A number of blockchain platforms want a piece of Ethereum's pie.

Up until recently, Ethereum was the de facto standard for the the latest token ICO, acting as the backbone of hundreds of token technologies. The value of Ethereum grew dramatically from a few dollars to more than a thousand dollars in the span of about a year and saw the launch of hundreds of token technologies on its blockchain.

More recently, similar technologies have been seeing development on competing platforms, most prominent of which go by names like NEO, Cardano, Tron, and EOS. These projects are all at various stages of development, but all hope to take a chunk of Ethereum's now-dwindling market cap.

Both EOS and Tron are ironically, ERC20 tokens at the moment, but will be launching their own mainnets in the not-too distant future. Cardano and NEO already have their own independent blockchain ecosystems. Hopeful investors might look at the low prices of Tron or Cardano compared to Ethereum and assume they are getting much better value for the money. Its bears mentioning that the quantity of circulating coins for these competing currencies is a much larger pool. Ethereum currently stands at a circulating pool of about 100 million coins, whereas Cardano has a circulating supply around 30 billion and Tron has an enormous supply of over 60 billion. The prices of these currencies simply can not mathematically reach anywhere near the value of ETH on a per-coin basis.

That's not to say that these competing technologies don't offer great value. Cardano, in particular, has been flying under the radar and quietly building and developing, with a large team of proficient developers. It is, in my opinion, the most under-valued of these currencies and stands to gain the most. It has addressed numerous issues with scaling and smart contract technology proactively and has quietly gained legitimacy as a potential Ethereum-killer.

Preferring a more brash and self-promoting campaign, Tron will be launching its mainnet at the end of May. Tron's Justin Sun has been trying his best to publicise the currency's development, even recently taking stabs at Vitalik Buterin on Twitter, to which Buterin brilliantly replied with a clever joke about being less efficient having to type out whitepapers manually, rather than quickly copying and pasting (a not-so subtle jab at Tron's plagiarising of sections of its whitepaper).

It will be interesting to see the market's response to the further developments of these competing platforms. It is possible that Ethereum will have a hard time recapturing market share from its competitors who offer potential solutions to some of Ethereum's recent problems. These competing currencies will also have to deal with the regulatory woes plaguing Ethereum as the SEC and other agencies explore the legalities of securities in relation to this emerging token economy.

As an investor, Cardano has seen huge drops from its peaks, dropping more than 80% from its all-time high. It might be an excellent time to accumulate some of this currency. Tron, EOS and NEO also are in good positions to buy with the currently depressed market and their incoming future developments. Having said that, with each of these platforms developing rapidly and so many possibilities for news to emerge regarding successes or failures, it is extremely difficult to estimate their future values.

*This is not professional trading advice - it's just my opinion!

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