This article sorts out the characteristics and latest developments of the current mainstream public chains

Produced | Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
Produced | Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)

Looking back on the past, sometimes I sympathize with the investors in 2017, but sometimes I envy them. The sympathy is because the blockchain at that time was really barren. Except for Bitcoin, no one knew what the blockchain could do, and even Ethereum was only used as a financial tool.

At that time, the performance of Ethereum was poor, but even if the performance was good, no one knew what it could do, and they really didn't know what else to buy.A group of people can't see the way out with the money, like throwing money around in a dark night, some of them got a hundred times rich, and some of them lost their money in the scam.

Winners and losers are actually confused. Most of those projects that have brought hundreds of times and thousands of times have been swept into the garbage dump of history in retrospect today. It is not known whether the big guys who got rich because of this in the past were foresight or luck. The reason why I am envious is because the blockchain at that time was really simple,Bitcoin has no forks, and the only public chain that can be used is Ethereum. There is no cross-chain, no Defi, no NFT, no Metaverse, and various Fi...

You don’t need to go to Telegram or Discord every day to track the progress of many projects, familiarize yourself with the different technical characteristics of each chain, learn the endless innovations of Defi, watch the updates of public accounts in various circles, and read the comments on Weibo or Twitter of various big Vs , and the wealth code that may be contained.

At that time, except for professional traders, there was no difference between full-time or part-time jobs in the circle, because there was only so much information.In the blockchain after 2020, the information density will explode exponentially, and full-time and part-time jobs will bring a huge information gap, which in turn will lead to a possible huge gap in return on investment.

Aside from Defi, NFT, and games, even the current eruption of the multi-chain universe infrastructure ecology is enough to make a novice who has just come into contact with the blockchain "sigh". After all, each Layer1/Layer2 (hereinafter referred to as L1/L2) is a "country" with its own community culture, technical characteristics and development routes.

In this article we willThe characteristics and latest progress of the current mainstream public chainbitcoin

01 
bitcoin

You may be wondering why Bitcoin, shouldn't Ethereum be the first? If it was written earlier, it might be like this, after all, Bitcoin "has no ecology". As "digital gold", immobility is the best state.

However, Taproot may change this situation. Although Bitcoin does not have smart contracts, scripts can also implement basic functions such as multi-signature, time lock and conditional programming.

This Taproot upgrade will greatly improve Bitcoin in terms of efficiency and privacy, and provide many possibilities for other chains to access Bitcoin in the form of "side chains" in the future.Ethereum

02 
Ethereum

Ethereum is the undisputed king of public chains and the core meeting point of the current multi-chain universe. No matter how jumpy and arrogant other chains are, they must be connected to "wormholes" and Ethereum through various bridges.

What's more, other chains are fighting on their own. Ethereum can also "give birth to nine sons", such as Optimism, Arbitrum, Zk-Sync, Starkware, Matic... The real competitors of each chain in the future will be these L2s, rather than Ethereum itself.

There are a few things to know about the recent Ethereum:

1. Recently, due to frequent on-chain activities, there has been continuous deflation for several days.

2. After POW is transferred to POS in a few months, the rewards of POW for miners will be transferred to POS. At that time, the POS rewards of ETH2.0 will suddenly increase, and then attract more ETH to enter the pledge until the income reaches balance again.

3. ETH will be BTC's most favorable competitor for "Ultrasound Money" (ultimate currency) in the next few years.

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03 
Matic

Matic is not L2, Matic is not L2, Matic is not L2, important things are said three times. No matter how Matic argues, its essence is still a POS sidechain of Ethereum, not L2. In addition to the Plasma channel that Matic's Token takes, it can be regarded as L2.

All other Erc20 above are sidechains. Of course, this is also a sidechain/L2 with the most complete ecosystem. Almost all the infrastructure you can think of, Dex,machine gun pooland NFT etc.,You can even find branches opened by Defi giants here.

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04 
Optimistic and Arbitrum

Optimistic (OPT) and Arbitrum (ARB) are the two leading stars of Optimism Rollup. OPT was originally the L2 that everyone was most optimistic about before ZK went online. There are many reasons.

1. OPT is the first to do Optimism rollup.

2. As the first well-known project to test Rollup, SNX runs on the OPT testnet.

3. The founder of OPT and the founder of Uniswap are said to be a junior and college classmate. Uniswap also decided to launch OPT a long time ago. As a result, an ARB broke out halfway and took all the limelight from OPT...

for examplefor exampleEVM Compatibility ModeHowever, it doesn't really matter whether the dispute is one round of challenges or multiple rounds of challenges.

The most important thing is that OPT bears the brand of VC (venture capital) capital blessing, with Paradigm and A16Z behind it, and ARB has the feeling of a community project. In this "slightly anti-VC" cultural encryption tribe, it is obvious that the latter is more pleasing.Coupled with the fact that the Uniswap community voted to deploy Arb earlier on the mainnet Arb, OPT's limelight was completely robbed.

The status quo is that the number of projects in the Arb ecosystem far exceeds that of OPT, and the TVL far exceeds that of OPT. ARB and OPT are deployed at the same time.Uniswap V3The trading volume of Arb far exceeds that of OPT. On native projects, ARB has MCDEX, GMX, etc., but OPT has none. Reddit’s community points program finally chose ARB among dozens of submissions…

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05 
Zk-sync and Starkware

ZK-Rollup, as the "brightest star" of Ethereum's expansion, does not know when it will be fully lit, but as a mid-to-long-term expansion plan hand-picked by God V, it can be said to be the most important expansion method of Ethereum in the next few years ,none of them.

So both Zk-sync and Starkware are impossible to avoid, what is the difference between them?

Matter labs has been engaged in the orthodox Zk rollup. Starkware first created Validium (an off-chain version of Zk-rollup for data release). Matter labs said: "Is it really okay for you to sacrifice security like this?"

Later, I found that the TPS of data off-chain is much higher, and the gas is much cheaper, so I also got a ZK-Porter, and the data is also put off-chain. Everyone laughed when they saw it, isn't this the Validium you used to diss others!

Matter Labs once defended: "We are not Validium, we are safer than him." It is quite the feeling that Matic refused to admit that he was a sidechain, and he insisted that he was an L2. Then God V also let go, saying that data off-chain is not very safe, and he would rather use OP.

Of course, this is just an episode. There is no doubt about the technical strength of the two companies. The data storage on-chain and off-chain have also been made into two different products by the two companies, targeting customers with different needs in terms of performance and security.

So besides the zk-SNARKs used by zk-Sync, which is the zero-knowledge proof technology, Starkware uses zk-STARKs. What is the difference between the two? Maybe it's mainly a difference in concept style.

ZK-Sync wants to become an L2 that is completely parallel to ETH, completely decentralized, completely open, and fully compatible; while Starkware is more like a proprietary expansion solution provider, providing services for companies like dydx, ImmutableX and others provide expansion solutions.The differences in these underlying design philosophies are reflected in software licensing, developer stacks, and upgradeability.

It is not known which one is better, but Starkware is currently two positions ahead of ZK-Sync by virtue of the previous Dydx fire and Immutable X, which will soon be launched in cooperation with Opensea.

However, the curtain of L2 has just opened, who will win in the end?Let us wait and see, and welcome to share your views in the message area.

Next preview:In the next part of the multi-chain universe, we will talk about new public chains such as Dot, Cosmos, Ada, Solana, AVAX, Algorand, ICP, Fantom, Near, Nervos, and Celo.