Why does the future of Ethereum seem so bright?
Ethereum has become the epicenter of the blockchain industry, perhaps mainly driven by the success of decentralized finance (DeFi). While other blockchains build bridges, dapps create a multichain ecosystem. Despite many alternatives, Ethereum clearly dominates this space.
The popular blockchain network has grown massively over the years, assuming the role of a parent blockchain, birthing other blockchains and tokens built via the ERC-20 standard. Additionally ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens, also known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
This article will briefly summarize Ethereum´s strong appeal as the blockchain king of dapps and how you best can make use of it with DappRadar.
Ethereum powers popular blockchain games
Blockchain gaming has proven its resilience during the bear market and the size of the industry is estimated to be over $175 billion today. GameFi’s market capitalization is less than 4% of that at around $6.2 billion. Imagine what the Ethereum blockchain games landscape will look like after the merge.
Here is a quick overview of the top three Ethereum games to be bullish about.
Mirandus
Mirandus is a play-to-earn MMORPG and is one of Gala Games’ most exciting projects.
Think of Mirandus like The Sandbox or Decentraland, except the world is a fantasy one, and the avatars are Humans, Elves, and Orcs.
Benji Bananas
Benji Bananas is simple: players swing from vine to vine, past obstacles, and try to remain off the ground as long as possible. The longer you swing, the more you win.
Illuvium
Illuvium is a free-to-play fantasy role-playing game where players explore a 3D world and capture Illuvials, the mythical creatures that populate the virtual world
Ethereum on DappRadar
Connect your wallet to DappRadar now and discover Ethereum dapps with our rankings tool. Find and swap tokens like ETH, estimate the value of NFTs and uncover exciting NFT Collections on Ethereum marketplaces like OpenSea using the NFT Collection Explorer.
What is going on with Ethereum?
The king blockchain of dapps is yet to attain its best form as it claims $1904, one of its highest marks since the crypto winter started, and sends out bullish signals anticipating the long-awaited Ethereum merge.
Moreover, the Ethereum blockchain has been able to achieve cross-chain relationships with other successful blockchains such as Polygon (MATIC), and Solana (SOL), thereby strengthening its foothold.
Why is cross-chain important for Ethereum?
Cross-chain functionality exists to enable interoperability between blockchains. As such, tokens built under the ERC-20 standard can be transferred to another blockchain, maybe Solana.
Before they arrive at the latter blockchain, they are locked into smart contracts in exchange for a wrapped version that supports the standards of their new blockchain. The more bridges exist for certain tokens, the easier value can flow between blockchains.
Similarly, these tokens can be sent to the former blockchain by unwrapping them. Then, they are swapped for the initial tokens locked in the smart contracts.
Wrapped tokens can be used on lending and borrowing DeFi protocols like Compound or Aave. Examples of wrapped tokens include WETH, RenBTC, sBTC (Synthetix BTC) and WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin).
Fostering multi-chain activities through bridges enhances the adoption of blockchain technology. Ethereum has positioned itself for the multi-chain paradigm and benefits from cross-chain functionalities.
How Ethereum and DeFi connect
Decentralized Finance owes much of its growth to Ethereum. In 2021 alone, the DeFi sector grew beyond measure in terms of daily trading volume and Total Value Locked (TVL).
Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and SushiSwap exist on Ethereum and keep witnessing increased traffic. The TVL on DeFi protocols currently stands at $ 72.9 billion, despite the impact of the crypto winter. Read our latest report to get a clear picture of how blockchain users reacted to the crypto contagion and Terra´s collapse.
Ethereum’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake consensus will line the network up for more scaling and development. Goerli, Ethereum’s largest testnet, was successfully merged on Wednesday 10th August, 2022.
The penultimate hurdle has been cleared. This means the next milestone is the full Ethereum Merge and the long-awaited transition to PoS.
With the benefits of the full Merge being lower gas fees, faster transaction speeds, and less intensive energy use, we could see ETH prices go much higher.
Closing
The adoption and use-cases of the Ethereum blockchain are significantly higher than for any other blockchain network.
Unlike previous bear markets, Ethereum has been leading the fightback. The continued good news coming from the blockchain, as it completes successful test after successful test, has the community in a buoyant mood.
We will keep monitoring the evolution of Ethereum so keep an eye on our blog and Twitter feed to stay up to date with everything web3. Follow the fortunes of ETH in the run up to the Merge with our Token Explorer and check the performance of Ethereum-based dapps in our rankings pages.
