Tezos Commons :: Tezos: the Dark Horse in the Race for Blockchain Dominance — Part 2: Evaluating The Field
December 1, 2022Tezos: the Dark Horse in the Race for Blockchain Dominance — Part 2: Evaluating The Field
“We will win if we can and live with it if we can’t, but you never know how far you can go unless you run. You have to run your race. I don’t care how many times they say it can’t be done.” — Penny Chenery, Secretariat
If you’ve ever spent a day at the racetrack (and if you haven’t you definitely should sometime), you’ll surely remember the brief period between each race during which the horses scheduled to participate in the next race stroll past the grandstand on their way to the gate.
It is during this time that the bettors in attendance have the opportunity to take a good, long gander at each of the participants and attempt to ascertain how each might perform. Do any of them (horses or jockeys) look nervous or uncomfortable? Are there any limps visible? Is there one horse that more confident, cooler, and more collected than all the others?
This visual (and purely subjective) information, combined with the much less subjective information about past performance, the respective jockeys who will be riding each horse, each horse’s weight, the name of its trainer, and the predicted odds that each horse is given by the experts to win the race — all available in our racing programs, is all that we, the bettors in the grandstands, have to go on.
Now that we’ve reviewed the current track conditions that the runners in the Blockchain Stakes are facing in 2022 from Part 1 of this series, it’s time to turn our gaze upon the runners themselves.
With 10,000+ cryptocurrencies theoretically involved in this competition, analyzing every competitor in this crucial and massively lucrative race would be near impossible, but that’s Ok. In the race for blockchain dominance, we can safely place every blockchain currently in existence into one of four basic categories: favourites, also-Rans, the lame, and the dark horse.
Let’s take a look at the relative merits of each…
The Field
The Favorites
We all know their names. They sport immense market caps and hold the notable advantage of being “first to post” as the earliest offerings blockchain tech had to offer. The also hold the benefit of being present during the “what is this crazy thing everybody’s getting rich off?” news cycle of the last decade. This advantage is nothing to be taken lightly. These chains and their associated cryptos possess names that almost everybody knows — even those who have no interest in the crypto arena at all. That kind of brand recognition matters, and it has served — at least up to this point — to ensure that the odds always appear to be in their favor.
But all is not well for the Favorites in this race. Cumbersome, inefficient governance processes, community infighting, resistance to change, and declining consumer sentiment have left them reeling. The ostensible technological advantages garnered by being early out of the gate have been largely squandered, and it’s only a matter of time before this simple fact becomes apparent to all.
The Also-Rans
In any race, the runner to finish first isn’t the only one who gets rewards. That’s why they have silver and bronze medals at the Olympics. In horse racing, it’s possible to lay “place” and “show” bets (“place” meaning you still win a bit if your horse comes in second, and “show” meaning you win an even littler bit if your horse comes in third).
In The Blockchain Stakes, it’s likely that we’ll wind up with multiple “place” and “show” winners. The odds that we wind up with but a single “winner takes all” blockchain that serves every purpose and meets every need the world may have are exceedingly low. A far more likely outcome is that many chains serving limited niche markets and delivering curated tools to serve those markets will cross the finish line here.
We’re all glad the Also-Rans are here, but everybody knows the big money is won by picking the winner.
The Lame
The sad reality is, not every horse is going to even finish this race, much less win it. Many (the majority, in fact) of this race’s participants are destined for the glue factory. The reasons for this are many. Some don’t have the tech to back up their lofty ambitions, others were simply built to serve a purpose that nobody actually needs (or wants), others still were unleashed upon the world with no other purpose in mind but to fleece an unsuspecting public of its hard-earned cash.
To the Lame, we tip our hats and thank them for coming out to the track, but their destiny is out of our hands.
The Dark Horse
Which brings us to why we are here: to talk about the dark horse in the Blockchain Stakes: Tezos. The numerous advantages that make Tezos a wise dark horse pick in this important race have already been covered in great depth by my compatriot, but let’s review them in brief anyway.
Tezos is a protocol built from the ground up, designed to evolve to meet the changing needs of the larger blockchain ecosystem. It has a tested and proven governance model that has already approved and implemented 11 significant protocol upgrades (with a 12th on the way). Tezos was purpose-built for scaling with a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism baked into its DNA, boasts an industry-leading environmental footprint, low gas fees, and is a self-amending chain — meaning that any part of the protocol can be upgraded at any time without necessitating a fork of any kind.
We’ve seen a flurry of activity in the Tezos ecosystem over the past 18 months. Tezos has become an important destination for digital artists and digital art collectors. Important partnerships with huge global brands have been forged. Ambitious Web 3.0 and metaverse projects have been launched in earnest. Tezos-based gaming has become a reality. Even globally recognized celebrities have begun to take notice of Tezos’ many USPs and benefits. In many regards, Tezos and its ecosystem have already begun to outpace the favorites in the race for blockchain dominance.
It all adds up to an intriguing possibility: perhaps it’s not so much a matter of if Tezos makes its way to the front of the pack in the crucial days ahead, as it is a matter of when.
In Part 3 of this series, we’ll dive a little deeper into exactly why betting on Tezos to emerge as the dark horse winner in The Blockchain Stakes might just be the smartest bet you’ll ever make…
Stay tuned for more!
Tezos: the Dark Horse in the Race for Blockchain Dominance — Part 2: Evaluating The Field was originally published in Tezos Commons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
