Most of the Major Blockchain Projects are Established on Ethereum

Kevin Rooke, a cryptocurrency researcher, and YouTuber noted that the Ethereum community presently has over 250,000 developers and 94 out of the major blockchain projects have launched on top of the Ethereum network.

“You simply cannot build excellent applications and products without a big developer base behind you. But today, Ethereum has roughly 250,000 developers building on its platform. The industry is still really small [and thus], 250,000 is a shocking number. Ethereum’s development framework called Truffle already has more than 500,000 downloads and even with the price fall of 2018, development interests have continued to rise,” noted Rooke.

Majority of cryptocurrencies and tokens aside from payment-focused blockchain networks such as Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin are established on top of the Ethereum protocol. Even Tron, which is the 10th largest cryptocurrency in the international market with a market cap of $3.4 billion, is established in the ERC20 token standard of Ethereum.

Some of the major blockchain projects that are presently on the Ethereum network include $2 billion China-based IoT blockchain network VeChain, $1 billion high-performance blockchain Ontology, $900 million South Korea-based ICON, and $850 million Sharding-focused blockchain project Ziliqa.

In 2017, alternative blockchain protocols have surfaced, with an objective to rival Ethereum and turn into the leading decentralized application platform. EOS, NEO, Cardano, Qtum, and ICON have acquired important market valuation and recognition in the global market, with their aim on decentralized applications.

EOS, which is also established on the Ethereum network raised a historic $4 billion in the biggest initial coin offering (ICO), with approval from the likes of billionaire investor Mike Novogratz. NEO, Cardano, and Qtum are the only decentralized application protocols created from scratch, out of the major 100 blockchain projects with a genuine vision of becoming the leading blockchain protocol.

Rooke stressed that large capital is not enough to commence the process of developing a major blockchain project, especially for decentralized applications. Ethereum’s potential can only be seen through effective Dapps and if developers exist from the Ethereum protocol, despite its complicated architecture and technology, the Ethereum network will drop in value.

With that being said, Rooke stated that Ethereum has already taken the position of being the leading smart contract platform for the cryptocurrency industry, stating:

“How do you get developers when you don’t have anyone using your platform? How do you get using your platform when you don’t have developers who are going to build that underlying infrastructure to make it easy to launch applications? In some ways, money can kick start the process but in crypto today, everyone has money, including Ethereum, so that cancels out the competitive advantage.”