Navigating the Landscape of Blockchain Network Selection

What defines the fitting blockchain community to your challenge? I spent a while just lately serious about this off the again of some work we had been doing. My massive problem was serious about how finest to convey this info to a extra layman viewers with comprehensible metrics. 

Blockchain networks are simply one other instrument within the arsenal of know-how options. Nonetheless, a number of helpful metrics may also help set up how widespread their adoption is.

These aren’t infallible, however used collectively they do present a useful image of the state of various them. 

There are a few essential caveats. It is price understanding early on in the event you’re focusing on a public or personal blockchain deployment, and if you need compatibility with the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM).

These two concerns will vastly affect the dimensions of the potential candidate platforms. Nearly all of blockchain exercise takes place on public networks. Therefore if you must have a personal community it should considerably slender the potential candidate listing. 

The opposite consideration is whether or not to work with an EVM-compatible community. The EVM is the dominant platform on which the vast majority of sensible contracts are deployed. It’s the closest factor now we have to a common customary for sensible contracts. 

I liken the EVM to being the TCP/IP of web3 resulting from its widespread adoption. However there are different choices, similar to utilizing the programming language Rust as is utilized by Solana and Polkadot’s Substrate. 

The selection of which comes all the way down to in the event you’re pleased to be tied in very intently with a selected ecosystem similar to Solana, or would reasonably have optionality and help for the widest potential variety of blockchains as you may have with the EVM. 

For comparability, none of what follows impacts the choice on whether or not or to not go together with an EVM-compatible blockchain. Though most of the different layer one networks have a stage of traction that’s not dissimilar to main Ethereum layer two networks. 

The classes I discover most helpful comply with. 

Developer Group 

The group is the lifeblood of any challenge. Given the open nature of blockchains, it is comparatively simple to acquire some metrics on their communities. 

This report supplies a useful view of improvement exercise on numerous blockchain networks, making it easy to check them with each other. 

Consumer Group

The person group of those networks is finest ascertained from the varied social media channels wherein their customers hang around. 

The variety of followers on X supplies a sign of a challenge’s attain. However to see how lively these customers are, it pays to see the dimensions of their group throughout the channels wherein they work together with one another.

These are more likely to be combos of Reddit, Telegram and/or Discord. 

The kinds of matters being mentioned throughout these communities will probably be insightful too. If they’re closely targeted on the costs of a community token, it’s not more likely to point out a dedicated group of builders. Whereas if they’re busy discussing initiatives with the actual utility on the community, the motivations are more likely to be higher aligned with making a sustainable ecosystem.

Traction

Past social media platforms, there are on-chain knowledge factors which are instructive demonstrating actual exercise on the community. 

These embrace the variety of lively accounts who aren’t simply utilizing the community as one-off occasions, however persevering with to utilize it. 

Coupled with the variety of transactions happening on the community you may get a helpful image of actual traction. 

Moreover, market capitalisation, in addition to the dimensions of the belongings locked on the community by way of the whole worth locked (TVL) metrics are helpful to grasp how comfy the DeFi group is with protecting belongings there. 

Prices

The price of the community can also be a consideration. The Ethereum mainnet is taken into account too costly by most customers today. This is the reason they’re being inspired to make use of layer 2 networks as a substitute which value a fraction of the value. 

Understanding charges is essential particularly as it should have ramifications for the way a lot you or your customers should pay to transact with the community. 

Sadly, I’m not presently conscious of a useful resource that consolidates customers prices amongst a lot of networks.

Different Property

Lastly, it’s instructive to see what different well-known initiatives have launched on the community. Are stablecoins similar to Circle’s USDC or Tether’s USDT out there on it? If the community is EVM suitable, have Uniswap, Aave or different notable initiatives launched on it? 

While you might not be occupied with these particular initiatives per se, their presence is indicative of the presence of actual customers whom these DeFi initiatives wish to help on these networks.

Getting Began

With the entire completely different blockchain networks out there, the choice technique of the place to start out for any challenge may be robust.

This listing just isn’t exhaustive. However in the event you begin by figuring out:

You should have a place to begin for additional exploration. From right here by pulling collectively the varied metrics I’ve outlined, you’ll have a good suggestion of among the tradeoffs between working with completely different public blockchain networks.