Solana | Theta | Terra | Algorand | Polkadot: The next generation of Blockchain Platforms

While Blockchains like Matic, Cardano, and many more are disrupting the world of Blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies, keeping an eye on the development and upgrades have become a pain for many people.

In the crypto world, Minutes feel like days, Hours like Years, and Days like Decades.

What you should understand is that, in many cases, it’s useless to keep track of upgrades and new releases. Do you still check if Orkut has released a new version? Some of you might not even know what Orkut is. It was a social media platform.

Let’s take a more recent example, do you keep track of what is the new phone being released by Nokia or are you keeping track of the upcoming Apple event or the new updates by Oneplus?

The point here is, it doesn’t take time for a company/brand/platform to get popular and vice versa.

The same has been happening in the world of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, just at a highly accelerated pace.

We have had an amazing Ethereum run, followed by a Dogecoin craze, then the rise of Matic, Cardano, and then Solana. This is a classic example of how the trend is changing exponentially in the decentralized world.

Keeping up with this trend becomes the biggest pain.

For instance, you might be living in India and inclined towards developing your next NFT platform on Matic, but you have no idea about Solana, its high throughput and scalability, and why its proof of History can be even more suitable for your use case.

But the list just starts from this “For instance”.

Platforms like Avalanche, DragonChain, Kurara, Akala, Kadena, Fantom, Zilliqa, and many more are waiting to blow your brains out when you are deciding on the platform you want to build on.

While it will blow my brains out too to evaluate all of them, I have managed to evaluate the following 5 platforms depending on my interests and belief in their capabilities.

Evaluation of Solana: A Moment in (Proof of) History

Ethereum killers are abundant in the crypto industry but none of them have been successful in providing more value and becoming a prominent competitor of Ethereum.

Solana, on the other hand, has gained increasing traction over time and it is certainly more than just an Ethereum killer. If Ethereum was Samsung, Solana might be the Oneplus(BTW I have Oneplus that’s why I keep coming back to it).

PS If you are wondering who is Apple, that’s obvious(I have Apple too, the real one that you can eat, not the reference one sadly).

Solana is a more efficient alternative to Ethereum. The fast execution and ability to generate buzz, on the other hand, has caused its SOL token to skyrocket and blue-chip investors to rush in with $314 million of capital this summer.

How Solana has stood apart?

Solana’s key features:

1. Proof of History(PoH) consensus — lesser energy consumption, efficient, faster.

2. Tower BFT — PBFT with a twist to leverage the PoH consensus

3. Turbine — Better than the typical gossip protocol

4. Gulf Stream — enables faster transaction validation, playing a major role in the high

throughput of Solana

5. Sealevel — Concurrency in Blockchain transactions, very powerful

6. Pipeline, Cloudbreak, Archivers — They would get awards for Supporting roles if there was a Blockchain Filmfare.

An application built on Solana Blockchain can leverage these characteristics to achieve unparalleled throughput, scalability, security, and finality.

Solana Blockchain can process 710,000 transactions per second on a standard gigabit network if the transactions are, on average, no more than 176 bytes.

Although Solana’s mainnet beta was only released in Feb 2020, it is still a relatively new project. Despite this, SOL, Solana’s native cryptocurrency, has already surged into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Even though the mainnet is fully functional, it is officially still in beta, indicating that the team is still working on improving the network’s features and stability.

Recently, Solana mainnet beta faced issues due to an increase in the number of transactions. Due to a substantial increase in the number of transactions on the platform, primarily due to a new social networking site called grape, a huge backlog of transactions caused the network to crash.

While people started raising questions about Solana being centralized, one thing has been forgotten that it is still in a nascent stage. That’s what beta release is for.

The thing to consider here is that it achieved 400,000 transactions per second. THAT’S AMAZING.

Evaluation of Theta Blockchain — Streaming Streamlined

From learning to cook, exercising at home, learning to take your dog to walk every day, having more dinners with the family, to learning new skills, the lockdown has taught us a lot. However, one thing that has grown significantly in the midst of all this is the consumption of digital content.

Be honest, how many series or movies have you watched online? I have watched A LOT.

Results showing the growth in the consumption of digital content such as video streaming was evident since the first week of the lockdown, all around the globe. If I start mentioning the numbers of this growth, I would probably have to write down a lot. I don’t intend to do that so for more information regarding this, you can visit this report by Deloitte.

Theta Blockchain, which made its debut just a few months back, seems to have spotted the need for revolutionizing online media miles away. Theta’s blockchain network uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol for content sharing in real-time.

The network’s open-source blockchain protocol also supports DApp development however the tech might not be that updated. I tried developing on Theta but was faced with several issues.

Getting test Theta tokens was one of them but since the deployment cost is not that high you can directly test on the mainnet also. Hopefully, the project will evolve in the near future from a technical standpoint.

Theta uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, like Tendermint’s blockchain system. Participants must deposit huge sums of THETA tokens to process transaction blocks.

Theta is a blockchain initiative in the video streaming sector, which is expected to grow at over 18% CAGR from 2020–24, with greater long-term growth as technologies like blockchain and virtual reality evolve. YouTube, Twitch, and Netflix may benefit from Theta’s efforts to lower streaming costs and streamline distribution, potentially accelerating the rise of fully decentralized video delivery services.

With investors such as Samsung NEXT, Sony Innovation Fund, BDMI Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, CAA Creative Artists Agency, DCM, and Sierra Ventures, Theta seems to be a major platform of the future.

Evaluation of Terra (Luna) — A project with Stable benefits

Terra (Luna) is a blockchain technology that supports smart contracts, oracles, and stablecoins. It provides users with a wide range of stablecoin possibilities.

The algorithm preserves asset value on the blockchain by adjusting monetary supply to reduce transaction fees. Price stability algorithm promotes smoother and more stable cross-border trades.

Its features like LUNA (Terra’s native coin), Anchor protocol, multiple stablecoin options, Mirror protocol, using GAS to facilitate the execution of smart contracts, and Community-based Governance make it stand out of the rest.

Using Terra has various benefits. The protocol’s permissionless and decentralized nature suits many industry players. Also, its payments, infrastructure, and logistics simplify the work of stablecoin and Dapp developers.

Terra’s ability to convert fiat currency to LUNA is a key factor in its growing prominence.

Terra’s self-adjusting monetary supply processes are unique. Decentralized projects are known for their pioneering spirit.

Companies like Binance Labs, OKEx, Huobi Capital, and Dunamu have invested in Luna, showing their belief in the project. It has already partnered with over 15 e-commerce services and has an exponentially growing ecosystem.

For a world moving towards a digital, decentralized, and borderless space, Terra seems to be a perfect solution, not competing but complementing the existing payment network as its combines the volatile crypto world and the stable FIAT world.

Evaluation of Algorand — Making Borderless economy possible without the Blockchain trilemma

For the Blockchain world facing trilemma, Algorand is a forkless Blockchain that leverages the pure proof of stake consensus algorithm to achieve decentralization, security, and scalability all at the same time.

While scalability may be the obvious priority for many applications, achieving scalability does not mean a tradeoff of decentralization or security. All three are essential to a successful blockchain platform or more importantly, to an ecosystem that can be globally accepted and adopted.

The fact that Algorand is preparing for the post-quantum era shows how this platform is keeping its eye on the future to become a sustainable candidate for the decentralized world.

It is a layer-1 solution which means that the applications are built directly on the Blockchain, enjoying unmatched speed and security.

It has a public as well as a private network, catering to both worlds. The possibility of combining these networks will become real in the near future, making the concept of hybrid Blockchain simple and efficient.

There are many features that the Algorand ecosystem facilitates, such as:

• Atomic transfers
• Algorand standard assets
• Stateful smart contracts
• Popular stable coins available(USDC and USDT)
• Rekeying
• And many more…

Considering the latest news of Algorand being adopted worldwide in various sectors, including the recent announcement by El Salvador to build its infrastructure on Algorand, this Blockchain platform should always be under your radar.

Evaluation of Polkadot — Connecting Blockchains that connect the world!

For the siloed Blockchain world, Polkadot is a multi-chain Blockchain platform that provides unprecedented cross-chain interoperability. It allows users to move more than tokens between blockchains and allows them to exchange actual data.

In essence, every Blockchain platform has a different configuration in terms of cryptographic standards, consensus, nodes, and many more things under the hood. Therefore, data can not be transferred among these Blockchain platforms.

Generally, techniques like hash time-locked smart contracts are being used to create a token bridge between the Blockchain platforms to allow applications for leveraging the user base or features of multiple blockchains at the same time.

However, the solution by Polkadot is more suitable, effective, permanent, and secured.

Furthermore, Polkadot can transfer data from private blockchains to public networks.

The Polkadot network’s native token is DOT. The system depends on it for a few things, like voting, table proposals, and bonding. It can also be used as a payment system.

Polkadot approaches consensus uniquely. The platform introduces the GRANDPA consensus mechanism (GHOST-based Recursive Ancestor Deriving Prefix Agreement). This feature makes Polkadot’s network more secure and resilient. It enables networks to pool security.

Even though there are a few barriers such as the learning curve or the allocation of the DOT token raising concerns, or even the questions around the interoperability of a few platforms, Polkadot still seems to be the best bet when it comes to connecting the Blockchain world which is kind of an irony since Blockchain itself connects the world through a peer-to-peer network, in most cases.