Etherum (ETH) is the most popular smart contract platform in the cryptocurrency market. As of this writing, the market cap for ETH is around the $280 billion mark. In contrast, Cardano (ADA) boasts the 8th highest market cap of any blockchain currently listed on CoinMarketCap. As of this writing, ADA’s market cap is around $47 billion.

However, it’s important to note that Bitcoin’s market cap currently stands at around $1 trillion, with the total number of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, NEO, Dash, etc.) all sitting in the tens of billions.

More interesting than that, however, is the fact that if Ethereum was to go away tomorrow, it would take Cardano (ADA) with it, since Ethereum is currently the market leader in the space and the Ethereum ecosystem is the foundation of the Cardano blockchain.

Similarly, Ethereum could theoretically disappear from the market, and the Cardano blockchain would still survive. Obviously, those are some lofty heights for the future of cryptocurrency, but there’s a lot of blockchain growth to go, and Ethereum appears to be one of the major accelerators of that growth.

If the Ethereum network has some kind of blockchain failure (disabling it), the market leader in the space (Bitcoin) could theoretically come back at any time and gain market share, but Cardano (ADA) is widely seen as one of the most innovative and forward-thinking blockchains in the crypto space today.

Since Ethereum is the leader, it earns the win, even though Ethereum has more market cap (almost $200 billion vs. $47 billion) and has an arguably easier time securing developers to build on its blockchain.

Winner: Ethereum