tl;dr: As alternatives emerge, gas prices stay high, and the roadmap stretches into the distant horizon, crypto projects look for alternative homes.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called Only 2 Chains Matter where I had the arrogant audacity to write:

Only Ethereum and Bitcoin matter right now. Everything else is pretty much a joke.

I write blog posts early in the morning and the coffee hasn’t always kicked in by then, so I am afraid the hyperbolic tendency that is the dark side of the marketing art may have reared its ugly head.

While the statement is currently true from a transactional volume and total value perspective, it’s starting to look like that won’t be the case for long.

There are a few reasons for this.

• the Ethereum 2.0 timeline is unknown and confidence is waning
• gas prices on Ethereum favor the rich
• the rollout of alternatives

SingularityNet = Canary in the ETH mine?

One of my favorite projects in the crypto space (disclosure: former advisor and token holder) is SingularityNet, a platform for decentralized AI.

They recently announced that they were porting part of their platform for Cardano.

According to their blog post, this was for a few reasons:

The move is driven by the speed and cost issues with the Ethereum blockchain, and the lack of clarity around the Ethereum 2.0 rollout

Recent developments in Cardano such as the successfully delivery of Shelley, continued decentralization and the recent roll out of Goguen functionality mean that the blockchain is mature enough to port a complex blockchain application like SingularityNET onto it

I found this interesting for a few reasons.

First, I didn’t think Cardano had any legs yet (despite high profile founders and a huge ICO).

Second, it provided some confirmation bias that Ethereum would evolve into a “crypto Wall Street” perfect for DeFi (and insurance-yay NXM), which leaves other applications hanging because of high costs/fees.

Third, “Eth 2.0 fatigue.” It’s like the Waiting for Godot of Crypto, which is probably why there are so many betting markets around its arrival.

Chains With Traction

It’s not just Cardano that is picking up steam.

The team at Flow is killing it with the NBA TopShot collection, Dr. Seuss, and other well known properites coming on board. Roham’s recent post said that conversion is 20x higher for TopShot than it was for CryptoKitties-arguably the 2nd most important blockchain application ever after Bitcoin. I saw a stat that the beta of the product had generated $2mm in revenue in 3 months.

I’ve also had recent conversations with the team at Radix and heard some really good things about NEAR as well as Solana.

As a bonus, here’s Piers from Radix explaining their value proposition.

Bottom line…the multi-chain world is soon upon us.

Blockchain Interoperability

Back in October, 2017, I wrote a feature for Venture Beat about cross chain protocols.

It ended as follows:

My crystal ball is as unclear as anyone else’s in this industry, but the one thing that consistently surprises those of us in the middle of it all is the pace of innovation.

If the Polkadot roadmap is any indication, we are about 18 months out from the first deployment. That gives all of us plenty of time to think critically about what the components are of a solid interoperability standard and which one is most likely to emerge victorious.

We also have time to begin developing plans for even more robust, dynamic, and powerful decentralized applications that leverage the “best of the best.”

The lag time until we see that first deployment also provides adequate warning to the establishment that decentralized technologies are maturing and, once bolstered by interoperability, are going to get closer and closer to mainstream use cases and adoption.

That feels pretty on point. The pace of innovation is there, with DeFi being example #1. Polkadot has begun to deliver (see post on Acala) and has risen to top 10 coin status, and Cosmos (another interoperability play) is in top 25.

The point is that others are seeing the arrival of the multi-chain world. For that world to work, you need interoperability.

Use Case Hardening and Cross-Chain Plays

And all of this means that Ethereum’s use case, I believe, will start to harden in the same way that Bitcoin has hardened around “digital gold.”

Which is fine.

We’ll have specialized chains for specialized needs. It will be a long tail of chains meeting ever more niche scenarios.

Great.

There are three things that everyone will need and they are

Those are the industries to watch, I suspect.

It’s going to be fun and interesting.