With the release of Ethereum's newest update, Blockdaemon's Ethereum ecosystem lead Freddy Zwanzger is optimistic that it will be able to retain its leadership position in this crypto ecosystem. The new features include improvements for smart contracts and faster speeds on blockchains following merges, making them more efficient than ever before.
In a recent interview with reporters at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) this week, Zwanzger said:
"It'll continue to be a leader. I mean, obviously, the first and most important smart contract platform, and that's not going to change."
Blockdaemon is a next-generation blockchain infrastructure platform that offers node operations and infrastructure tooling for blockchain projects.
Zwanger also took aim at these so-called Ethereum killers trying to topple the cryptocurrency leader from its position as number one but failed.
"All the Ethereum killers from back in the day didn't succeed, and I don't expect them to succeed at all."
Some people believe that there are a group of crypto projects called "Ethereum killers," which includes Solana, Cardano, Tezos, and others. These blockchains claim to operate with lower fees and faster transactions. However, there are fewer active developers for these projects and no emphasis on decentralization.
Till now, the race continues with no coin managing to take second place from Ethereum. Cardano, Solana, and Polkadot are ranked eighth, ninth, and 11th, while Tezos comes at number 37 according to CoinMarketCap.
With this merger, Zwanzger believes that Ethereum will be able to overcome its challenges and continue onward as cutting-edge technology.
"There are so many good things in there, like environmentally-friendliness, [and] all sorts of things that are beneficial to many people. Staking will become more attractive," he said:
He believes that the Merge shows how dedicated the Ethereum team is, and he's glad the roadmap is materializing.
Once the Ethereum Merge is fully implemented, it will no longer be necessary to mine with high-powered computers. The new consensus protocol—proof of stake or PoS – requires less energy and can provide more security than Proof Of Work (PoW) models currently in use today. The Merge is scheduled to roll out by September 19.
However, he also mentioned scalability as one of Ethereum's most significant challenges in the future.
"The original Ethereum roadmap was focused on sharding, but that's not so much the case anymore. Now we have a roll-up-centric roadmap, so scaling via layer-2 solutions."
With the current proof-of-work consensus model, blockchains can process between 15 and 20 transactions per second (TPS).
This is according to data from Blockchair.
When the Ethereum network introduces sharding in 2023, it should be able to process more transactions per second than ever before.
The idea behind sharding is to split the entire network into multiple portions for it to be more efficient and scalable.
Sharding has been designed to work with layer-2 solutions, which will further "supercharge" the scalability of this network.
The founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has claimed that after sharding has been fully implemented, the network would be able to process transactions up to 100,000 TPS.