Ethereum may not be perfect, but it's still the go-to for most DApp development
Editor's Note: This article comes fromCointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)Editor's Note: This article comes from
Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)
Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)
After years and dozens of trials, Ethereum remains the first choice for decentralized application developers to deploy their products and services. The "Dapp Market Report Q1 2020" released by Dapp.com clearly shows this trend. The data shows that 635 DApps are based on the Ethereum network, with 616,369 active users, accounting for about the total number of Dapps running on the market half of.
Despite what appears to be a gloomy global economy, Ethereum is experiencing its golden age in the fast-growing decentralized finance market. In the first quarter of 2020, the average daily activity rate of wallets interacting with DApps on Ethereum increased by 16% from the previous quarter. The “Dapp Industry Review Q1 2020” report released by DappRadar clearly shows this growing trend.
So why on earth are DApp developers still loyal to Ethereum despite its upgrade delays, poor scalability, and fierce competition with the likes of EOS?
secondary title
2017: The first and only DApp platform
Today, Ethereum is not the only platform that provides tools for developers to launch their own applications, but this was not always the case in the past. For the first DApps like Bancor that came out in 2017, Ethereum was the only proven and trustworthy solution. Nate Hindman, head of growth at Bancor, told Cointelegraph: “When Bancor launched in June 2017 as the first-ever DeFi protocol, Ethereum had no public contenders, so the choice was easy.”
According to Hindman, Bancor's users spend $120,000 per day in DApps, and it remains committed to choosing Ethereum because its DeFi usage and development is still the most mature and tested.
Aave, a major financial DApp with the ninth highest daily transaction volume, has been building on Ethereum for several years. “When we started building on ethereum, it was the only network with smart contracts,” its CEO Stani Kulechov noted in an interview with Cointelegraph.
Other blockchain projects have successfully improved upon Ethereum tools, providing more viable solutions. These include Ava Labs, a blockchain platform co-founded by Cornell professor and renowned blockchain scholar Emin Gun Sirer. He shared his thoughts with Cointelegraph on the issue:
“Before Ethereum, many people would scoff at the concept of decentralized finance and dismiss it as a pipe dream. Ethereum has proven that when you combine a talented developer community with a convincing sandbox When boxes are combined, they can be used to create visions where anything is possible.”
Kevin Sekniqi, Sirer's colleague and co-founder of Ava Labs, believes that at the time of Ethereum's launch, there were no compelling alternatives that could solve the scalability and performance issues that prevented DeFi from reaching its full potential.
secondary title
Lots of development tools and great user experience
Known for its unique user experience, the Ethereum network is in a class of its own. Development tools for its network include extensive templates, a MetaMask integration, a transaction logger, and its own browser built on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (known as the EVM) for faster logins.
The Ethereum platform has a large number of functions, allowing developers to create hundreds of thousands of different applications, unlike Bitcoin applications, which are composed of a single part of the multifunctional protocol.
So, according to Francesco Vivoli of blockchain-based lending marketplace Raise, a team developing a new DeFi product really wants to have all of these features at the start in order to focus on building the product. He added in an interview with Cointelegraph:
"We chose Ethereum because the Ethereum network offers strong, well-understood security guarantees, excellent development tools, and a wealth of documentation resources available."
The functionality of the Ethereum network allows developers to create a wide range of solutions, including but not limited to smart contracts for supply chain management, applications such as utilities or games, user identification services, decentralized asset transactions, and even for political elections. Electronic voting system.
secondary title
Network Effects and Experienced Developers
Due to the large number of developers involved, the availability of extensive documentation and constant updates, Ethereum is considered the best platform for deploying any kind of infrastructure, be it a game, a financial tool or a social network. This task does not require much programming experience or basic knowledge, as its applications are created on top of a fundamentally decentralized architecture.
Such versatility and strong support from a community of experienced programmers allows developers to troubleshoot efficiently and launch applications with minimal errors. A Consensys report on June 1, 2018 showed that the Ethereum community had around 250,000 developers at the time, and 94% of blockchain startups were built on the platform. Ethereum seems to be the only blockchain with this many technically educated engineers. According to Bancor's Hindman, this is key to the smooth operation of the system:
“Bancor’s core team is primarily working on the contracts, so it’s helpful to have a strong ecosystem of third-party developers who can get into the contracts and deploy interfaces for the users involved, and they’re Excited to experiment with new on-chain financial applications."
Many developers see Ethereum's strong network effects as an important factor in building DApps. According to Dapp.com, MakerDAO is the most popular Ethereum-based DApp among them. Niklas Kunkel, Head of Backend Services at MakerDAO, explained to Cointelegraph what this network effect means for DApps:
"Ethereum embodies the core spirit of decentralization early on, attracting many enthusiastic developer communities. Network effects, especially the composability of the protocol, are very powerful and cannot be underestimated. Developers choose to build on Ethereum Building because they inherited the entire original ecosystem including Dai, Uniswap, Compound, and MetaMask. The moat is too big and getting bigger every day.”
Another blockchain platform, Status Network (ranked 12th in user 30-day transaction volume) also chose Ethereum due to its network effects. Status Network’s head of marketing, Jonathan Zerah, told Cointelegraph:
Zerah added that the Ethereum community has the largest audience due to the mass adoption of DeFi and Web 3.0 technologies. Beni Hakak, CEO of LiquidApps, a technology company focused on optimizing decentralized development, shares the same view, noting: “Ethereum’s network effects, especially in the DeFi space, bring unique features to the ecosystem. advantages, enabling sustainable development.”
The importance of network effects for building financial applications was also demonstrated by Raise, a blockchain platform building a lending marketplace on Ethereum. Its founder, Francesco Vivoli, explained the project’s choice to Cointelegraph:
"An incredibly strong developer community that not only creates a network effect that enables new projects to leverage documentation, libraries, and other expert expertise, but also attracts the attention of large corporations and venture funds because of their interest in due diligence on the applicability and feasibility of blockchain solutions.”
Security and Stability
The pride of Ethereum is that any developer can use a decentralized virtual machine to deploy DApps. Smart contracts use code written in the original Solidity programming language to manage the resources of the EVM. Developers rely on scripts built on the "if-then" principle, and the nodes of the blockchain execute commands automatically.
related articles:
Ethereum 2.0 release date set for 11th hour as issues persist
1inch.exchange, whose DApp users trade $63.2 million per day, explains its preference for Ethereum due to its resistance to 51% attacks. Sergej Kunz, co-founder and CEO of 1inch.exchange, told Cointelegraph: “The Ethereum network is the most reliable and secure, more secure from 51% attacks than any other proof-of-work blockchain with smart contracts , because its miner rewards are very high.”
Kunz added that for the security of the overall system, it is best to have a stable, less upgradable framework. Social network Sapien also chose Ethereum because of its high protection against 51% attacks, said Ankit Bhatia, co-founder and CEO of the project.
Another factor mentioned by respondents was the stability of Ethereum. Michael Astashkevich, CTO of software development and consulting firm Smart IT, explained to Cointelegraph why Ethereum is considered the most stable blockchain for DApps: “Blockchain developers like complete, comprehensive and up-to-date documentation that can be used for predictive development process. It can also have stable and flexible client applications.” Astashkevich also noted that unlike other blockchain networks like Waves or EOS, the Ethereum framework is truly decentralized, which is critical for building and using It is very important for DApp engineers.
secondary title
viable business model
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steven Pu said that for any blockchain ecosystem, having a viable business model is the only way to survive and develop sustainably. He told Cointelegraph:
Community
“The most sustainable way to build a developer ecosystem is to make sure they can make money. A viable business model usually overrides any technical advantages. In the case of Ethereum, it was the first where developers could make money issuing tokens blockchain ecosystem."
secondary title
Community
