There is broad consensus that Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is the way of the future for cryptocurrencies, and this is especially true for the four cryptocurrencies Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Ethereum (ETH), and Polkadot (DOT) competing in the “smart contract” space.
Despite Ethereum’s first mover advantage in DeFi, Solana is the winner in staking, according to crypto analytics firm Staking Rewards, with a value of $78.49 billion.
Cardano comes in second with $42.92 billion, accounting for 70.67 percent of the overall market capitalization. With $33.9 billion and $23.68 billion, respectively, Ethereum 2.0 and Polkadot round out the top four most valuable cryptocurrencies.
Users looking for Ethereum alternatives are one of the key reasons behind Solana’s rise. Despite the fact that Ethereum is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, it was the first to include smart contracts, and has the first mover advantage, Solana has gained a significant amount of market share since its inception in 2017.
Solana uses a combination of proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-history (PoH) consensus techniques to improve performance and scalability. As a result, the network claims to be able to process 50,000 transactions per second (TPS), making it the fastest blockchain in the world.
There are approximately 350 initiatives in Solana’s ecosystem including decentralized finance (DeFi) apps that provide free financial services without the need for an intermediary, non-fungible token (NFT) activities, gaming apps, and more.