend on building with the right SDK —. Will develop and permit making a single environment.
From a down to earth viewpoint there’s no contrast between employing a rollup or a Polkadot parachain. The complete concept of “Ether Killer” would make small sense in a profoundly interconnected environment. Even though beyond any doubt ventures will still compete for the distinction and honor of being a blockchain center.
References
https://cointelegraph.com/news/finance-redefined-is-this-the-escape-from…
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereum-based-social-media-project-shuts-down-as…
https://cryptonews.com/news/crazy-bitcoin-and-ethereum-fees-dampen-rally…
https://www.newsbtc.com/news/cardano/cardanos-ada-hits-3-year-high-as-bets-on…
https://cointelegraph.com/news/as-defi-booms-ethereum-s-blockchain…