Former Ethereum Contenders Embrace Ethereum Compatibility
Towards a Stronger Interoperative Web 3.0 Ecosystem
If you are going to build a dApp on the blockchain, few developers will disagree that your BUIDL efforts should support the WebAssembly (WASM) virtual machine. WebAssembly is the most widely used runtime engine, widely adopted from web browser applications to cloud computing, optimized for performance on Web 3.0. With this open standard, developers can build applications in low-level languages for execution at native speed on hardware across a wide range of platforms, including all modern web browsers.
What not all developers have agreed on is whether the Web 3.0 blockchain environment they are building in should support the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum introduced a new world operating system when it developed a decentralized OS, EthOS, that supports programmable smart contracts. Until the recent arrival of the next-gen blockchains, the lion’s share of dApps built on Ethereum.
Yet much has been written about Ethereum’s shortcomings in the face of rapid dApp growth, notably the low transaction processing speed, scalability limitations, and high gas fees. Some new blockchains have chosen not to integrate this slower execution environment into their ecosystems but, in doing so, did they cut off their nose to spite their face?
The Ethereum Contenders: Round 1
In order to unleash the enormous potential of programmable smart contracts first conceived by the Ethereum network, numerous solutions have emerged. Basically, these solutions have been divided into two camps: Ethereum contenders and Ethereum extenders — Ethereum compatibility seekers.
Solana and Cardano have emerged as leading rivals to Ethereum. Both of these blockchains were out of the gate earlier than Ethereum in the implementation of a proof of stake (PoS) protocol, which uses fewer validators to verify transactions, significantly saving on computational power and thus lowering the operating costs and gas fees.
Following closely in step, Ethereum is introducing PoS in its Ethereum 2 upgrade. Since the London hard fork introducing PoS to Ethereum in August, volatility and average transaction fees on the incumbent blockchain have slowly declined.
Although Ethereum continues to struggle with processing a high volume of transactions while Solana through its cryptographic time-stamping and Cardano through its epoch blocks (a series of slots) are achieving record transaction processing speeds.
DeFi’s Search for Performance
DeFi applications, in particular, cannot ignore the time and cost advantages of these higher performing blockchains. With the fastest transaction speed (65,000 tps) and lowest average fees ($0.0015), dApps have been piling onto the Solana blockchain.
But as interoperability becomes another must-have feature of blockchains, the great divide between Ethereum compatible haves and have nots is becoming more pronounced. DeFi dApps from staking and farming to cross-collateralized lending are competing on cross-chain features. And Ethereum is indisputably the home of the most dApps, and also where early innovation on, for example, more capital efficient protocols such as Balancer-style pools and KyberDMM programmable pricing curves has taken place.
So rather than topple Ethereum from its reign on top of the dApps kingdom, Cardano and Solana are now fortifying the Ethereum ecosystem. Both blockchains are scrambling to develop EVM solutions to achieve Ethereum compatibility.
These former adversaries realize that, as dApps develop more interoperable features to take advantage of the ability to transfer assets and data among chains, closed systems post a growing risk to innovation and the overall growth of the Web 3.0 ecosystem.
ParaState’s EWASM Solution
What these high performance Ethereum contenders lack is a smart contract execution environment for Web 3.0 that maintains Ethereum compatibility. ParaState, on the other hand, has bridged this divide by incorporating Ewasm, the Ethereum version of WASM (WebAssembly) developed by the Ethereum Foundation. Using Ewasm, developers can recompile Solidity programs written for EVM to run on Ewasm.
This brings us to yet another next-gen blockchain, the Substrate-based Polkadot. The sharded multichain operates parallel interoperable blockchains called parachains. These cross-chains can transfer any type of data or asset among them. Because parachains operate in parallel, they can run applications with business logic simultaneously, and together have the potential to deliver in excess of 10,000 tps. To allow any dApp to leverage Polkadot’s scalability, speed and cross-chain functions while maintaining Ethereum compatibility, ParaState provides its virtual machine for building Web 3.0 dApps and smart contracts as a parachain of the Polkadot ecosystem.
The WasmEdge VM (previously SSVM) is the highest performing WebAssembly VM on the market, according to an IEEE Software magazine study. Because the SSVM pallet supports EVM, all of today’s Ethereum applications can be ported to higher performance Web3-ready Substrate chains. That means popular DeFi applications like Uniswap and Balancer could run on the highest speed and lowest cost blockchains.
Notably, developers are no longer constrained by the Solidity language. With WebAssembly, they can write smart contracts in Rust as well as in other domain specific languages (DSL). using multiple programming languages to write Ethereum-compatible smart contracts.
Developers Migrate to Open Web 3.0 Options
What ParaState means for the blockchain in the Web 3.0 world is developers no longer have to compromise; they can have the best of Ethereum and Web 3.0 on the next-gen high performance blockchains — in the case of ParaState, Substrate-based blockchains like Polkadot.
Meanwhile, EVM testnets have gone live on Solana and Cardano using the native Solidity code. For now, ParaState is the only solution to support both EVM and Ewasm, allowing these two infrastructures to communicate. While it is backward compatible with today’s EVM applications, it future-proofs the Ethereum protocol by bringing the LLVM and WebAssembly developer communities into the Polkadot ecosystem.
At the end of the day, some healthy competition has not hurt Ethereum, and Ethereum’s development seems to have come full circle. Incidentally the Ethereum contender Cardano and Ethereum extender Polkadot were founded by Ethereum cofounders Charles Hoskinson and Gavin Wood, respectively.
One term we are hearing less and less is Ethereum killer. The Web 3.0 dApp development race is no longer a zero sum game. The more Ethereum-compatible dApps that run on interoperable blockchains, the stronger the overall Web 3.0 ecosystem will be.
About ParaState
Known as Ethereum on steroids, ParaState is a multi-chain smart contract platform bridging the application and developer ecosystem between Polkadot, Substrate and Ethereum, as well as other chains wanting to provide Ethereum compatibility. While supporting the EVM pallet to provide seamless compatibility with all existing Ethereum applications, ParaState also provides developers with a next-gen smart contract implementation environment, Ethereum-flavored WebAssembly. These two infrastructures are ensured to talk to each other and share the same account system on ParaState.
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