We continue to analyze the main private players and explain their use cases, their most recent initiatives and developments, and their most prominent clients.
ChainLink
ChainLink It has decentralized oracle networks that provide tamper-proof inputs, outputs, and computations that help develop advanced smart contracts on any blockchain.
In order for smart contracts to specify agreements that go beyond blockchain data, they must be able to access external data sources. While on-chain data is trusted because it exists on a blockchain, off-chain data cannot boast the same level of trust. ChainLink's goal is to feed a blockchain with external data that offers the same level of reliability. With this, ChainLink significantly extends the functionality of smart contracts.
ChainLink has been selected as one of the top blockchain projects by major independent research companies like Gartner. Its main use cases include:
- blockchain development
- Payment platforms
- Database management
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
- Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Gambling
- Insurance
- weather markets
- Insurance
- Blockchain solutions for companies
Avalanche
Launched in 2020, Avalanche is an open source and programmable smart contract platform for DApps and enterprise blockchain deployments in a highly scalable and interoperable ecosystem. The company aims to develop as a unified platform for creating, transferring and trading digital assets.
Avalanche claims to have the fastest smart contract platform in the blockchain industry, as measured by its time to completion. The company claims to be the first decentralized smart contract platform designed to accommodate the scale needed by global finance, with near-instantaneous speed for transactions.
Avalanche solutions allow:
- The creation of fast, low cost and solidity compatible DApps.
- The launch of customizable public and private blockchains
- Platform scaling to millions of validators with minimal hardware
- Avalanche also offers interoperability between blockchains by easily transferring Ethereum assets through the Avalanche bridge.
Avalanche Use Cases
The Avalanche platform offers DeFi solutions for asset issuance, automated market makers, lending and borrowing, and decentralized exchanges. Avalanche also provides a platform for institutions, companies, and governments for asset issuance and trading, central bank digital currencies, debt financing, digital identification, and document tracking. Also allows users to mint digital and NFT collectibles, including art, certifications and licenses, collectibles and credentials.
Avalanche Incentive Programs
Avalanche actively funds incentive programs. In March 2022, the Avalanche Foundation announced that it would invest up to $290 million to support DeFi, blockchain-enabled gaming, institutional use cases, and NFT through its Program of Multiverse Incentives. The program, also called Avalanche Multiverse, is expected to be funded with up to 4 million AVAX tokens, equivalent to about $290M (based on USD-AVAX exchange rates prevailing in March 2022). The value of the AVAX token has fallen since March 2022 at the time the article was written, from $75,39 to $15,22 on November 8, 2022.
The Avalanche Multiverse initiative will aim to grow its "subnetting" feature. Subnets allow for the development of application-specific blockchains on Avalanche. are integrated in the Avalanche ecosystem. The supply of subnets is unlimited. Subnets allow for customization and the ability to add features from other blockchains. Avalanche plans to break their Multiverse initiative into a minimum of 6 phases that will support new projects and cohorts. There are no time constraints for the completion of the project.
In November 2022, Avalanche granted $4M worth of AVAX tokens to decentralized trading platform GMX. GMX offers perpetual and spot futures contracts on Avalanche and Arbitrum. Avalanche's $4M incentive is intended to grow GMX users and provide liquidity in the Avalanche network. It is based on the Avalanche Rush incentive program, which is aimed at growing the DeFi ecosystem on Avalanche. Avalanche Rush is a $180 million liquidity incentive initiative that has as purpose the increase in liquidity and the number of users of DeFi applications on the Avalanche smart contract platform. The Avalanche Foundation expects the incentives to be spread out over several months. The incentives will also be shared with partner platforms Dopex, TraderJoe and YieldYak.
The Avalanche incentive program mitigates a portion of the risk involved in providing liquidity at GMX. It also helps partner protocols design and build new products on top of the GMX revenue model. The additional $4 million of liquidity being disbursed over a period of several months could make users prefer GMX for liquidity. You can also use new products being built by partner platforms.
How are companies building platforms with Avalanche?
Institutions like Deloitte, Lemonade, and Togg are leveraging or planning to leverage Avalanche's technology for different use cases. For example, Deloitte uses Avalanche technology to speed disaster recovery. Its Close As You Go program uses technology to improve security, reduce waste and fraud, and ensure trust between all parties.
Lemonade, an American insurance technology company, has leveraged Avalanche's technology to offer insurance to the world's farmers in development using a Web3 platform.
Similarly, Togg, a leading Turkish manufacturer of Power Plants, will use Avalanche to strengthen its new mobility initiative with smart contracts and create efficient functionality compared to other electric vehicles.
BNB Chain
BNB Chain, based in the Cayman Islands, is a distributed blockchain network. Established in 2019 by Binance as Binance Chain, the concept has undergone several iterations, the latest being the February 2022 launch of the BNB Chain, comprising the BNB Beacon Chain (formerly Binance Chain) and BNB Smart Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain). BNB Beacon Chain takes care of governance (voting and staking), while BNB Smart Chain serves as the infrastructure to create a large-scale DApp ecosystem. The BNB chain is a decentralized ecosystem, of open source and run by the community. Innovators and developers can create DApps on the BNB chain as part of the move to Web3.
In October 2002, BNB Chain was the world's largest smart contract blockchain in terms of transaction volume and daily active users.. It has processed 3.000 billion transactions from 163 million unique addresses and has an ecosystem of more than 1.300 active DApps as of October 21, 2022. The decentralized and permissionless nature of the network means that anyone can create a product on the BNB chain and possibly reach a huge audience.
Binance is neither the owner nor the controller of the BNB Chain. Binance and BNB Chain have one main difference: BNB Chain is a decentralized blockchain ecosystem, while Binance is a centralized entity that seeks to serve the Web3 world.
BNB Chain Growth Incentive Program
In October 2022, BNB Chain announced the launch of a $10 million growth incentive program to help with user acquisition and ecosystem growth. The program will be active with immediate effect for the projects of the fourth trimester of 22. BNB Chain will provide eligible projects with gas incentives of up to 800 BNB per project per month.
Gwendolyn Regina, Chief Investment Officer at BNB Chain, said that “Through the Growth Incentive Program, BNB Chain intends to support projects at various stages of growth and provide direct support for user acquisition so that projects also they can take advantage of other elements of the BNB Chain community to further drive growth and user experience. This is one more step to help the most promising DApps and embark the next one billion of users in Web3.
Binance Launches Oracle
In October 2022, Binance launched Binance Oracle, a decentralized Web3 Oracle (i.e., a data feed network that connects real-world data with blockchain smart contracts). Binance Oracle will enable smart contracts to run on real-world inputs and outputs, starting with the BNB chain ecosystem. Binance Oracle is expected to be chain agnostic and support other blockchains besides BNB Chain.
According to BNB Chain's Chief Investment Officer, Gwendolyn Regina, “The new internet is in the process of evolving into well-connected smart contracts. He use of oracles to drastically increase knowledge The smart contract of what is happening outside the blockchain, allowing it to respond to external events with specific actions, will be crucial. Binance Oracle will emerge as a significant contributor to Web3 by offering a stable, reliable and efficient oracle network with comprehensive accuracy and accessibility features.”
What is the future of non-Ethereum based platforms?
In its effort to unseat the blockchain from Ethereum in the field of smart contracts, non-Ethereum based chains should strive for greater enterprise adoption and create a more mainstream user base. To drive adoption, several alternative blockchain platforms have announced incentive programs, which have been discussed earlier in this article.
Non-Ethereum-Based Blockchain Platforms Are Sparking Investor Interest. In March 2022, cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale expanded its range of investment funds to include non-Ethereum-based smart contract tokens. The Grayscale Smart Contract Platform ex Ethereum (GSCPxE) fund allows investors to gain exposure to some of the largest Ethereum sidechains and smart contract networks. The GSCPxE fund consists of the altcoins Cardano (~24%), Solana (~24%), Avalanche (~16%), Polkadot (~16%), Polygon (~10%), Algorand (~4%) and Stellar (~4%).
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said the fund was created to provide investors with “diversified exposure” across the cryptocurrency market. “Smart contract technology is critical to the growth of the digital economy, but it is still too early to tell which platform will win out,” Sonnenshein added.
