Ethereum vs. Solana vs. Cardano
Altcoins make up more than 60% of the entire crypto market today. If you’re still on the verge of investing in them, I can assure you that this is one of the best times to do so.
The main reason being difference — difference in purpose. Every altcoin today is trying to provide a facility that no coin before it has. This constant desire to offer a unique goal has also led us with cryptocurrencies behind akin ideas.
Blockchains with smart contracts being the most common of them.
Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana are the go-to platforms for most dApp developers out there. What’s most intriguing about all three of them, however, are their rivalry and creators. All three of these altcoins share the same creators.
To reiterate, Ethereum was launched by a group of blockchain developers, two of whom separated from the project and created their own platforms. Charles Hoskinson went on to invent Cardano, while Anatoly Yakovenko was responsible for Solana. I’ll take you through all three of them today and discuss a few details to determine which one ranks the best.
Ethereum
Price
I don’t think Ethereum even needs an introduction. It has been the number one rival to Bitcoin for the longest and the first blockchain with smart contracts.
Coming over to Ethereum price, one Ether (Ethereum’s coin) costs around $2,400 as of January 27th, 2022.
Ethereum ranks at number 2 in the global market capitalization with a figure of nearly $300 billion.
Infrastructure
Ethereum is an open-source blockchain that currently uses a consensus protocol, Proof-of-Work (PoW), to facilitate transactions on the platform. Ethereum’s platform enables developers to create smart contracts/dApps on the Ethereum network.
These smart contracts are automated to ensure no third party can interfere.
Potential
Ethereum’s future is heading in a healthy direction. With Ethereum 2.0, the current system has guaranteed to resolve all current shortcomings (goodbye blockchain trilemma) of the platform with several upgrades.
These include up to 100,000 TPS (transactions per second), a complete shift from Proof-of-Work to a Proof-of-Stake mechanism, lower gas fees, etc. Ethereum 2.0 is said to release in late 2021 or early 2022.
Cardano
Cardano was founded by one of the initial co-founders of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain.
You may have come across Bitcoin and Ethereum getting named the first and second-generation blockchain technology. Likewise, Cardano is also known as the third-generation cryptocurrency.
Price
As of January 2022, Cardano (ADA) has a market cap of more than $35 billion, making it the sixth cryptocurrency worldwide.
Cardano’s price is at around $1.20 at the time of this writing.
Infrastructure
Cardano’s runs on an Ouroboros algorithm which is its proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus system.
Moreover, Cardano can process 257 transactions per second. It was developed with methods based on evidence and peer reviews.
Potential
Cardano is ready to release its much-awaited hydra update that will include a layer two solution for better scalability than its current one soon.
In addition, it’s reported to have an improved TPS rate of 1,000,000! That certainly is a revolutionary update that will also influence its transactional fee to be relatively low compared to Ethereum.
Solana
Solana, in short, is a more efficient version of Ethereum’s current model. The platform also aims to be the fastest blockchain ever.
Price
As of January 2022, Solana ranks in the fifth position, right above one of its rivals, Cardano with a price of nearly $100. T
Infrastructure
Solana integrates two consensus models, namely Proof-of-History (PoH) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
The proof-of-history model is relatively new and allows 69,000 TPS (transactions per second). That’s better scalability than multinational companies like Visa.
Altogether, Solana’s utility has widened because of this hybrid model and thus has gained institutional investors.
Potential
As far as future upgrades are concerned, there aren’t many available on Solana. However, one of its updates is to launch the Solana mainnet officially.
In February 2020, Solana only released a beta version of the mainnet, and a full release might be right around February of 2022.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana are top-ranking altcoins. It’s not easy to determine which one is best since they’re all rapidly growing.
If we consider future advancements, Ethereum and Cardano can outperform Solana at some point. But, for now, it’s a competition that still needs more time and upgrades.
