Before you embark on reading this post, let’s all pause. No stop. For a moment. And put our maxi mindsets and prejudices out of the post before we continue. Because what we want to present here is something that is based on a logical sequence from a pragmatic perspective.
Ethereum and Cardano
The beauty of these two tokens is that one is known as digital oil (aka Ethereum) and the other, Cardano, has captured the attention of Africa as its founder Charles Hoskinson is a cofounder of Ethereum and has decided to strike it out on his own. The logic imputed into both tokens is premised on the fact that brilliant mathematicians and programmers are working furiously to push out what seems to be the breakthrough in solving the trilemma of the industry - scalability, security, decentralisation. There are whitepapers, theoretical frameworks, and what seems to be lacking in many tokens out there at the moment, is the execution between theory and application in the blockchain. This is where real world cases happen and where adoption goes mainstream. At the same time, the price of the token (hurrah for early adopters) ‘moons’, so to speak.
Forbes has published an article on Cardano (https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2021/04/26/cardano-and-ethereum-founder-analyzes-the-newest-evolutions-in-crypto-and--blockchain-technology/?sh=2af6923f3e52), and Steven Ehrlich (staff writer of Forbes) opines that the key to winning this race lies in the solving of the present blockchain issues. The tokens that do so quickly will dominate the space and the others, will cease to exist.
Zoominfo estimates the number of employees that these post-Bitcoin tokens with great potential as follows (these may be incorrect or outdated, but with data gathered from the reported links as at the time of this publication):
Ethereum - 325 (https://www.zoominfo.com/c/ethereum/412201367)
Cardano - 36 (https://www.zoominfo.com/c/cardano/463748059)
Zilliqa - 23 (https://www.zoominfo.com/c/zilliqa/435661433)
Solana - 33 (https://www.zoominfo.com/c/solana-labs-inc/458999317)
In the game of blockchain, without real world utility and adoption, realising revenue as with a business, it is very difficult for a token to survive beyond initial hype. All the money that can be raised for the initial stages will end up going to waste if it does not generate traction for users and especially institutions to take on what it can do. To this end, the team of the alt-coins that now seem to be compared to Ethereum have their employee/headcount set around the 30-ish zone. Again, this may be inaccurate by the time you are reading this, but we need to make certain assumptions here, that business costs have to be kept low to reduce the cash flow burn rate for startups.
With this headcount, the rate at which the developments can take place will only be able proceed at about the same pace across “Ethereum-chasing” competitors, assuming the brain power thrown behind the development processes is about equal. The developers can only build on what the initial whitepaper has laid out in terms of its theoretical framework and so if the initial ground efforts were already off, every other project will be out of alignment and will never reach the objectives set out.
Ethereum not only has a head start in terms of growth and making necessary adjustments to better its systems and processes, it also has a 10x headcount thrown behind developments. This is massive as a lot can be done within the same time period presented to it as compared to the other crypto/alt-coin underdogs. However, given the amount of time that both Ethereum and Cardano have taken to resolve issues like transaction speeds, sharding, etc. and the continual delaying in pushing out important updates to its token, one can only surmise major issues that need to be dealt with at the fundamental level. This would mean that they will have to spend their manpower and return to the drawing board once again to see what has gone wrong.
Enter Zilliqa
This is where Zilliqa becomes one of the most crucial investment choices in this game for investors. Hailing from what the world calls the “Little Red Dot” of an island, known in recent times because of Crazy Rich Asians, has a lean but effective team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) that actually presented a solution to Ethereum when it first started out - sharding. And this is not just a theoretical framework that gets passed down from developer to developer hoping to get some traction running.
Zilliqa is the “first public blockchain built entirely on a sharded architecture”. It started out in 2017 and its first test run in transactions hit more than 2000 transactions per second based on its sharding technique. Based on this technique, the shards would validate “microblocks’ simultaneously with other shards, and these microblocks are combined to create a single block on the blockchain. It launched its mainnet in 2019 to enable transactions and following that in the same year, smart contracts were made available on its platform, where developers can use Zilliqa’s own programming language, Scilla to create smart contracts.
The powerful part behind this is that despite competitors hitting out at the security issue, claiming that sharding reduces security, Zilliqa has not been hacked to date. To top it off, these are the other features that make it stand out from the competition.
First, ultra-low energy consumption.
Whilst Bitcoin runs on PoW (proof of work), Zilliqa’s energy consumption is known to be very much lower. To bring this into context (check out this article for more info: https://medium.com/builders-of-zilliqa/zilliqas-carbon-footprint-in-context-6dbf6d05a566)
For every 10,000 tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) that Ethereum will emit due to mining in 2021, Zilliqa will only emit 9 tons. There will certainly be no accusations from environmentalists or concerned billionaires alike.
Second, ultra-low transaction fees.
The design of the Zilliqa platform allows it to handle both gargantuan as well as micro transactions. The micro transactions are a plus point for developers to create and design more DApps (decentralised applications) and conduct those daily transactions without incurring high fees from carrying out their work. This increases adoption along the way.
It costs 0.1 Zilliqa which is an equivalent of 13 US cents to send hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars across a network. Try that with Bitcoin or Ethereum and know (sorry, feel) the difference!
Third, excellent decentralised ecosystem.
The Zilliqa network/ecosystem operates as both code and cryptocurrency. And its scheduled burn rate allows for continuity within the ecosystem, whilst drawing others in to contribute to its thriving nature. No transactions will be confiscated, revoked or blocked in way due to its decentralised nature.
At the time of this writing, Zilliqa is just at the 13 cent mark. Which is strange because Ethereum stands at $2700 whilst Cardano has risen to $1.70. Is there something that investors are missing out on? Has the market overpriced the other tokens? Or is this just a waiting moment for discovery where Zilliqa will explode into the radar of awareness of many investors out there?
Watch the crypto space as it journeys along this exciting growth.
Yours,
Cookie Mooning
This post is specially written to be posted on publish0x. No part of this contents can be reproduced without the author's consent.
This post was published 7 June 2021.
As with all articles of this nature, it is imperative that as an investor into crypto to do your own research. This is not investment advice.
