Blockchain Networks Scorecard

This document intends to make a detailed comparison about how the different networks attempt to the blockchain trilemma of scalability, security and decentralization.

Introduction

Ever since Ethereum became a victim of its own success with increasing gas fees to do simple on-chain tasks, a new race has started to overthrow Ethereum as the de-facto leader of the smart contract world. We have seen a cambrian explosion of new chains popping up to challenge Ethereum.

When one tries to see through the noise of these wars, one is encountered with the VCs of chains like Solana or Avalanche or the Ethereum maximalists, and there are very few who occupy the space in between.

Anyone can analyze the information given here and form a coherent world-view of how the future will turn out.

Outcomes

The industry can only go in three ways:

1. Consolidation onto a single network where a single network has majority of all activity
2. Multi-network with trustless integration where a few networks have majority of all activity
3. Multi-network with centralized bridges where a few networks have majority of all activity

Goal of this document

The blockchain industry is ever-changing, and it would be a mistake to commit to one course of action for years and not re-calibrate the direction as more information comes to light. So the goal of this document is to create a reliable compass that will help guide anyone towards the approximation of the best course of action in these uncertain times.

Questions that need to answered

The questions we need to answer are:

1. Architecture: a. First generation blockchain b. Sharded blockchain c. Etc.

2. Consensus mechanism: a. What is the consensus mechanism of the network? b. How easy/hard is it to become a miner/validator?

3. Developability: a. Is it EVM compatible? b.If not, how do smart contracts work and get developed?

4. Scalability strategy: a. Does it rely on increasing block size, compute power, and bandwidth to achieve scalability? b. Or does it rely on an innovative way to scalability where it avoids mining concentration to a few miners/validators? c. What are the block size and block time of the ledger in the network? d. What is the max TPS of the network?

5. Isolatability: a. Does the network rely on other multiple chains inside the network? b. If yes, how does it solve inter-chain communication problem? c. Is the inter-chain communication synchronous or asynchronous?

6. Governance: a. How much influence do founders have on the project? b. How is governance done? c. Is it efficient or slow? d. Is the governance structure a crucial part of the ecosystem?

7. Security strategy: a. How easy/hard is to freeze the network or worse re-organize the ledger?

8. Decentralization strategy: a. Does the network employ any layer-2 strategy? b. Does the network support light clients? c. Is every user in the ecosystem able to check the validity of data in the network? d. Does the network encourage diversity of client implementation in different languages? e. Is there a cap on the number of nodes that can become part of the network? f. Does one need huge amounts of native tokens to become a miner/validator? g. How is the chain size expected to grow in the future? h. Does the network employ techniques to strip off useless data in the network like zero knowledge proofs?

9. Developer ecosystem: a. What is the state of the developer ecosystem in the network? b. Do developers regularly contribute to the layer-0/1 code? c. Is the network able to attract application-layer developers? d. What is the state of TVL and current activity in the network? e. How is the developer ecosystem expected to grow in the future?

10. Legitimacy of the team: a. Who are the people responsible for developing it? b. Who is backing the project? c. What are their incentives?

11. Integration with other networks: a. Does the network support or intend to support trustless integration with other networks?

12. What is the one thing in your opinion that makes this network different from the rest?

Networks to be analyzed

1. Ethereum, and all scalability solutions
2. Polkadot (Khuzama)
3. Avalanche
4. Binance Smart Chain
5. Solana (Nabeel Naveed)
6. Cosmos (Mavia)
7. Terra (Aroon)
8. Tezos
9. Mina (Danial)
10. Near (Hassan)
11. Radix (Haseeb)
12. Stacks (Waleed)