Alternative blockchains continue to evolve but app builders still prefer Ethereum for various reasons, Set Protocol’s co-founder maintains. Felix Feng touches on what he thinks gives Ethereum a higher value proposition over others in a series of tweets. They include developed infrastructure for developers, decentralized exchanges and liquidity, standardized fungible token standard, non-volatile asset, and oracles.

He notes that these key pieces of infrastructure have to be on any other chain before developers “can seriously consider building on it.” He tweets:

“For chains that mimic the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), it’s possible to simply copy/paste your smart contract code and deploy the bytecode generated by truffle. However, it gets a lot more challenging when existing tools are incompatible, and you have to think about underlying blockchain assumptions.”

I get asked a lot whether we'd build @SetProtocol on other chains like @tezos or @Tronfoundation.

The answer is it depends if theres developed infrastructure around developer tools, DEXes and liquidity, standardized fungible token standard, non-volatile asset, and oracles.

— Felix {Setoshi} Feng (@felix2feng) May 20, 2019

Others moves are huge  

Other platforms have been doing more to up their games of late. After its $100 mln ecosystem funding announcement, NEO keeps propping efforts to build the most developer-friendly blockchain. For example, it revealed development tools like the NEO Toolkit for Visual Studio and the NEO Express Node to make developers’ coding on the platform easier. It also demonstrated its forthcoming decentralized and distributed storage platform, NeoFS. The peer-to-peer data storage service is meant to provide secure, private data storage for users, data exchange for small and medium-sized enterprises, and fixed document storage.

IOST recently introduced mobile number logins to appeal to mainstream audiences. Its CEO, Jimmy Zhong, maintains that the world needs a blockchain network “that is not only scalable and built to deploy seamless DApp experiences, but also one that overcomes the technical barriers which prevent millions of everyday people from experiencing the benefits of blockchain technology.” He believes IOST, which they claim has more than 250,000 registered accounts and over 35 million transactions processed including daily transaction rates that surpass Ethereum’s, is the best choice.

TRON too continues to spread its wings with one of its latest moves being Opera’s planned addition of support for TRON’s TRX and other TRC-standard tokens within its browser. The integration of the TRON tokens within its crypto wallet will allow hundreds of millions of Opera users to play TRON games and access TRON dApps within the browser.

What about tomorrow?

However, despite these big moves, though, Feng explains that the availability of developer infrastructure (like Metamask) and an ecosystem of other tools that make smart contract and dApp development possible still give Ethereum the edge.

He states:

“Also, an understated consideration is security. Projects such as the DAO and ParityTech have provided precedent for common security issues. If you build on a new chain, you risk being the guinea pig for a new bug. And, good luck finding an auditor to review your code.”

Feng adds that DEX infrastructure helps platforms like his to acquire their native assets without a trusted counterparty as well as a community-agreed upon token standard (e.g. ERC20) for the compatibility of protocols.

The race for which smart contract platform hits critical mass seems to be on as they all compete for developers and projects’ attention. But time will tell if Ethereum will be able to maintain its noted dominant position by improving on its accessibility and originality.