At first it was just Cardano, the much touted, much talked about  smart contract blockchain which bore the title Ethereum killer. As Ethereum's notoriously high gas fees continued to present a barrier for some wanting to get into the space, for years, Cardano wore the cap unchallenged as the go to alternative with a  market cap that stood unthreatened, and though there were many sceptics, so too were there many devout followers who kept adding to their bag in anticipation of the day when Cardano's peer researched blockchain was launched. And then, in 2021 all of that changed. Cardano's launch was underwhelming, and under its nose, another blockchain, Solana, began its rise. 

"VISA of the digital ecosystem"

Solana, built for high speed transactions,  65,000 TPS, for fractions of a penny, $0.00025 per transaction, attracted major investors in 2021 including FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried, while officials at Bank of America dubbed it the VISA of the digital asset ecosystem and JP Morgan researchers projected that Solana could overtake Ethereum in the NFT market. A lot of high powered interest, right? And Solana's market cap soared. In 2021, the protocol soared, climbing from $1.80 near the beginning of the year to peak at near $260 in November. 

But then with the rise in interest, Solana's promise of fast, reliable, and cheap transactions was tested and the network suffered a number of outages and performance issues which caused some to question its viability. 

The coin has since lost value, falling to $89 earlier this month, a drop many blames on the network's performance issues. And though there are those who still swear by Solana, pointing out that even with its performance issues, it processes more than all other blockchains combined, others are on the hunt for the next best project.

Enter Avalanche (AVAX) and FTM. 

Is Avalanche the next powerhouse?

A relatively young platform behind it, AVAX was launched in 2020 and dubbed blazingly fast, low cost, and eco-friendly. The blockchain project has been on a run since 2021 with Ava Labs President John Wu recently boasting that the blockchain is now seeing more than 1 million transactions per day.  Last year, in 2021, AVAX also attracted the interest of major investors.  Built on a proof of stake model, Avalanche reportedly processes over 4,500 transactions per second, which is significantly lower than Solana's reputed 65,000 transactions per second, but also a lot more than Ethereum's 13. Avalanche, however, boasts one second finality compared to Solana's 13 whereas Ethereum's finality time is more than one minute. 

Avalanche certainly seems promising, but before you run off to bet on AVAX, you may want to take a look at the FTM project. 

Can Fantom surpass Solana?

Fantom was launched in December 2019 as an open sourced, permissionless, decentralized, scalable, secure blockchain with low transaction fees. It also utilizes a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to implement security, low transaction fees, and high throughput.

Both blockchains are scalable, secure, decentralized, and have low transaction fees.  Fantom also has a lightning fast finality time.

So my question is, guys, with the markets relatively low, do you think the time is right to invest in Fantom and AVAX? I've held a small bit of FTM since last year, and it has not escaped me that Fantom has been attracting a lot of attention at the start of this year while it's still not yet listed across major exchanges like Coinbase, for instance, so there's still a lot of room for growth on this project. Fantom has also attracted the attention of major investors including FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried and Andre Cronje, founder of Yearn Finance.  

So what do you guys think? Are you betting on FTM? AVAX? Solana? Or are you holding true to ETH? And with the current volatility in the market, is it the right time to invest? 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. So lemme know your thoughts, guys, and until the next one, arriverderci!