Will Ethereum keep its leadership in the crypto smart contract industry?

[uneng]

I believe the point is that Ethereum doesn't have a rival on its reach. It was mentioned ETH is going centralized, but then, what strong and popular alternatives does crypto market offer towards it? The only crypto which comes to my mind is Binance Coin, as it visibly stands out among other altcoins, but it's also a centralized cryptocurrency, therefore it's more of the same compared to ETH on this case.

Then we have many other minor projects which promise pushing decentralization to the next level, however, they don't have enough popularity, originality and demand to overcome ETH's position.

Conusion: if your goal is decentralization, go for bitcoin. You don't need anything else.

[vv181]

The Ethereum blockchain is currently the most used blockchain when it comes to Smart contract, NFT and Metaverse development. It achieved its leadership while it was still a decentralized network.


Unfortunately, right after the merge, Ethereum lost its decentralized feature and is now one of the most centralized cryptocurrency projects in the industry.

Given that we're going through a debate opposing Centralized vs Decentralized, do you think that Ethereum will still keep ahead of the competition?

What is your take on this matter?

How do you measure the decentralization of ETH when it's pre-merge and compared to now, besides a consensus change? Ethereum users back then are even already using a third-party RPC to connect to the network, using a centralized front-end when interacting with DApps. Nothing much different right now.

The point is, the Ethereum ecosystem seems did not bat an eye into maximizing decentralization, so there is nothing that most users lose because of the change, IMO.

Aren't there a lot of chances of Ethereum being overcome by an alternative decentralized network?

For example, which smart contract oriented coin that currently exists which maximizes decentralization, is there even any?

[hyudien]

Unfortunately, right after the merge, Ethereum lost its decentralized feature and is now one of the most centralized cryptocurrency projects in the industry.

Given that we're going through a debate opposing Centralized vs Decentralized, do you think that Ethereum will still keep ahead of the competition? Aren't there a lot of chances of Ethereum being overcome by an alternative decentralized network?

What is your take on this matter?

My opinion is that support for Ethereum includes central institutions which operate in control of policy. So if it is said to be superior in competition, maybe yes. But the reality is that decentralization comes from believing that individuals don't like centralized things and that those beliefs have the power to fight back. Let's say we still prioritize Decentralization even though we occasionally use a centralized system. Even though centralized or decentralized, we all use it for our own needs, and Ethereum has clearly betrayed its original purpose.

[Tony116]

As bitcoin was the first to create the cryptocurrency industry, so it will play the biggest role in the market, ETH leads in smart contracts so it is hard for anyone to replace it. Despite the controversy surrounding ETH as it transitions to POS, it is by far the most secure altcoin and is not hacked like other blockchains. I don't think it will face stiff competition from other blockchains but other blockchains will fear it more, the only problem it faced was the high transaction fees after it was fixed, no altcoins could compete with it.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Most of the top projects that we all know of is under the ETH blockchain and will continue to do so despite the claims that ETH now is more centralized as there are validators and node operators that have total control and not the devs anymore. But there are no shift in power so far, not anything that I heard of.

Its because even though they completely shifted to PoS most dapps are entitled with the use on eth network. There are others too on other network but eth still be the major usage on nft, games and other application. Most use case are indeed remarkable on eth network.

[merekamo]

While it makes sense that blockchain networks are decentralized, there are still a lot of challenges that blockchain developers face when they try to make their networks as decentralized as possible. The main challenge is that decentralization doesn't mean scalability and vice versa.

The main reasons why Ethereum is so slow and expensive is because of its smart contract feature. Every time a transaction is made on Ethereum's network, it costs one ether to process the transaction on the network. Also, every time a user wants to make an update to the Ethereum blockchain, it costs one ether to make an update.

Given these challenges, it seems that Ethereum won't be able to keep the lead they have in the industry if they don't solve these problems soon.

The potential solutions are either centralization or sharding. Either way, Ethereum will lose its decentralized nature when they decide to implement these solutions because any kind of centralization is against what blockchain stands for.

[nakamura12]

We might see some changes but let’s see how ETH will deal with this one.
After the merge many still choose ETH as their network and probably they still see good things about ETH. The future might be more challenging for them as they take another path but I’m confident that ETH will not do the merge of its not necessary and if that update can affect them, they do the merging for the benefit of the whole project.

I also think the same. There's no way exact date on how long eth take the lead but I think eth will still take the lead much longer if their competition experience some problems or issue like binance having their own problems. Let's just wait for now on what eth will update later that will benefit of the project. There are other projects that use such as bnb and other project that supports smart contract but in the end they are now using bnb SC or ETH.

[DanWalker]

I think Ethereum has had an interrupted reign in smart contract and it has large amounts of users of its smart contract. But even before the merger happened the Ethereum network started to see less patronage than it use to get before. Back then it was so much that the network gets congested. I think this downward spiral has to do with the transactions fee on Ethereum.

Ethereum high transactions fee was slowly reducing the amount of people using because there are other networks that has good transactions speed and very affordable fee than the Ethereum network. Now with the decentralization going away on the merger I don’t know how much longer Ethereum can hang up on its position.

BUt that's exactly where it shows it is not neither will be ever a good network. Ethereum always had the problem of incredibly high fees and to solve that it had to rely on other cheaper and faster networks to have it done in the cheapest way. The eth network has to rely on sidechains and Layer two solutions to be able to provide a cheap and fast network. So, basically, ethereum would not work if it wasn't for other solutions. If it can't solve what we need to have solved it is not a good network and will replaced by a new and better network very soon.

High gas fees are not new for ETH which has been around for many years but you can see it is still the top choice of large projects because they know that it is more secure than other layers1. Aside from the high gas fees, I don't really see a serious problem with ETH like outages or attacks like other blockchains, as long as it's safe, high gas fees shouldn't be a concern for many investors. 
Have you heard about sharding upgrade? as far as I know that upgrade it will solve the gas charge problem and it will be done in 2023. Ethereum has been on the market for years and it has proven to be an extremely secure blockchain, so users will stay with it and wait for the upgrades to improve things. I am also a fan of ETH, I am willing to pay high fees but in return I will safely stay with eth.

[Sayeds56]

The Ethereum blockchain is currently the most used blockchain when it comes to Smart contract, NFT and Metaverse development. It achieved its leadership while it was still a decentralized network.


Unfortunately, right after the merge, Ethereum lost its decentralized feature and is now one of the most centralized cryptocurrency projects in the industry.

Given that we're going through a debate opposing Centralized vs Decentralized, do you think that Ethereum will still keep ahead of the competition? Aren't there a lot of chances of Ethereum being overcome by an alternative decentralized network?

What is your take on this matter?

The kind of huge technological development Ethereum has achieved on its block chain & the big investment it has attracted from big market players; it won't be easy for its immediate competitors to challenge its leadership in the near future. I think the issue of centralized and decentralized will not matter much in future when strict regulation will be implemented by SEC to monitor transactions on all wallets either custodial or non-custodial.

[alexandr1115]

Of course!! there are a very large number of tokens in the Ethereum blockchain, as well as a huge number of different NFT projects and various other developments launched on the Ethereum network, and, of course, Ethereum is of great importance in the cryptocurrency industry. In fact, it's not even necessary to discuss it, since the Ethereum platform develops the entire cryptocurrency sphere the most!!!