All ‘ Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) killers’ will fail: Blockdaemon’s Freddy Zwanzger

Blockdaemon’s ETH ecosystem lead Freddy Zwanzger believes Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) will retain its leadership position in the crypto ecosystem over the coming years due to its utility as a smart contract platform and upgrades to the network following the Merge. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph during the Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) Community Conference (EthCC) this week, Zwanzger said:

“It’ll continue to be a leader. I mean, obviously, the first and most important smart contract platform, and that’s not going to change.”

Blockdaemon is an institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure platform that offers node operations and infrastructure tooling for blockchain projects.

The Blockdaemon employee also took aim at so-called “ Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) killers” — competing Layer 1 blockchains — which have tried to topple Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) from its leadership position but failed.

“All the Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) killers from back in the day didn’t succeed, and I don’t expect them to succeed at all.”

Crypto projects that have been touted as “ Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) killers,” include Solana, Cardano ( $0.25 ) , Tezos, and Polkadot ( $1.28 ) , among others. Many of these blockchains tout lower fees and faster transactions but have fewer active developers and certain blockchains place h less emphasis on decentralization.

To date, none have managed to displace Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) from its number two spot in terms of market cap. Cardano ( $0.25 ) and Solana currently sit in the eighth and ninth positions, Polkadot ( $1.28 ) is ranked 11 while Tezos is ranked 37, according to Coinmarketcap.

Zwanzger believes that the upcoming Merge will further propel Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) onwards and upwards in terms of technology and price.

“There are so many good things in there, like environmentally-friendliness, [and] all sorts of things that are beneficial to a lot of people. Staking will become more attractive,” he said.

“It’s a show of strength and commitment that the roadmap is materializing.”

The Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) Merge involves transitioning it from the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mining consensus to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model, and has been tentatively scheduled to be rolled out around September 19.

However, Zwanzger admitted the big future challenge for Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) will continue to be scalability.

“The original Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) roadmap was focused on sharding, but that’s not so much the case anymore. Now we have a roll-up-centric roadmap, so scaling via layer 2 solutions.”

Currently, the “proof-of-work” consensus model allows the blockchain to process 15 to 20 transactions per second (TPS) according to data from Blockchair.

A quantum leap in the number of transactions per second is expected sometime in 2023 when the Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) network introduces sharding.

Sharding is a multi-phase upgrade to improve Ethereum ( $2,318.93 ) ’s scalability and capacity by splitting the entire network into multiple portions in order to increase the network capacity.

Sharding will work hand in hand with layer 2 solutions to further “supercharge” the scalability of the network.

Post-sharding, cofounder Vitalik Buterin has claimed the network will be capable of transaction speeds up to 100,000 TPS.