What will be the next potential ecosystem after Solana?
According to the MEXC market, the Solana project’s SOL has increased by more than 682% in the past month since August. Although it has experienced a mainnet crash and market stabilization, it still maintains an increase of more than three-fold.
Other than Solana, other public chain projects in the market also hold potential. The following is an introduction to Polkadot, Celo, Cosmos, Near, and Avalanche. As the competition in the public chain intensifies, it is worth it to wait and see who will capture the value of more markets and projects in the future. We believe that only the continuous progress of blockchain infrastructure can bring a more prosperous ecosystem. (the following data are sourced from CoinGecko on September 23)
Polkadot
Token: DOT (30.69 USDT)
Market Value：$30.397 billion USD
Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain framework that aims to become a scalable heterogeneous multi-chain framework. Polkadot’s main purpose is to connect the independent blockchains. Polkadot enables communication and data transmission between different blockchains. Polkadot was founded in 2015 and is the person mainly in charge is Gavin Wood, one of the founders of Ethereum.
Polkadot mainly focuses on cross-chain communication. Its framework is mainly divided into three roles: Relay Chain, Parachain, and Bridge. The Relay chain is the core of Polkadot, which is responsible for the security, consensus, and cross-chain capability of the whole Polkadot network. The parachain is an independent blockchain connected to the relay chain, which is connected through leasing slots. The bridge allows parachains to interact with external blockchains (such as Ethereum and Bitcoin networks).
As the deployment of projects on Polkadot is mainly in the form of leasing slots as parachains, the Polkadot ecosystem is one of the most noteworthy public chains when the mainnet launches in the near future.
Introduction to some Ecosystem Projects
(Since Polkadot’s mainnet has not been officially launched yet, the projects deployed on the Kusama network will be labeled with the project name of Polkadot’s official network later.)
Polkadot’s Testnet Project Kusama
Relavant token: KSM (351.8 USDT)
Market value: $2.92 billion USD
Kusama is Polkadot’s pre-production environment canary network built on an independent network based on similar code as Polkadot, but Kusama has faster governance parameters and a lower entry threshold. Therefore, Kusama is more radical, Polkadot is more conservative and gives priority to stability and reliability. Thus, itis more stable and slow in the governance and upgrading processes.
DeFi Aggregator Karura (Acala)
Related token: KAR (9.81 USDT)
Market value: $84 million USD
Acala is the world’s first decentralized open financial alliance and the Polkadot’s ecosystem’s financial center. It aims to create an open financial framework with the Polkadot ecosystem to bring global crypto assets financial stability, liquidity, and accessibility. It has launched core Layer 1 modules such as a stablecoin Honzon protocol with cross-chain collateralized multi-assets, staking asset liquidity Homa protocol and a decentralized exchange.
Founded by the Acala Foundation, Karura is a scalable, EVM compatible, and customizable network for DeFi based on the Kusama ecosystem. Karura’s one-stop DeFi platform brings users a series of out-of-the-box financial applications, including on-chain Staking liquidity products (IKSM), multi-collateralization of the cross-chain stablecoin kUSD, and a DEX based on an automated market maker mechanism.
Ethereum Polkadot Cross-chain bridge Moonriver (Moonbeam)
Relevant token: MOVR (340.5 USDT)
Market value: $511 million USD
Moonbeam is a cross-chain bridge smart contract project based on Polkadot’s network. It is compatible with Ethereum, supported by the Polkadot network, and developed by PureStake. With the help of the Moonbeam smart contract and the compatibility with Ethereum’s development toolset, decentralized applications based on bridge integration can be quickly built.
Moonriver is a parachain on Kusama released by Moonbeam.
Privacy Protocol Calamari (Manta)
Relevant token: KMA (MANTA)
Manta Network is Polkadot’s first on-chain privacy protection project. It provides the highest level of on-chain privacy protection for DeFi users through the cryptography technology zkSNARK, aiming to become the privacy protection infrastructure of the whole decentralized finance world. Manta’s early products include MantaPay, a private payment protocol, and MantaSwap, the first private DEX protocol in the Polkadot ecosystem. Furthermore, Manta can provide plug-and-play privacy protection services for the whole Polkadot ecosystem based on the Substrate framework.
Calamari is the leading network of the Manta network and will provide privacy services for the whole Kusama’s DeFi network. It is the only network in the current Kusama ecosystem network that can resist censorship and protect privacy while ensuring decentralized interaction.
Cross-chain Asset Management Platform SherpaX (ChainX)
Relevant token: KSX (PCX)
ChainX is the earliest project launched by the Polkadot ecosystem. It is committed to the developing and researching BTC layer 2 expansions, digital asset gateway and Polkadot’s secondary relay chain to realize cross-chain asset interworking and lead the new direction of Bitcoin Cross-DeFi.
SherpaX is the leading network of ChainX. It transfers cross-chain assets through complete decentralization so that BTC and ETH can flow to other chain systems but is also an independent testnet.
Cross-chain platform Sakura (Clover)
Relevant token: SKU (0.23) (CLV)
Market value: $25 million USD
Clover is a Polkadot parachain committed to providing simple and easy-to-use blockchain infrastructure and creating a one-stop EVM-compatible framework for Substrate based applications. Sakura is Clover’s sister network. It is a Substrate-based DeFi service platform that provides an easy-to-use and interoperable blockchain infrastructure to reduce the threshold and cost of developers. In addition, Sakura supports both EVM and Wasm, providing a one-stop high-speed cross-chain experience.
Avalanche
Token: AVAX (74.44 USDT)
Market value: $16.397 billion USD
Avalanche was co-founded by Emin Gün Sirer, a professor at Cornell University and the co-founder of IC3; Kevin Sekniqi, a computer scholar; and Ted Yin, the first author of HotStuff consensus Facebook Libra protocol. Itofficially launched the Mainnet on September 22, 2020.
Avalanche (Avalanche protocol) is an open-source platform, which provides an interoperable and highly extensible ecosystem for decentralized application and blockchain deployment. As a result, developers can easily create strong, reliable, and secure applications, customize blockchain networks, or build on existing blockchains.
Introduction to some ecosystem projects
DEX platform Pangolin
Relevant token: PNG (2 USDT
Market value: $102 million USD
Pangolin is the largest DEX (decentralized exchange) in the Avalanche ecosystem at present, which enables the Automated Market Makers (AMM) DEX like Uniswap and Sushiswap to hold all transactions on the Avalanche and Ethereum chain. Pangolin’s governance token PNG will be fully distributed to the community and will not be retained by the team. It is a platform completely governed by the community.
Collateralized loan protocol Benqi
Relevant token: QI (0.147 USDT)
Market value: $85 million USD
Benqi is a non-custodial liquidity market protocol based on Avalanche. Users can earn interest income from Benqi’s assets, obtain credit lines through over-collateralized loans, and provide liquidity in the Benqi protocol and Pangolin to earn QI rewards.
DEX platform Penguin Finance
Relevant Token: PEFI (2.44 USDT)
Market Value: $42 million USD
Penguin Finance is a DEX based on Avalanche. It supports Farming and Staking services to help maximize revenue. At the same time, it supports NFT, games, market prediction, and other services.
Avalaunch Launchpad
Relevant token: XAVA (4.48 USDT)
Market value: $57 million USD
Avalaunch is the IDO platform of the Avalanche ecosystem. It is positioned as an ecosystem accelerator and the first protocol specifically for the Avalanche ecosystem. It aims to provide a fast, safe, and efficient decentralized fund-raising platform for promising innovation projects.
Aggregator Yield Yak
Related token: YAK (15550.81 USDT)
Yield Yak is a community-driven DeFi revenue aggregator in Avalanche. YY Farms supports automatic compound interest mining rewards, and YY Swap finds the best price execution for DEX transactions.
Aggregator Trader Joe
Relevant token: JOE (4.14 USDT)
Market value: $377 million USD
Trader Joe is a one-stop trading platform on Avalanche, combining DeFi lending to provide leveraged trading. The goal is to become an innovative platform centered on DeFi.
High-performance Public Chain Celo
Token: CELO (6.97 USDT)
Market value: $2111 million USD
Celo is a high-performance public chain project based on PoS. It has a lightweight identity protocol and stability protocol and has launched a series of tools to reduce the threshold for developers to build applications on the Celo platform. It hopes to build a complete payment ecosystem and build a highly efficient, low-cost, and decentralized social payment system worldwide.
Celo adopts the BFT consensus algorithm and reaches consensus through a group of verifier nodes selected by Celo’s PoS consensus algorithm. Thus, compared with Ethereum, it has a shorter block time and more substantial scalability.
Celo mainly provides low handling fees and high-performance infrastructure for the payment system and hopes to support ecosystem development by reducing the technical threshold and financial support.
Some Ecosystem Projects
Collateralized type of stablecoin CELO dollar / CELO Euro
Token: cUSD / cEUR
Celo has launched a series of stablecoins that can track the value of any asset, including legal tender, commodities, and even natural resources. Supported stablecoins include Celo Dollar (cUSD) and Celo Euro (cEUR), benchmarked against the US dollar and the Euro.
Celo’s stability mechanism allows users to create a new CELO Dollar by sending a $1 USD CELO to the reserve or burning the Celo Dollar by exchanging a $1 USD CELO.
Valora Wallet
Valora is a point-to-point mobile payment application based on the Celo system. It is the core carrier to realize the stablecoin cUSD payment. It is very important for the long-term stability of the stablecoin and the most important value support of the whole Celo system. Valora was inspired by the idea that everyone should have complete control over their money — without relying on Intermediaries — and that remittances should be as simple as sending text messages.
Lending Protocol Moola
Token: MCELO (6.88 USDT)
Moola is a non-custodial liquidity protocol based on the Celo blockchain, democratizing access to revenue and credit. The borrower pays the income earned by the depositor. The borrower can permanently obtain over-collateralized loans or low collateralized flash loans. At present, Moola is similar to Aave v1.
DEX platform Ubeswap
Token: UBE (1.04 USDT)
Market value: $31 million USD
Ubeswap is a decentralized trading and automated market maker protocol on the Celo platform. The goal of Ubeswap is to increase Celo’s liquidity. Ubeswap attempts to introduce liquidity from all DeFis by taking advantage of Celo’s fast transaction time, high-block gas restrictions, and stablecoin system.
Tumbler Poof.cash
Token: POOF
Poof is a decentralized protocol to ensure the security of financial data on CELO. It supports private transactions through mixed transfer in the fund pool, supported by Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) technology.
Crosschain stablecoin exchange protocol Mobius Money
Token: MOBI
Mobius Money is a cross-chain stablecoin trading platform on Celo.
Cross-chain Cosmos
Token: ATOM (39.6 USDT)
Market value: $8.784 billion USD
Cosmos aims to solve the problems of blockchain interoperability and scalability and improve transaction speed. Known as the “Internet of blockchain”. It is also considered the version 3.0 of blockchain. Its inter-blockchain communication protocol can realize the interconnection of blockchains and support the transfer of assets between different blockchains.
Cosmos believes that the world cannot be dominated by one blockchain. It must be a world with multiple chains and multiple currencies. How to integrate Multi-chain and multi-currency into an ecosystem is the ultimate ideal of Cosmos. It believes that coins and chains should be separated. Tendermint, the core technology of Cosmos, enables tokens to be transferred across blockchains, an earlier PoS consensus based on Byzantine fault-tolerant protocol in the field of blockchain.
Some Ecosystem Projects
Stablecoin Protocol Terra
Token: LUNA (34.11 USDT)
Market value: $13.67 billion USD
Terra Protocol is an algorithm-based stablecoin protocol, committed to providing a stablecoin system with stable price and is widely used. Unlike the currency agreements such as Maker and Liquity, which mainly focus on miniting stablecoins linked to the US dollar. Terra aims to provide a richer set of currency combinations at the beginning to meet the needs of stablecoins in different regions and scenarios. The Terra protocol currently provides multiple stablecoins linked to the US dollar, Korean Won, Mongolian Tugrik, Thai Baht, and International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Right (SDR).
Cross-chain platform IRISnet
Token: IRIS (0.13 USDT)
Market value: $148 million USD
The core of IRISnet is to integrate service-oriented infrastructure into the cross-chain ecosystem. As the first regional hub in the Cosmos cross-chain ecosystem, IRISnet will provide an infrastructure that can efficiently and safely build a distributed business collaboration ecosystem. In addition, IRISnet supports the building of and linking of a large number of distributed business application chains, providing management tools and public chain facilities for the holders of these digital assets.
Cross-chain DeFi platform KAVA
Token: KAVA
Market value: $507 million USD
Kava is the first decentralized hub to support cross-chain DeFi applications and services. At present, it provides Kava cross-chain lending platform, cross-chain token market HARD protocol, and Kava Swap cross-chain liquidity center to provide DeFi services and rewards for mainstream digital assets such as BTC, XRP, BNB, and BUSD.
Public Chain Binance Chain
Binance Chain is built based on the Tendermint mechanism and Cosmos SDK project. Binance Chain will focus on the transaction and conversion of blockchain assets as a public chain, providing new possibilities for future blockchain asset transfer. Binance Chain focuses on high performance, ease of use, and mobility. Its token format is BEP2.
Crosschain Oracle Band protocol
Token: BAND (7.88 USDT)
Market value: $297 million USD
Band protocol is a Cosmos-based Oracle project, similar to Chainlink. Band protocol is a secure and scalable decentralized Oracle, which expands the capacity of the public chain in the form of Layer 2. It allows decentralized applications to utilize existing data on the Internet without trusted intermediaries.
Near
Token: NEAR (7.47 USDT)
Market value: $3481 million USD
NEAR is a decentralized development platform, which aims to provide an ideal environment for DApps by overcoming some limitations of competitive systems, such as low throughput, low speed, and poor cross-compatibility. NEAR adopts the PoS consensus and has an order of magnitude processing capacity of 100,000 transactions per second (tps). At the same time, it is compatible with Rust, Solidity, and TypeScript. It is perfectly compatible with the contract code of cross-chain Polkadot, which is conducive to developing more Web3 projects in the future.
Some of the Ecosystem Projects
Cross-chain project Octopus network
Token: OCT (3.39 USDT)
Market value: $106 million USD
Octopus Network will deploy a decentralized protocol. Any developer, project party, or entrepreneur can quickly and efficiently create their own application chain in NEAR at a low cost. The Octopus Network’s relay operates on NEAR as a smart contract to provide infrastructure for the verification node market of the application chain released by Octopus.
Pixel mining game Berryclub
Berry Club is a DApp deployed on NEAR. It is a small pixel game. It consumes Avocados, and users can draw on the pixel disk.
Ethereum Virtual Machine Aurora
Aurora is an Ethereum capacity expansion solution based on NEAR. The bridge + EVM solution for Ethereum can help Ethereum users and DApps to easily migrate to the NEAR blockchain. Specifically, users can upload and interact with the Solidity smart contract on the NEAR blockchain, and transfer assets from Ethereum to NEAR.
DEX platform Ref Finance
Token: REF
Ref Finance is one of the core projects in the NEAR protocol DeFi ecosystem. Its main goal is to integrate the core components of DeFi, i.e., decentralized exchange (DEX), lending protocol, and synthetic asset issuer, into a single and synchronous DeFi platform. Using NEAR’s 1–2 second certainty, low cost, and user-friendly and interoperable infrastructure, Ref aims to make it easier for people to participate in DeFi.
Cross-chain Oracle FLUX protocol
Flux protocol is a scalable decentralized Oracle protocol through which users can use various data on the chain, such as assets, commodities, or events. Developers can use this open-source tool to build the market from scratch or integrate it into existing financial products, significantly reducing the cost and time of merging blockchain technology. In addition, the protocol has the potential to drive some fields, such as synthetic assets, derivatives, insurance, and forecast market, which opens unlimited possibilities for the DeFi industry.
NFT platform Paras
Token: PARAS
Paras is a digital art card market based on blockchain technology, providing real ownership and digital scarcity. It is committed to introducing traditional collections into the cryptocurrency industry and gaining its growth. Paras focuses on complete collections rather than individual works of art.
