Ethereum Isn’t Dying, It Is Still Going to Scale In The Future According To Cryptocurrency Analyst

Last year, things were bad for Ethereum. Apart from the fact that the price of ETH fell significantly against the USD, many competing blockchains that offer smart contract capabilities were created. Developers started to try new generation blockchains that offered more scalability and were more cost efficient than Ethereum. In fact, many blockchain analysts predicted that Ethereum is slowly meeting its end as failure is imminent due to the reduced traction and scalability issues the network is facing. So, what does the future hold for Ethereum?

Will Ethereum Survive The Storm?

Many of the articles that predicted imminent doom for Ethereum raised legitimate concerns. However, they bluntly ignored the scalability progress that is being made on the Ethereum blockchain. While Ethereum still hasn’t achieved world-class scalability, the anticipated issues have been acknowledged by its core developers who have also provided solutions that may take a while to implement. Hunter Hillman, the head of growth at Connext, talked about the challenges on the Ethereum blockchain and how core developers have created solutions over the years.

Ethereum (ETH) Price Today – BTC / USD

NamePrice24H %
ethereum
Ethereum(ETH)
$0.00-2.08%

The scalability challenges on Ethereum became a serious problem during the ICO bubble when there was an increase in the price of gas due to high transaction volumes. Before this time, core developers had anticipated this challenge but were unable to provide a solution. Some of the solutions they suggested included Serenity and Casper. These protocols will scale the Ethereum blockchain itself making it capable of handling the increase in transactions. Sidechains, Plasma, payment channels and state channels were also suggested. These options involved moving a majority of the transactions volume to another layer to reduce the load on the Ethereum main chain.

The Casper and Serenity (sharding) protocols have been on the ethereum roadmap for a long time now. However, developers have faced challenges that have prevented any real progress. When they finally implement these protocols, they will still need to implement layer two scaling mechanisms that will provide lower transaction fees, enable private transactions and provide higher throughput.

The Narrative Needs To Change If Significant Progress Is To Be Appreciated

The truth is that scaling in blockchain is difficult. However, the mistake many new developers are making is moving over to third generation blockchains simply because of Ethereum’s inability to scale efficiently. This minimizes all the efforts the Ethereum core developers are making on the blockchain. There are solutions on the way that will be transformative while some solutions are already in the market. Those who wait patiently and contribute to the development of Ethereum will enjoy the blockchain when all the scalability issues are finally addressed.

Ethereum is an unstoppable platform even as slow as it is today. It’s efficiency in enabling programmable money is unparalleled. Ethereum can serve as the foundation for an entirely novel financial system. When its scalability issues are fixed, it will pave a way for new markets. Ethereum provides a decentralized economic future and will be used as a settlement layer for facilitating bulk transactions using Layer Two technologies.

What do you think? Will the Ethereum developers be able to implement Serenity by the year 2020 as indicated in the roadmap?

Max writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on United States and China. He joined Smarterum after years of writing for various media outlets.

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