Opinion | Ethereum's technical debt will lose the opportunity for widespread adoption

Cryptocurrency researcher Andy believes that in the future, alternative chains may replace Ethereum due to their modular design, user-friendly programming languages, and virtual machine architecture, which could lead to greater adoption and true innovation.

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Advantages of Alternative Chains Gradually Surpass Ethereum

Andy believes that the current theoretical development related to the Virtual Machine (VM) module is diverging further from Ethereum and its EVM. In the future, the relevance of modular networks to EVM technology may decrease, and he states that alternative chains other than Ethereum have significant advantages in the modular vertical field.

The advantages of alternative chains lie in overcoming every difficulty in achieving this goal: using any programming language, a secure and stable environment, and high performance.

Modularization Superior to Monolithic Chains

As of now, most blockchain networks for user interaction are monolithic. Execution, consensus, settlement, and data availability (DA) all occur within the same framework; whereas modular blockchain separates various functions according to project needs, assigning them to different networks for operation.

Data availability layers are flourishing. Celestia and Hyperlane have both introduced similar designs this year, with the former not only providing a data availability DA layer but also offering solutions for other DA layers. The Polygon ecosystem's Avail and the NEAR ecosystem's NEAR DA will also introduce data availability layer networks.

Data availability layers make modular blockchains more feasible. Rollups can store complete transaction information in the DA layer rather than on Ethereum, providing extremely low transaction costs and significantly enhancing user experience, thus highlighting the advantages of modular blockchains.

Weak Foundation of Solidity Community

Writing Solidity smart contracts for the EVM is not an ideal programming language for developers. Currently, thousands of developers have never heard of Solidity but are familiar with other more popular and robust languages such as JavaScript or Python.

If the Web3 industry aims to recruit a large number of new developers to truly achieve the tipping point for mass adoption and innovative applications, it needs alternative language solutions instead of being limited to Solidity.

Popular programming languages such as Rust, Go, Move, JavaScript, Python, Linux, and others have a large number of developers and strong communities. By using these channels, a large number of developers can be attracted to join the ecosystem, far surpassing Solidity in terms of quantity.

While Ethereum continues to use Solidity to write smart contracts and applications due to EVM's technical limitations, in the long run, this poses a significant obstacle to growth. Alternative chains like Solana and NEAR can use Rust to develop applications.

Bloated EVM Technology

In addition to Solidity, the EVM itself is also problematic.

EVM performance has a ceiling. In the current scope of applications such as transfers or DeFi, the EVM is sufficient. However, compared to the foundational structures of other virtual machines, the EVM has limitations in performance, and its security still needs time to be verified. Traditional virtual machines like JVM and WASM can achieve greater flexibility and security.

EVM's infrastructure development is relatively new. Although the EVM currently provides developers with a wealth of tools, its functionality is actually lacking and there are some issues.

Building on a solid foundation is more likely to foster truly innovative applications. Due to the EVM's insufficient design for simplicity and security, the probability of contract design flaws increases, posing a continuous threat to DeFi fund security and causing users and developers to hesitate. Alternative chains using the AltVM virtual machine provide development kits that have undergone more practical testing and usually come with a large number of libraries and frameworks.

For example, Aptos uses the MoveVM virtual machine, which was created based on the Facebook project when launching tokens. It has a relatively mature library and its core advantage is integration with M1, enabling access to various virtual machine networks and native DAPPs. It not only provides high transaction speeds but also offers real-time transaction finality, allowing high-traffic applications and services to establish specifications for modularization.

Ethereum's Inherent Fatal Flaw

Alternative chain virtual machines AltVM, due to their developer-friendly and modular design, are expected to experience significant growth in the future.

For the rapid development of the Web3 industry, reliance on Ethereum is not sustainable. Ethereum is burdened with many technical debts, including monolithic architecture, insufficient language community strength, and bloated EVM architecture. Therefore, if the goal is to attract a large number of developers to generate innovative applications for mass adoption, alternative chains that address these issues have a better chance than Ethereum.

Improving the aforementioned issues with Ethereum is not easy; technical debt is a challenge that all long-term projects face, and it may eventually become a fatal flaw for Ethereum.

Although Ethereum has a robust consensus, it is still likely to continue to exist in the future. However, when it comes to mass adoption and opportunities for future innovation, these may fall to other ecosystems.