The Ethereum 2.0 update aims to address many problems, but these benefits may not manifest until 2023. Meanwhile, other projects are gaining ground. For example, programmable blockchains like Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA) and Avalanche (CRYPTO: AVAX) have generated significant interest among cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and both appear to be smart long-term investments. Here because.
1.Cardano
Cardano is a smart contract platform powered by the ADA token. Compared to other blockchain projects, Cardano's team has taken a more evidence-based approach to development. New features are often presented to academic journals, and the blockchain itself features the industry's first peer-reviewed consensus protocol: Ouroboros. Ouroboros is a type of proof of stake (PoS) protocol, a greener consensus mechanism than the proof of work protocol used by Ethereum.
Note that the Cardano project is divided into five phases, each focused on a particular set of characteristics: foundation, decentralization, smart contracts, scalability and governance. On September 12, 2021, smart contracts were activated on the platform as part of the third phase. And during the fourth phase - set to begin in late 2022 or 2023 - the consensus protocol will be updated to Ouroboros Hydra, a scalability solution that will divide the network load more efficiently, increasing its speed from the current 250 TPS to a theoretical 1 million TPS.
Assuming Cardano development stays on course, the platform could see supercharged growth in the coming months and years. With smart contracts now active, dApps and DeFi products can be deployed on the blockchain, which makes it more useful to consumers. And the implementation of Hydra should supercharge its scalability, making the platform more popular with developers. Ultimately, as more people use products on the Cardano blockchain, demand for the ADA token will increase, pushing its price higher.
2. Avalanches
Avalanche is a smart contract platform powered by the AVAX token. The blockchain is protected by snow protocols, a new PoS consensus mechanism in which each node (computer) verifies transactions by repeatedly sampling a small subset of nodes (rather than every other node) until all are in agreement.
As a result, Avalanche is very fast. The network was timed at 4.500 TPS, and this figure could reach 20.000 TPS over time. Even more impressive, Avalanche finalizes transactions in under a second, making it the fastest smart contract platform measured by time to finalize, according to the developer team. Furthermore, the blockchain is compatible with Solidity, the programming language used to code smart contracts on Ethereum. This means that developers can easily port Ethereum dApps to Avalanche, a platform that offers better performance at one-tenth the cost.
Unsurprisingly, Avalanche has caught the attention of developers and Investors, and currently ranks as the fourth largest DeFi ecosystem, with $ 11,4 billion invested on the platform. In the future, as products on the Avalanche blockchain continue to gain traction with the crypto community, demand for the AVAX token is expected to increase, sending its price higher.
