As the crypto market continues to see volatility in 2022, certain themes are starting to emerge. One is that developers have been taking the opportunity very seriously, building some excellent utilities that might be disruptive in many markets ranging from event ticketing to finance. Another theme is that blockchains have been dealing with various challenges in meeting user needs and scaling, which is causing trouble in some areas.
The crypto that could deal with both the challenges and opportunities best will be the largest winners long term. That is why I think Solana, Ethereum, and Polkadot are the leading cryptocurrencies to purchase today.
1. Solana’s calling card
Developers are being attracted to the Solana blockchain — and for a great reason. Transactions on Solana tend to take only a few seconds to complete and cost a fraction of a penny. That compares to ETH, which is the biggest smart-contract enabled blockchain, which could cost over $100 for transactions that could take a few minutes to finality.
Low costs let developers to create products that are able to disrupt other industries. Solana Pay was announced a few weeks ago, which is a transaction system that lets customers pay merchants with stablecoin or Solana. Fees are just fractions of a penny, which can threaten expensive financial networks like Mastercard and Visa that charge 2% to 3% for every transaction.
Non-fungible tokens are also increasing on Solana in everything from video games to decentralized finance products, which has allowed developers to fund projects.
We do not know what creators will build on top of the Solana blockchain, but the there are endless possibilities, given the very low costs and quick transaction speeds, which is one reason you should be bullish on Solana crypto today.
2. Ethereum is the leader but has a big year ahead
The big money in smart contracts is on ETH, which is where NFTs have really became popular and businesses like Opensea are now processing NFT sales that amount to billions of dollars every month. But ETH does face higher transaction costs and a relatively slower network because of its POW structure, which will be a headwind if it is not improved fast.
A few upgrades are meant to move ETH to a reduced cost proof-of-stake protocol, which is known as Ethereum 2.0. If finished as planned, this will cut the cost of ETH and improve its transaction speeds, allowing it to compete better with Solana. And given the momentum and financial investment already behind Ethereum, simply being close in speed and cost might be enough for it to keep the leading spot among blockchains that are smart-contract enabled.
3. Polkadot’s future innovations
The blockchain that links other blockchains is Polkadot. It is able to create bridges across other blockchains like parachains or Ethereum, which are independent blockchains that live on Polkadot.
Like Solana, the price of Polkadot is not what the blockchain itself does but instead what developers do with the blockchain. If they were to use it to bridge from one blockchain to another or unlock new decentralized apps, the Polkadot coin will be used as a main part of that exchange.
What will be challenging is getting developers on board. I mentioned above that ETH is arguably the most mature crypto for developers and Solana is growing fast. I think Polkadot has a chance at unlocking a different layer of collaboration and development with parachains, bridges and other technologies. That is why this is a top crypto today.
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