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- Polkadot and Ethereum comparison inevitable
- Polkadot network to become fully operational by the end of 2021
- 2022 will be an eventful year for both the platforms
Polkadot and Ethereum are two blockchain development platforms, and a comparison between the two is bound to happen. Externally they may seem alike as cheese and chalk, but delving deeper, the two platforms have much in common. They are alike at technical levels since they use comparable architecture and proof-of-stake consensus to achieve scalability.
What is more critical are both Vitalik Buterin and Dr. Gavin Wood, also having a shared history in Ethereum.
So the cards have been played, and both Ethereum and Polkadot enter the final lap in the relay race for Chain supremacy. 2022 will be an eventful year for both platforms.
Ethereum is unveiling a series of improvements ahead of the “merge.” The ‘merge’ will amalgamate the current Ethereum main chain and join the proof-of-stake Beacon chain. Henceforth Ethereum will bid adieu to proof-of-work consensus and shift entirely to proof-of-stake. There will be more upgrades later when the Ethereum network implements other chains or shards connected to the Beacon chain, augmenting scalability.
Polkadot has been vague about its updates, but it seems likely that Polkadot is all set to roll out its event changes before Ethereum’s merge. ‘Parachain auctions‘ are the process of awarding the first shard slots on Polkadot, a step that Kusama, Polkadot’s experimental “canary network,” recently achieved. Thus, it is only a matter of months before the Polkadot network becomes fully operational, and it will support an array of services before the end of 2021.
A Shared History
For the umpteenth time, both Buterin and Wood have said that there is no competition between Ethereum and Polkadot. However, old habits die hard, and both Wood and Buterin, wherein the core team created Ethereum and their contribution in building the ecosystem, are unique and vital. Solidity programming language is a brainchild of Dr. Gavin Wood, and he founded Parity Technologies, which has always been a significant technology engine for Ethereum. Wood also created the Web3 Foundation, which supports Polkadot’s development.
Dr. Wood left Ethereum as the Chief Technology Officer in 2015. He had already suggested a new infrastructure that will be compatible with the newly launched innovative contract platform and reform it into a more robust and scalable platform. Interestingly Wood did not mention Buterin in his parting Ethereum blog post, despite name-checking several others.
Even though both Butter and Wood have been tight-lipped about the competition between the two platforms, others have been more forthcoming in their reactions. For example, Peter Mauric, Head of Public Affairs at Parity Technologies, recently addressed the comparison.
He highlighted Ethereum’s inadequacy and referred to the innovative contract platform as a “proof of concept,” which had provided the education necessary to build Polkadot.
Clash of Titans
Three years into development, Polkadot was finally launched on mainnet in 2020. Although the platform is not operational and is running without any applications, it has generated a significant amount of interest, and it is not just because of the founder’s history. Polkadot offers the promise of true interoperability between applications running on different chains.
While developers were busy creating the Polkadot ecosystem, the Ethereum team was thick into finding a solution for Ethereum 2.0. The two platforms are akin to one another in many respects. For example, both run on a variant of proof-of-stake. Also, the two platforms employ sharding to enable scalability, connecting sharded chains to a major chain responsible for network security.
For Gavin Wood, the fact that Ethereum 2.0 is shaping up to be very similar to his creation must give him the satisfaction that it is a vindication of his beliefs.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
